Need help in the battle for cool bass tones?

[Phil O'Keefe]

Maybe it's time to call in some reinforcements - maybe a whole Battalion, as in the EHX Battalion bass preamp & DI. For more info, check out my review here:

 

 

http://www.harmonycentral.com/expert...-preamp-and-di

 

 

 

 

 

Feel free to ask any questions you may have, or to make your own comments about the Battalion if you have one of your own or have tried one out.

 

[WRGKMC]

I'm not a fan of distorted bass but the rest of it would looks fine.

 

This one looks cool too. Too bad it doesn't have a compressor/gate, cab emulator too but I guess they were trying to stay true to the SVT head.

 

[Phil O'Keefe]

I reviewed the Ampeg Classic Analog Bass Preamp recently too (and so did Isaac42 )... and they do make another pedal with more features called the Ampeg SCR-DI; while there are some notable differences between them, that's actually closer to the Battalion in terms of overall features than the Classic Analog Bass Preamp is IMO.

[WRGKMC]

Yea I knew about that one too. Its an expanded version with a scrambler built in. Overdrive on bass isn't something I'd use. Even with the cover bands I used to play with I can only think of 2 songs we played that had bass distortion, an old stones song and another from the 70's. Bass distortion is a one trick pony which wouldn't get enough use to justify the additional cost for me.

 

EQ levels which are highly musical, amp/cab emulation, Pickup emulation (which I haven't seen in a pedal yet for some reason) Compression, Limiting, Maybe a chorus or reverb are all highly useful live or recording.

 

Not a big one on synth bass sounds either. It kind of went out of style after Disco got done butchering the moog tones.

 

I'd rather have fewer features and higher quality too. The big fail of many bass multi effects pedals were the same as many guitar pedals. They sold on the basis od the number of effects not the quality of the effects. I'd rather have one great Preamp with a wide range of EQ then a pedal packed with a bunch of junk you'd never use. For me bass simply needs to match the kick and for most of the music I write it goes unnoticed most of the time.

 

Having pickup emulation can be very handy though. I have some recording plugins which do a fair job making a HB sound like a Single, vice versa. They have impulses for changing the attack and tones of the pickups and a selection of instrument materials the pickups are mounted in and the strings produce, like a wood instrument vs a guitar made of stone or plastic, hollow body etc. Many are just EQ tricks but they are convincing enough to be very useful.

 

It would be cool to change a Precision's tone and make it sound like a Hofner or an EBO so you have some real diversity recording without having to actually change instruments to get those sounds.