New pre-amp pedal wanted for use with short scales

[Osiris]

I play short scale basses exclusively these days and I'm on the lookout for a new preamp pedal, one that will help me shape the inherent darker sound of short scales. I currently have a Fender Downtown which is cracking unit but I could do with a bit more control particularly over the mid range.

I'm not too fussed about onboard compression as I already have that covered by a TC Electronic HyperGravity with my own TonePrint. Some sort of drive would be useful but not essential, but if it does I'm looking for a smooth low gain, natural type sound, not some nasty fizzy distortion. So what I'm essentially after is a flexible but not overly complicated EQ, a DI out and an optional touch of drive. Some sort of cab sim could be handy too but again not essential.  

I've watched shedloads of Youtube demos and have ruled out a lot of the obvious contenders - the TC Spectradrive would be perfect but unfortunately you cannot edit the tone prints, as far as I can tell. I love Steve Harris's tone but his Tech 21 signature pedal hasn't got the sound in my head in the demos I've seen. I briefly had an EHX Battalion and soon sold it on, enough said there! 

A mate of mine has recommended the Lehle Basswitch which looks and sounds great but is perhaps over spec'd for my relatively simple needs. But I keep coming back to the DarkGlass Alpha/Omega Ultra simply because of the 6 band EQ which should give more control over the short scale sound. I know the DG X Ultra also has the 6 band EQ but I don't like the drive tone on the YouTube clips I've seen, if I can I'll get my hands on one I'll give it a go if only to rule it out. There are several comments online that the AO Ultra does a good (however you quantify what that means) low gain sound, but I've not been able to find any sound samples online. Has anyone done low gain sounds with the AO Ultra? What did you think    

Any other suitable recommendations that meet my needs above, guys? 

[Thunderbird]

If it was my money I'd buy the hartke bass attack 2 check it out on the bass channel on YouTube 

[Al Krow]

Won't your Helix Stomp give you pretty much all the tone shaping options you need? What do you feel it's lacking? 

Edited September 24, 2020 by Al Krow

[Osiris]

It's probably useful to list the pre's that I've tried over the years but didn't get on with for one reason or another, in no particular order; EHX Battalion, Tech 21 BDDI, VT Bass & DP3X, Trace Elliot Transit, 2 Notes Le Bass, DarkGlass B7K & Vintage. There's probably a few more but these are all I can remember for now. From these, the Tech 21 DP3X was very good, certainly my favourite Tech 21 offering, but the EQ section was a bit limited in getting the best out of a short scale, IME. The Trace Transit was a mixed bag,  a great EQ section and superb dual band compression, but a weird sounding drive and the pre-shape added so much sub bass that it was actually funny. But for the wrong reasons. 

[Osiris]

6 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

Won't your Helix Stomp give you pretty much all the tone shaping options you need? What do you feel it's lacking? 

The Stomp is amazing and gives me everything I need and way more. I don't find it lacking in anyway, but having had one die on me I want a backup DI/tone shaper. My current Fender Downtown is actually very close to what I want, it just needs a bit more mid control to be perfect. 

[Osiris]

@Al Krow you have a DarkGlass AO amp, don't you? How do you find the graphic for tone shaping? How do the various cab sims sound, which is your favourite? Does it do a smooth, amp like low gain sound? If so, what settings are you using to get that? How does the AO work in the mix, both clean and driven? Does the clean section have an inherent voice of its own or add anything to the core bass sound? 

The thoughts and experiences of an AO user will be very useful in helping me decide if it's the one to go for. 

[Al Krow]

14 hours ago, Osiris said:

The Stomp is amazing and gives me everything I need and way more. I don't find it lacking in anyway, but having had one die on me I want a backup DI/tone shaper. My current Fender Downtown is actually very close to what I want, it just needs a bit more mid control to be perfect. 

Gotcha - that's definitely a crap experience to have had! Was it just an unfortunate one-off or did it require a full repair / replacement - hopefully under warranty?

FWIW - I find that the Tech 21 VT Bass DI, which is more featured than the VT Bass you've tried, really hits the spot in terms of that 'blanket lifting' effect, even with gear I really wouldn't expect it to "improve". Primarily I think due to the 'bite' switch which I leave permanently on, and which provides a ‘presence’ boost by boosting the upper mids and treble so that the tone becomes more pronounced and present especially in a mix. It also has a subsonic HPF filter to tighten up the sound. It's also got a very decent 3 band EQ & character / drive dials for tone shaping from clean to full on dirt. Put that all together and it's very possibly exactly the antidote needed for a dark sounding bass?

Out of interest why are short scales darker than 34" scales?

Edited September 25, 2020 by Al Krow
To keep the font police, with obviously too much time on their hands, happy :)

[Thunderbird]

23 minutes ago, Osiris said:

It's probably useful to list the pre's that I've tried over the years but didn't get on with for one reason or another, in no particular order; EHX Battalion, Tech 21 BDDI, VT Bass & DP3X, Trace Elliot Transit, 2 Notes Le Bass, DarkGlass B7K & Vintage. There's probably a few more but these are all I can remember for now. From these, the Tech 21 DP3X was very good, certainly my favourite Tech 21 offering, but the EQ section was a bit limited in getting the best out of a short scale, IME. The Trace Transit was a mixed bag,  a great EQ section and superb dual band compression, but a weird sounding drive and the pre-shape added so much sub bass that it was actually funny. But for the wrong reasons. 

Think you missed one out I'm sure your Mrs said you had tried pre ejaculation also lol

[Al Krow]

Sid -  a couple of posts from me on here a while back, which look at the amp and AO drive in a bit of detail:

The clean tone on the amp is great, and it now has a 6 band EQ rather than 4 band with variable mids; and I know you were hugely impressed with the clean tone and EQ from your own review of the Mk1 in your amp shoot out a few years back. When I'm playing live I tend it to use it mostly clean, and maybe add a bit of grit from the drive for harmonic richness, rather than using it full on drive mode.

Edited September 24, 2020 by Al Krow

[Cuzzie]

1 hour ago, Thunderbird said:

If it was my money I'd buy the hartke bass attack 2 check it out on the bass channel on YouTube 

I have to say I preferred the bass attack 1 to the Bass attack 2, it’s just a bit more raw, with punch to it.

[Thunderbird]

6 minutes ago, Cuzzie said:

I have to say I preferred the bass attack 1 to the Bass attack 2, it’s just a bit more raw, with punch to it.

Oh not personally tried the 2 but it does seem to have much more control over the frequencies than the 1 in the demos that I have seen I was impressed with my HBA 1 and regret moving it on

[karrlander]

I run a Nux Melvin Lee preamp with my Fender JMJ Mustang and I’m very happy with it. And it’s pretty cheap considering what it does.

[Cuzzie]

2 minutes ago, Thunderbird said:

Oh not personally tried the 2 but it does seem to have much more control over the frequencies than the 1 in the demos that I have seen I was impressed with my HBA 1 and regret moving it on

I couldn’t put my finger on it, maybe me having more control was a bad thing and I dialled in a poo sound.

I would have kept mine, but I had another unit that could do what it did

Cracking bombproof piece of kit

[krispn]

I had an amp die on a gig - (It fell from on top of a speaker in the back of the van and the drop caused an issue - I've learned to never let the singer load the van) so used the stomp as my iem/out front sounds  - it was a great back up for me but I can relate to your dilemma on a gig if your stomp died! 

The AO is a great pedal and should tick a lot of boxes

-it can load cab sims which are great for direct to desk, I'm guessing you can load 3rd party sims now too but you'd have to consult a current owner (who employs this feature) as I used the DG suite cab sims during my tenure. I used it for heavy sounds but it can do lower gain too but all depends if its the correct type of gain for an always on type sound if that's what you're aiming for. The EQ is good and can be used independently of the dirt so that's handy.

I totally get the theory behind the decision - get a solid box that shouldn't fail - I thing AK had a usb issue with his pedal way back too so they're not impervious to the odd issue!

@Al Krow A short scale has generally got about 8lbs less tension per string than on a regular bass. This lower tension can translate as more fundamental and fewer overtones and can be described as woolly/phat/thick/muddy depending on what one gravitates to in their bass sound. This can often explain why some eq options are useful especially in relation to drive on a short scale. I know I prefer using fuzz/octave down on the short scale as it just seems to work well for those tones. There's a Zeus Fuzz/Octave in the FS which looks great and does a really nice gated/glitchy fuzz for that exact tones but that wil be no use to the op.

 

 

[Osiris]

32 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

Gotcha - that's definitely a crap experience to have had! Was it just an unfortunate one-off or did it require a full repair / replacement - hopefully under warranty?

FWIW - I find that the Tech 21 VT Bass DI, which is more featured than the VT Bass you've tried, really hits the spot in terms of that 'blanket lifting' effect, even with gear I really wouldn't expect it to "improve". Primarily I think due to the 'bite' switch which I leave permanently on, and which provides a ‘presence’ boost by boosting the upper mids and treble so that the tone becomes more pronounced and present especially in a mix. It also has a subsonic HPF filter to tighten up the sound. It's also got a very decent 3 band EQ & character / drive dials for tone shaping from clean to full on dirt. Put that all together and it's very possibly exactly the antidote needed for a dark sounding bass?

Out of interest why are short scales darker than 34" scales?

The VT bass lasted one gig, actually not even one song! And it's reasonable to assume that the VT Bass DI is the same sound and circuit board but with a few bells and whistles attached but it doesn't work for me. I dialled in a great tone with it, but when I switched it on mid gig the bass simply vanished from the mix! I don't do mid scoops, indeed, the tone on the pedal was pretty mid forward but once engaged my bass became inaudible. The pedal volume was correctly set so it wasn't a volume issue either. All weight to the sound was lost, so much so that a couple of guys in the band looked over to see what was happening. It was as though someone had swapped out my rig - which you have heard in action and you know is very capable - had been swapped out for a cheap transistor radio. I switched the VT off again and the bass was back. I double checked settings and the volume and tried again but it was the same story.  It sounded great on its own but was incapable of cutting through the mix of guitar and keys playing rock and pop stuff. Maybe it was a duff one but it sounded just like the YouTube clips I'd seen. The DP3X on the other hand worked brilliantly in the mix. 

As for the short scale darkness, it's something to do with physics, apparently. 

[Osiris]

16 minutes ago, karrlander said:

I run a Nux Melvin Lee preamp with my Fender JMJ Mustang and I’m very happy with it. And it’s pretty cheap considering what it does.

I did look at the Nux but wasn't sure about the EQ center points on paper, for example, the treble is centred at 8KHz, whereas I pretty much cut most frequencies above 4KHz so I wasn't sure how effective it would be especially on something vintage sounding like the JMJ. But based on your recommendation I'll do some more homework 😊

[Cuzzie]

Lehle sonic spark is a decent bet as well

[Jus Lukin]

-

 

Edited March 8, 2022 by Jus Lukin

[krispn]

QStrip?

[krispn]

6 hours ago, Al Krow said:

Gotcha - that's definitely a crap experience to have had! Was it just an unfortunate one-off or did it require a full repair / replacement - hopefully under warranty?

FWIW - I find that the Tech 21 VT Bass DI, which is more featured than the VT Bass you've tried, really hits the spot in terms of that 'blanket lifting' effect, even with gear I really wouldn't expect it to "improve". Primarily I think due to the 'bite' switch which I leave permanently on, and which provides a ‘presence’ boost by boosting the upper mids and treble so that the tone becomes more pronounced and present especially in a mix. It also has a subsonic HPF filter to tighten up the sound. It's also got a very decent 3 band EQ & character / drive dials for tone shaping from clean to full on dirt. Put that all together and it's very possibly exactly the antidote needed for a dark sounding bass?

Out of interest why are short scales darker than 34" scales?

Why is the font all different?

[dannybuoy]

Aguilar Tonehammer is my favourite pre for what you describe. I prefer the sound of this over anything Tech21 or Darkglass have to offer (and I’ve tried most of them) for a warm barely-overdriven tone with my P-Bass and flats, and would expect it to suit short scales well also. I have an Alpha Omega and love it but wouldn’t recommend it as a natural sounding low gain preamp.

[Osiris]

@Jus Lukin Yes, some sort of parametric EQ would do the job, of course. But I'm lazy and I like to keep things simple so ideally I'd like everything in one box so as not to have to faff about with a pedal board and all the extra odds and sods they require. Maybe another multi fx is the answer? 

@dannybuoy I'd ruled out the Tone Hammer after not being overly blown away by the amp which I thought was good but not great. But it does have a semi parametric mid so it's worth another look. You don't think the AO does the low gain thing well? There's a couple of folk online saying it does, but I guess that the only way to decide if it works for me is to try it. 

[krispn]

Only thing with the TH preamp is the volume jump when engaging the AGS and while it's a great unit I found you can't really use it as a clean and dirty preamp as effectively as some other units - it kinda needed to be clean or 'dirty' depending on how much of a change in tones/volume you want.

[Al Krow]

1 hour ago, krispn said:

Only thing with the TH preamp is the volume jump when engaging the AGS and while it's a great unit I found you can't really use it as a clean and dirty preamp as effectively as some other units - it kinda needed to be clean or 'dirty' depending on how much of a change in tones/volume you want.

From the comments I've read, 99% of folk found the exact same thing with the Tech 21 dUg Pinnick, which I believe Tech 21 themselves may have acknowledged. 

I guess that's one of the benefits of having the AO on the AO900 - you have some impressively flexible gain stage options on that amp!

Edited September 25, 2020 by Al Krow
No fonts were knowingly abused in the writing of this post.

[krispn]

I know the dug can be set up to be more even across its switchable sounds but the TH will automatically add in a certain amount of boost with the AGS engaged so it’s not really possible to balance the two sounds especially if the AGS side is needed for a much heavier sound. I used the TH pre more as low gain always on option rather than relying on it as both clean and dirty - it just wasn’t really usable in that capacity.