Anyone who got any experience with the Nux Melvin Lee Davis Bass Preamp?

[Baloney Balderdash]

So I originally planed to get the NUX Solid Studio IR & Poweramp Simulator to make my bass setup more mobile, but after some pondering I am kind of leaning towards getting the NUX Melvin Lee Davis Bass Preamp instead, both from NUX's Verdugo Series of pedals.

This preamp pedal features digital amp modeling of both a Nux custom (as far as I understood it) Melvin Lee Davis and an Aguilar Tone Hammer (the actual amp, not the pedal) bass amp, which you can chose between via the software editor, with promise of more amp models becoming available in the future (and as this pedal seems to have just quite recently become available on the market there should yet still be a realistic chance that they actually will keep that promise too, though I would actually be quite satisfied with just the Aguilar Tone Hammer bass amp, at least assuming the modeling is of proper high quality), as well as 4 build IR cab simulations in 24 Bit, 48Khz, 20ms, 1024 Samples, resolution, with room for additionally loading 4 extra 3rd party cab IR files, giving you 8 cab IRs at a time to chose from via the software editor, and the possibility to change out the 4 custom 3rd party cab IRs at any time you should wish with new ones of your choice (the Nux Solid Studio uses 32 Bit, 88,2kHz, 50ms, 2048 samples resolution for the cab IRs, but I have no idea of how much of a real difference that would actually make, as well as if I got that instead I would still need a bass preamp), otherwise the preamp works at 32Bit, 48kHz resolution, and allegedly should have a latency of just 1ms.

It all looks great on paper, as far as I can see.

 

Here's the page for the preamp on NUX's homepage:

https://www.nuxefx.com/melvin-lee-davis.html

 

And here's a demo/review of it from BassTheWorld on YouTube:

 

And here's a bit more detailed demo of the pedal from YouTube:

 

The price seems amazing for what you get as well, just 152£/165 Euro, and the Nux Tape Core Deluxe, which is a digital Roland Space Echo tape delay emulation pedal, with all the original features plus a bunch other useful ones via a software editor, with capability to save and store the presets, that cost less than half as much as this bass preamp, and which I happen to own, sounds no short of amazing, which also seems to be the general consensus of reviewers around the internet, which I think ought to at least say something about the company's capabilities when it comes to digital modeling/emulations/simulations and the general level of quality vs. the price points of their products.

 

However before I pull the trigger and buy this preamp, are there anyone here on the forum who have actually tried it out or even own one of these pedals them self, who got any advice that could possibly help me decide, their personal opinion of the quality and capabilities of the pedal, and weather they would recommend me for or against buying it, and if so why they think so?

Any input from people with actual first hand experience with this pedal really I would much welcome and appreciate.  

And input from people with first hand experience with other NUX pedals from the Verdugo Series, to which this preamp belongs, would be welcome as well.

 

I should properly point out that I will have no issues with only having access to choosing between the IR cab simulations and amp models from the software editor, as I will really only need one basic great tone from this pedal, and as said, if the modeling of the Aguilar Tone Hammer bass amp that this pedal comes with is of proper high quality that will actually fit me perfectly well, then the rest should hopefully be possible to achieve just by finding the right 3'rd party cab IR and dialing in the EQ of the pedal to my liking. 

Edited July 22, 2020 by Baloney Balderdash

[karrlander]

I've had mine for one week now and done some bedroom work and one rehearsal with the band. I think this pedal is the best you can get for that price. Maybe it's not up there with Arkham Oracle and that stuff but for me thats just practice and play out live it's good enough. No one would hear the difference where I play live anyway.
There is a lot of possibilities in there but I just worked out a tone that I like and left it on. Nice to be able to work with different IR's, I have it on to the DI and off to the amp and just switch between headphone practice, using and amp and amp + PA. The HPF and LPF in the IR section is nice too. Thinking about making a flat IR to use when running trough and amp so I can get the HPF on but the EQ section has a very low center for the bass so cutting a bit there and then a little bass boost on the amp gives me a nice clean bottom with a lot of punch so I have not tried it yet.
The pedal is new to me so this is what I found out after a weeks use. I'll be happy to answer any questions if I can.

[Baloney Balderdash]

3 hours ago, karrlander said:

I've had mine for one week now and done some bedroom work and one rehearsal with the band. I think this pedal is the best you can get for that price. Maybe it's not up there with Arkham Oracle and that stuff but for me thats just practice and play out live it's good enough. No one would hear the difference where I play live anyway.
There is a lot of possibilities in there but I just worked out a tone that I like and left it on. Nice to be able to work with different IR's, I have it on to the DI and off to the amp and just switch between headphone practice, using and amp and amp + PA. The HPF and LPF in the IR section is nice too. Thinking about making a flat IR to use when running trough and amp so I can get the HPF on but the EQ section has a very low center for the bass so cutting a bit there and then a little bass boost on the amp gives me a nice clean bottom with a lot of punch so I have not tried it yet.
The pedal is new to me so this is what I found out after a weeks use. I'll be happy to answer any questions if I can.

Thanks a lot for your reply. 

Though in the meantime I moved back to deciding in favor of the NUX Solid Studio IR & Power Amp Simulator, since I discovered that using a bit of full parametric EQ'ing from my Zoom MS CDR70 unit, then going into my EHX Black Finger, tube driven optical compressor, and then into a Behringer MIC100 Ultra Gain Tube Preamp, equipped with an EHX preamp tube, even if the Behringer starve the tube at merely 60V (but still sounds great to me, with a higher quality tube swapped in instead of the cheap crappy stock one), unlike the Black Finger that run it's 2 preamp tubes at proper high 300V voltage, finally going into my poweramp and then my bass cab, actually sounds really great.

The Zoom CDR70 and Black Finger I would be using anyway, so space wise it's just the Behringer MIC100 that will take up extra space, compared to if I had gotten the NUX Bass Preamp with integrated cab IR simulation.

So figured the over double resolution (34 bit, 88,2kHz, 2048 samples of 50ms length, which is pretty high compared to most other, even more expensive, IR cab simulation units) that the NUX Solid Studio run the cab IR files at, compared to the NUX Bass Preamp, plus the poweramp simulator that it features, would be a much better choice for my use, since I already got a preamp tone that I am really satisfied with. 

Plus I will get more slots for loading 3rd party cab IR files, and be able to change between them on the fly, even if I won't really be needing that feature. 

Edited August 9, 2020 by Baloney Balderdash

[karrlander]

Ah, so many pedals and so much fun!  Of course it depends on what you are planning to run it with. I got it when I did a pedalboard makeover and tried to clean it up a bit. Now i just run an EBS Multicom into an EBS MultiDrive (both in tube sim mode) to the Nux. Clean and simple and gives me a killer tone that sits just above the kick drum and below everything else. Just have to put an octaver and an envelope filter in there to get some synth like sounds for 70's soul/disco. I have a Moer Radar if I want to load more IR's and shift them on the fly but haven't found that I need it yet.

[Olymoon]

@Karrlander, thank you for all the description and explanations.

I'm thinking about buying one, but I use 4 different basses, so I'm wondering how much of the original tone this pedal does respect.

I've been using a lot of different digital pedals and I found that some of them sound almost th same no matter what bass you plugin.

Also I'd like to know how is the dynamic response.

Thanks in advance 

Edited November 9, 2020 by Olymoon

[karrlander]

2 hours ago, Olymoon said:

@Karrlander, thank you for all the description and explanations.

I'm thinking about buying one, but I use 4 different basses, so I'm wondering how much of the original tone this pedal does respect.

I've been using a lot of different digital pedals and I found that some of them sound almost th same no matter what bass you plugin.

Also I'd like to know how is the dynamic response.

Thanks in advance 

It has a little bit of personality but very subtle and only in a good way. Nice workable eq and you can choose between two different eq’s in the editor. I keep tweaking my pedalboard and tone all the time and change pedals mostly because  it’s always something to improve. But the Nux has just sat there from day one and I have no plans to replace it. I have an EBS ir loaded for headphone practice but it’s turned off on the amp out. For the money it’s hard to beat. 

[Olymoon]

@Karrlander thank you very much for your answer. 

[spyder]

Any users out there...

I'm about to buy one and would like to know how you guys have got on with the Nux.

[SumOne]

Resurrecting this thread just to say I just got one and think it's decent, good value for money. I wrote a bit of a review that's copied below from another thread. This is a good video showing how it sounds: 

 

 

 

 

• EQ: 3 band with sweepable mids is good. Has it's own footswitch (for preamp: Vol and EQ), clicked 'off' isn't mute - it's the preamp section bypassed.
• Drive: It sounds best to me on subtle low setting and using the clean blend, as good as any low-gain 'always on' type mild overdrive I've used. It has it's own footswitch and can be turned on while the preamp switch is turned off if you want to run overdrive with no EQ (or volume) changes.
• Noise reduction: with adjustable decay/threshold.
• IRs: It's a shame that it needs to be hooked up to a computer (or someone on Talkbass has made an app) to change IR. The IR is on even with both footswitches set to 'off', there are toggle switches to turn the IR off to each of the outputs though. 
• Preamp tones: I guess that it's not exactly doing the 'Preamp' thing in terms of emulating something like a SVT or B-15 tone for me at the moment but I'm hoping the right Amp downloads will do that fairly well - It looks like you download Amps that can be controlled by the preamp controls and then use IRs mostly for the Cab sims, but I think as it takes 3rd party IRs you could potentially put whatever you want there (I haven't touched the firmware or made any changes yet - considering the points raised on Talkbass noted below I'll wait a while).
• DI/Connections: Connections are very useful - particularly that the 'XLR' (with pre/post preamp and ground lift switches)  and 'Output' can each individually be set for IR on/IR off and there's a 'Through' too, and can record to a Laptop via USB (and do things like re-amping). Also Aux in and headphone out, not with their own volume controls though. 
• Quality: Decent sound quality and no hissing or crackling, feels solidly built.
• Value: Considering it costs £120 vs alternatives it seems very good value.

 

Talkbass has a big thread (24 pages so far)  https://www.talkbass.com/threads/new-bass-preamp-pedal-from-nux.1442434/page-24#post-25662209 ...beware of updating the firmware if you don't want to change the EQ curves and Drive settings.

Edited September 14, 2021 by SumOne

[spyder]

Celestion have some great Berg. IRs.

 

[SumOne]

I just spent quite a long time trying to get the editor to work to try out the different amps and IRs but no success.

 

I read a lot of the Talkbass thread (which is page after page of people having similar issues) and it seems a solution is to update the firmware first - so I try to do that and pedal isn't recognised by the firmware updater. Also updated the Nux asio driver and mucked about with the drivers. Did all of this on windows 10 then tried on a mac.... Still nothing. 

 

It's for these sort of reasons rather than any digital vs analog sound purism that I fall out with digital pedals!

 

It's got about 1hr of my time left before I get tired of faffing and return it for a refund for wasting my free time (although it is actually pretty decent just the way it is out of the box but it feels like being able to change amps and IRs etc is something it should be doing without hassle). 

Edited September 16, 2021 by SumOne

[spyder]

Did you get it to work?

There is definitely an order to updating the pedal.

I switched mine on and off and it was recognized on the Mac.

 

[AxelF]

What worked for me was:

 

1) Plug the pedal in to the PC via USB without it being powered up

 

2) Open the firmware updater on the pc

 

3) Connect power to the pedal while holding down both footswitches

 

This meant the pc could see the pedal and I updated it to the latest version on the NUX website (3.7 I think). The editor worked perfectly for me after that.

 

I agree that the instructions/software setup side of the pedal is appalling, but the sounds more than make up for it!

 

I hope you get it working ok, shout if that doesn't work.

[Gareth Hughes]

I had the same experience as SumOne. I absolutely loved the sound of the IR’s - made playing through headphones a whole new thing. And then the pedal would not be recognised by my computer no matter how many updates, re-installs, etc were done. Pedal returned and back to analog for me, despite the digital pedal sounding and feeling awesome.

[SumOne]

Thanks @AxelF, unfortunately still no luck though.

 

I've now also tried a different USB cable, un-instilling my existing ASIO driver and re-installing just the nux one. Also things like shutting down Chrome before plugging in, un-plugging the nux power before doing the both footswitch held down thing, launch firmware before and after the pedal turning on. And trying these things on Mac (albeit an old one) and Windows 10. 

 

There probably is a solution like re-mapping ASIO drivers/what the Laptops recognises for the USB input or just some switching on order combination that I've missed, but my patience is wearing thin and the slightly cheaper (2nd hand) ParaDriver in the classifieds is looking quite tempting!

[AxelF]

That's so frustrating, sorry it's happening! I can't really offer any practical advice I'm afraid but I would say hang on in there - you'll love it if you can get it working...

 

It'd be worth giving Jon 'Jkos' on Talkbass a PM - he'll almost certainly be able to tell you what you need to do, and he has also written an android editor that he'll send you a link to - if nothing else that will allow you to switch between the pre-installed IRs.

Edited September 17, 2021 by AxelF

[SumOne]

29 minutes ago, AxelF said:

That's so frustrating, sorry it's happening! I can't really offer any practical advice I'm afraid but I would say hang on in there - you'll love it if you can get it working...

 

It'd be worth giving Jon 'Jkos' on Talkbass a PM - he'll almost certainly be able to tell you what you need to do, and he has also written an android editor that he'll send you a link to - if nothing else that will allow you to switch between the pre-installed IRs.

Thanks, yes I'll persevere over the weekend as it seems a common issue so is unlikely I've got a faulty unit. There will be some annoying thing I'm not quite doing right - some setting on the laptop that needs changing or something. 

 

It'd be annoying if it doesn't work as I'm on a pedal downsize mission right now and the Nux potentially covers EQ, DI, amp&cabs/IRs, and overdrive. 

[bartelby]

I've just got one of these this morning. I had trouble with the pedal being recognised by NUX's own software. Running a Mac on Big Sur the System Profiler could see the pedal and Logic could also use it. After rebooting the pedal and laptop the third micro B USB cable I tried worked. But the editor crashes when I try to load my own IR file... But from 30 mins use I can see this pedal being bloody good!

 

Hopefully I can figure out how to the IR loader working...

[bartelby]

Now I've figured out the IR loader. The files weren't quite right, but NUX's file converter app sorts that out. 

 

This is a very cool pedal for not a lot of money...

[gyrus]

I’m tempted to buy one of these. 😁

[SumOne]

10 hours ago, gyrus said:

I’m tempted to buy one of these. 😁

It's a great pedal, the only potential problem is getting it to talk to your laptop (see posts above from different people, and similar on the Talkbass thread). That aspect works fine for plenty of people though so it's still probably well worth getting - you might need to be more patient or more tech savvy than me to not get frustrated with it though! 

[bartelby]

Yes, it’s very picky about usb leads to use the editor but, weirdly, not as an audio interface.

[Cyanide]

Hi there,

 

so, I just got myself the MLD Bass Preamp and am wondering what's with the DI output level in bypass mode?

When the pedal is engaged, the level is decent, but as soon as I turn it off (i.e.bypassing the preamp) it just completely clips the input which is at ZERO gain...

I can't imagine this to be the normal behavior, is it?

 

Hope someone here might have an idea of what's going on or whether this is just a defective unit...

 

Cheers

[jacobass8]

Hallo there from Italy. I also spent many hours trying to fix the software to work with the pedal Nux nbp-5 Melvin Lee Davis bass preramp and Di, but culd not tolk to PC. I also tried to apdate firmaware and nothing all the time came out window saing that pedal and pc didn talk to eatch others, and the software program showed that was disconnected....i then read the post of Mr. AxelF on the sobject, and that was it worked....but you have to do some extra steps in orther to work.

1. power of the pedal and leave the usb cable connected to comunicate with pc later on

2. dowload latest firmaware from nuxefx.com. At the moment is: Firmware_NUX_MLD_BassPreamp_V4.0_Windows, or Mac version

3. Is a zip file so you need to unzipit to a location you want, i use desktop.  Make sure to both files in the folder meaning, NUX Device Updater.exe and also extract in the same folder BassPream_v4.0.bin. If this bin file is not there when you start the apdatig firmaware windows will not work.

4. Press both switchs in the pedal while connecting the power...it will start flashing. I keep it pressed until i opened the NUX Device Updater.exe in the desktop folder, but i suppose that once it is flashing it is in reciving data setup, so you can let go the swithcs.

5. Open the NUX Device Updater.exe in the desktop folder copyed in desktop, and you will see that now the litle window of fiemawaqre apdater now will work, and the botton of update wil work. If the window updater doesn't work it's becouse one of the file in the zipped folder in desktop is missing, ...AND THAT IS THE  BASIC PROBLEM...after the file start trasfer to the pedal you will see a fast flashing. You will be able also to see the classic bar in the updater window strasfering the data. That's all.

If you do this you will save a lot of time trying to get it to work.

In the page of the pedal : https://www.nuxefx.com/melvin-lee-davis.html

there are indications about the pedal and all the connections and ways of using the pedal with diagrams, but sorry...nothing about this BIG problem. 

Beside this problem of communication with the pc and get it to work, the rest is SUPER.

The pedal is strong, the sound are fantastic, i use mark bass this the 4 speaker simulation and is very good.

Before even the volume level indicators didn work, and after proper installation all is perfect ( beside the drum option witch i don't care.

Well hope you too will be now able to use you pedal in max 10 minute time...sorry for the long script.

Have fun jacobass8

[la bam]

Ok everyone, I've bought one of these today, pulled (what's left of) my hair out, but eventually solved this.

 

To get the pedal and pc to sync and work properly try the following.

 

1. Go to nux site.

2. Download the editor software for the mld.

3. Download the preamp software for mld.

4. Go to bottom of page and install the asio driver.

 

5. Install the asio. Restart pc.

6. Install editor software. Restart pc.

7. Install preamp software. Restart pc.

 

8. Connect usb cable to pedal and pc.

9. Connect 9v power to pedal.

10. Open the update software.

 

Now heres the trick.....

 

11. When the update software has popped up and it says 'device not recognised or no device connected'....

a) press both footswitches down and keep the held down.

b) keep holding the footswitches down and unplug the 9v psu. Keep the footswitches pressed down.

c) after a few seconds with the footswitches still held down, plug the 9v psu back in.

d) you will now get both green and red lights flashing. Let go of the footswitches.

12. You'll now see on the updater software that the device is recognised. Click select file. Find the 4.0 bin file and press select.

13. Press update.

 

This will now work and update the firmware. It's the instructions above 11 to 13 that are the key.

 

Once its updated shut down your pc and unplug all connection and psu.

 

Restart the pc, reconnect all cables and psu and start the software editor, give it a while to recognise.

 

Hopefully this helps.