Tech21NYC

No, it is after the speaker sim. Most stompbox compressors are designed for guitar input. The SansAmp circuit emulates an amp and also produces intentional distortion as well as the natural compression that is a byproduct of the tube amp emulation. A compressor in most cases will increase the noise floor.

It's post SansAmp circuit and Level control. You should only put post amp type of effects like delay, reverb EQ. Do not put compressors, OD , fuzz in the loop.

From the manual: HOW TO FIND KNOB POSITIONING WITHIN A PRESET When you turn a knob from its stored position, it “unlocks” and the channel indicator LED will blink. The slower the blink, the farther away you are from the preset point. The faster the blink, the closer you are. At the preset point, the LED stops blinking and remains on The VT Bass Deluxe is an analog circuit that uses a digital processor to control and memorize the different settings. In order to have the knobs represent the position they are stored at would entail using motorized controls which would be more involved, make the unit more expensive, bigger and heavier and has its own set of downsides with possible noise and reliability issues.

Here is a link to the VT Bass Deluxe manual. Keep in mind that all sample settings are done with a vintage P or Jazz Bass into a mixer and studio monitors. Using the pedal into the front of an amp or power amp and speaker will yield different results. Once you edit a preset make sure to double click and save the preset. Do not keep playing while the pedal is in edit mode to avoid noise.

The Blend control allows you to mix in the un-effected signal with the SansAmp circuit though everything goes through the Low, Mid and High EQ. In most amps you will bypass your amp's preamp by plugging into the effects return. You can use the parallel out and send your un-effected signal to your bass amp and send the SansAmp XLR output to the mixer.

I would have suggested trying to turn the comp control down. If the v1 works better for that's cool too. We have not heard similar complaints regarding the Bass Fly Rig v2 compressor but everyone's rig and situation is different.

Is the volume on your bass all the way up? What is the comp and level knob set at?

When it comes to any artist product, we only add specific features if the artist requests it.

It's most likely a burned out component due to an over voltage situation. It can be fixed but then the good deal on Ebay isn't such a good deal. My suggestion is to return it to the seller for a refund. If the OP wants to contact us we can tell them what component to replace. It involves removing the circuit board. Support

I can only speak to our particular products. Our Bass Driver which came after our original Bass DI (see attached picture) was originally designed soles as a DI. You could use it in one of two ways. 1.) As a transformerless active DI that would allow you to present a transparent high impedance instrument signal to a low Z input on a mixer without any signal loss or signal degradation due to long cable runs. 2.) As a colored amp emulated output (with SansAmp circuitry engaged) similar to the old studio and live technique of mic'ing a bass amp cab along with a DI'd signal to create a summed sound with more complexity that could be provided by your guitars pickups only. When we released the Bass Driver DI, we added an on/off stomp switch as well as the ability to send a 1/4" output to your amp while simultaneously. This gives you more options but it also requires the player to consider how the FOH is affected by the DI signal. In general if you are using the Bass Driver DI as an always on pedal we recommend setting the unit for unity gain. When you do a soundcheck it's best to have the pedal bypassed and let the FOH hear the uneffected signal first, then you should engage the SansAmp. At unity gain there should be no major level change which should make the sound tech happy. If you start adjusting the unit during a performance this will most likely change the output level to the FOH which may be problematic depending upon how drastic your sound changes. If you were using and mic'ing a vintage bass amp and changed your amp settings this would also change things at the FOH as well. Most good sound techs are savvy enough to allow some extra headroom at the mixer to deal with level changes that occur during a performance. If you are constantly tweaking throughout the gig this will not make the FOH happy.

On SansAmp products like our Bass Driver DI etc, the "Drive" control acts like the volume control on a vintage non-master volume amplifier. As you turn up the control in the first half of the rotation, you increase both volume and power amp style distortion. When you get around 12 o'clock (depending upon playing style, pickup output etc) you start to get to the point where increasing the Drive results in more distortion and volume increases become less and less as the circuit gets more saturated. We do have a few products like our PSA 2.0 that have "Gain" controls. Gain increases the input sensitivity. Drive=distortion Gain=input sensitivity Volume=level These terms can be interpreted somewhat differently for different applications.

Which product were you asking about?

It sounds like your sound tech doesn't know what a "normal" bass sounds like. Electric bass is a two part instrument. The bass and the amp. The entire reason the Bass Driver was created was to avoid the typical DI'd sound of your guitar's pickups without the benefit of the bass amp and speaker. Bass sounds in the studio (though sometimes direct without an amp) were usually done by recording a bass amp with a microphone and mixing that sound with the DI'd sound to add articulation. The original intent of the Bass Driver was to plug into the unit and send the parallel output to your bass amp and use that for your stage monitor and tone. The XLR out of the BDDI was then sent to the board allowing you to mix the amp emulation with the DI'd tone like in the studio. Analog speaker sims like we use and companies like Palmer, ADA, H&K etc use low and high pass filtering in conjunction with EQ to simulate the speaker frequency response of a recorded speaker. An impulse response sends an "impulse" through a system to take a digital snapshot of the system. The IR captures the frequency response, phase, time and reflections of the system. IR's only capture the linear response, they can't capture compression and distortion. IR's are very accurate and work well in many applications. After making my own IR's and buying and using dozens of them I find that whether using actual microphones or impulse responses it's very difficult to capture the entirety of a cabinet in the room in a useable way. Whether or not they always sound or work better is a matter of taste and application. Some sound techs prefer analog sims. To me the one downside of IR's is that there is no way to use them without going digital. The other downside is that they don't work well into a typical analog guitar or bass rig. The other thing to consider is that there is a big difference between listening to your sound through a pair of nearfield monitors at low volume or headphones vs the sound coming through a large PA system in a big space.

Yes, the Para Driver works in the same manner. The VT Bass DI's speaker sim can be bypassed.

The parallel output is hard wired to the input by design. This parallel output is the dry signal from your instrument. When the Bass Driver DI is bypassed your signal is un-effected and goes through a high quality buffer. When the pedal is engaged with the Blend off and the tone controls at noon, the signal is un-effected. It is a clean DI with no amp or speaker emulation but the EQ can be used if desired. The Drive and Presence controls will not work with the Blend off. When the Blend is turned up it starts to add the SansAmp circuit to your signal. Think of the Blend control like a pan pot that can sweep from un-effected to the full SansAmp signal. (On the Bass Driver DI the speaker sim cannot be turned off when the SansAmp circuit is engaged.)