Sansamp VT Deluxe vs Bass Drive deluxe / questions on distortion live

[Bileofwood]

I know this topic has been discussed before, however my question is slightly different.

I have long been battling the issue of using a heavily distorted bass with DI happy live sound men.

At the moment I am using this set up:

Bass> Tuner> Noisegate> Blackstar HT Distortion> EQ pedal

I have bought a Behringer DI with a 4x21 emulator which I insist sound guys use but sometimes they cannot - and even when they do it's not really designed for bass anyway.

I have also tried using the emulated out from the Blackstar, often with catastrophic results.

But we were playing a gig last night and the bassist in another band showed me his Bass driver deluxe - I had used a smaller Sansamp before and been fairly underwhelmed - however the bass driver deluxe not only had XLR out for the desk, but also, crucially, an effects loop, meaning I could insert my noisegate and Blackstar pedal (and maybe the EQ if needed) into the whole mix.

So I guess what I am asking is which of these items would be most receptive to a distortion pedal? I have read about the VT being more vintage sounding, but the BassDriver having better Mids control - I am not sure about the idea of the Bass Driver scooped - while I do like that sound it's not something I would want to be stuck with - however if the option was always scooped or never scooped I would choose the former.

Also, any suggestions on whether or not I could be looking a different route here?

Basically what I am looking for is a way to dial in my Blackstar pedal into my bass sound and control what comes out of the PA FOH. A standard DI is obviously no use, I do need something which sounds like a bass amp speaker. It might even be the these boxes here won't do what I am after. I find that every DI, except my 4x12 emulator, retains too much hi and lo frequencies - a bit like plugging a distortion pedal into your hi fi basically.

Kinda at my wits end, am really thinking that the only method would be to spend big bucks on a bass microphone - this option above could be my last attempt into feeding the PA a dialled in tone which I would prefer in order to retain 100% control of my sound 100% of the time.

[Wally]

Vt bass is the more mid ranged focused pedal and has a dedicated mid control knob. The driver has no dedicated mid control but has a blend to mix clean bass with the drivers distortion.

Don't know how they'd do with the blackstar in their loops. Both the sansamp pedals have loads of distortion in them and with either one you may find you can do away with the blackstar and the eq pedal.