Tech21NYC

We made two versions. One with the speaker sim defeat and one without. My suggestion is to plug a 1/4" cable into the effects send and from there into an amp or mixer. Turn the switch on and off and listen for a change. 

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.  

On 18/01/2024 at 06:59, Maurice bates said:

hi all, was wondering if anyone has had any problems with the volume of the compression effect. I bought a fly rig bass pedal recently and the volume on the comp button was very loud, with the volume hardly used to that of the rest of the pedals, is this standard on this upgraded pedal 

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. 

3 hours ago, Downunderwonder said:

@Tech21NYC hell ya! The bain of soundmen's existence solved in one fell swoop. I can't believe it took until 2023 for this to happen.

Which product were you asking about? 

21 minutes ago, Lozz196 said:

After the gig the soundguy said to me he had a nightmare with my bass sound trying to get it to sound like a proper bass, but by removing the top end and high mids he got it sounding like a regular P-bass.

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.) 

The Para Driver DI was designed to be a multi instrument DI/preamp that can be used with electric and acoustic instruments, keys, drums, vox etc. It has a higher input impedance that can work well with piezo pickups. The VT Bass was designed to emulate a library of vintage Ampeg tones. 

Aren't you able to purchase new products in the UK and return them if you decide they aren't working out for you? Buying used is always an option but it can be somewhat of a crap shoot. We get contacted by many customers that purchase used pedals that turn out to have some sort of malfunction. 

The PSA 2.0 sounds great on bass but it's a very different pedal from our Bass Driver DI. If you go to our YT channel there are a number of clips of the unit on bass. 

Yes, buffered means low impedance. It is not a balanced TRS connection. 

The VT Bass has a buffered output and was designed to be connected directly to a mixer/recording interface. Its buffered output will not be degraded even when using long cable runs. If you need to use an XLR connection any decent DI box can be used. 

1 hour ago, spyder said:

Bass into the unit and put to an Acoustic Image Clarus amp.

 

When the bass is plugged into the amp direct there is no noise. When the unit is put between the bass and amp there is hiss that varies with which patch is used. 

The PSA 2.0 is a preamp and not a typical stompbox pedal. If going into the front end of an amp the amp should be set for flat response or try bypassing the preamp section of your amplifier and plugging into the effects return jack of your amp. Please note that on many amps this will bypass the master volume control so take care.

The majority of presets in the unit are for lead guitar. Presets 30-39 were written for bass guitar so I would start with those. The PSA has an all analog signal path and responds much like a vintage tube amp. It has no noise gate.  Higher settings of Drive and high end will produce more noise relative to cleaner amp settings with more flat EQ.  Even if a preset "seems" noisy in a quiet room, the signal to noise level is such that when playing (and guitar volume is full up) you will hear no noise. 

The other thing is that the pedal should be gain staged properly with your system when going into the front end of an amp. This means the volume level of your presets should be the same  as your bypassed (preset 00) level. 

On 03/03/2023 at 09:18, spyder said:

Sending mine back, it far too noisy. 

I don't understand why manufacturers make products that hiss. Drives me mad.😡

What were you plugging the unit into? The unit is analog but has very low self noise. 

The sample settings for the Bass Driver DI were done with a vintage Fender bass directly into a mixer and near field monitors. The Blend is usually set to 100% since the SansAmp emulates vintage tube amps that have no blend control. What you are plugging the Bass Driver into will have an impact on the final sound. It's best to use the Bass Driver into a flat response platform when you first use it so you can hear and understand how it works. Running through other effects or a bass amp with its own EQ curve will negate the sample settings and the way the pedal is supposed to work.

The unit does have a midrange scoop by design and backing off the Blend or increasing the midrange can help if you require more mids. We also offer the ParaDriver and VT Bass DI's for players that want more control over the midrange content. 

19 hours ago, Wild Cayote said:

Does Getty not use the dual outputs on his Rickenbacker? I would have thought that was the whole reason it had dual inputs. I though I had read something with Getty saying the essence of his signature sound was overdrive with a fat bottom end, so when I saw that his signature Sam's amp had two inputs and two channels, one fat and one with drive, I assumed that's how he achieved his sound, using his dual outputs from his Rickenbacker, as Chris Spire from Yes does. Of course they used to use two amps, which I was hoping tech 21 had streamlined into one 2 channel preamp. 

 

I think the dual outputs in a Rickenbacker is a great idea, separating the two pick up, but there seems to be almost no other gear that supports that format, other than to use 2 amps and 2 cabinets, or to use A/B/Y switching. 

No, he does not use two outputs. Maybe once upon a time in the 1970's but now now. Yes, you would need two amps or two preamps to do the Rick-O-Sound thing. 

19 hours ago, Wild Cayote said:

Well isn't it true that the Geddy DI box  pedal has a blend switch on it that blends not the dry signal with the wet signal, but the fat channel with the drive channel? As in the device has two channels and without the drive on, you can play through the fat channel, then switch the drive on and blend drive with the fat channel.... 

Its surprising to me that the rack mount doesn't have this functionality - or does it? Like even if you can't plug into its two channels simultaneously, can you use both channels though one inputs? It seems like the ultimate way to do this would be to run both input channels at once, as even if you didn't have a Rickenbacker with dual outputs you could use a y cable and split the signal into each input. Source audio has this ability in their aftershock pedal, and maybe other pedals they make too. Which is what I think I'm gonna have to do since u can't achieve this with the Geddy pre amp

Both the DI-2112 and the GED-2112 have two channels. The Drive and Deep channels. Only the Drive Channel has the Blend control that allows you to mix in your un-effected signal with the Drive (SansAmp emulation.) There is no ability to switch between them. You might be confusing this product with the dUg Pinnick DP-3X pedal. That unit allows you to switch between the two channels. 

No they cannot. The inputs A and B allow you to have two different instruments plugged into the preamp. The front input jack overrides the rear inputs. The GED-2112 has two channels but operates with a mono input. This is the way Geddy uses it.

If you want to use two outputs you would need a second unit.