Ideas for bass distortion?

[FatMike]

Hi,


I am thinking about building a custom design distortion/overdrive pedal for my bass guitar in order to get that distorted bass sound you hear on a lot of Queens of The Stone Age and Kyuss tracks (listen to the intro of "First it Giveth" or "Give the mule what he wants" by QOTSA for example).

I tested my modded (guitar-)Tubescreamer with my bass an the sound was already pretty close, although there was not enough bass coming through. But I guess diodes in feedback loop should work good for that kind of distortion.  


However, I want the pedal to be as flexible as possible. It would be cool to have several distortion types to choose (as long as they really sound different  :wink: ). So does anybody know some clipping/distortion methods that work especially good for bass guitar (not necessarily for a QOTSA like sound)? Any ideas would be apreciated.

And by the way, does someone have a schematic for comercial bass distortion pedals like for example the Boss ODB-3?






Fat Mike

[j0shua]

if you wana Fuzzy sound  Mxr Distortion is cool
for hard distortion whit good tone control is RVD Heavy Metal Pedal

[Joe Viau]

If I can offer my opinion, bass fuzzes will sound fatter when you mix some of the original undistorted signal in.  You still get nice fuzzy harmonics, but there's enough "beef" in the sound to supply a good bottom-end.

I would check out the Maestro Bass Brassmaster.  Geofex has a schematic and board layout, you can get a board from generalguitargadgets.com.  This will probably be my next build.  I'm fairly certain that this build will let you mix "wet" and "dry" signals together.

moosapotamus.com also has a link to his Bass Brassmaster project, along with sample MP3s so you can hear how the gadget sounds.

HTH,
Joe

[SirPoonga]

If I can offer my opinion, bass fuzzes will sound fatter when you mix some of the original undistorted signal in.  You still get nice fuzzy harmonics, but there's enough "beef" in the sound to supply a good bottom-end.

Agreed.  Another option is to build the whisker biscuit or bazz fuss (do a search here) combined with the bass paralooper on mossawhatever's site to blend the fuzz with the clean signal.

ggg sells preprinted pcb for the brassmaster I believe.

[FatMike]

Hi,

thanks for you replies so far, but I am not looking for a fuzz like distortion, as I don't like this for bass at all (sound somehow like a syntesizer or stuff like that).

I am looking for a distortion, that keeps the punchy sound and the low end of the bass' sound.



Fat Mike

[runmikeyrun]

make sure you keep your input, coupling, and output capacitors large (0.1-1.0 uF to start).  LED's clip at a higher threshold and although they don't clip as hard they do let more of the punch and low end through.  also a pedal that allows you to mix clean signal is will help a lot too... you can set it to mix in just enough clean to where it's not really heard but the low end and punch is kept.

The bazz fuss is a good place to start, low parts count and easy to modify.  You can make the buzz box (two bazz fusses in series) for more distortion.  For lots of distortion i would suggest an opamp build like the opamp muff fuzz.  I've built both of these circuits and they work well... the opamp muff fuzz has a little less low end but with a mix control it would sound amazing.

good luck

mike

[tarzanalog]

Greetings,

I'm building a pedal for a bassist friend that just bought a Wal bass and wants to HEAR it through his fuzz/distortion pedal.

I started with the Craig Anderton Tube Sound Fuzz circuit from his "Electronic Projects for Musicians" book. It's based on a CD4049 CMOS chip that distorts in a very overdriven tube sort of way.

I added a Fender TBX Tone Control to the front end but wired it to cut bass and treble at the same time so he could dial in more mids (or less of bass and treble). The Wal bass has low end to spare.

I also added a DPDT mini-toggle to let him choose between the TBX or use a Wah in a mono loop as a tone control.

The pedal is set up with a vol pot (BTW - the gain is very good on this circuit and might be enought to overdrive whatever amp you have), a fuzz pot, and the TBX tone control. Two stomp switches: one bypasses everything and the other bypasses the fuzz pot giving a set level of fuzz vs. FULL.

Again the CMOS is less fuzzy than you'd imagine and has a lot of overdrive distortion bite.

Best of luck.

-T

[robotboy]

Hi,

thanks for you replies so far, but I am not looking for a fuzz like distortion, as I don't like this for bass at all (sound somehow like a syntesizer or stuff like that).

I am looking for a distortion, that keeps the punchy sound and the low end of the bass' sound.



Fat Mike

If you think your modded tubescreamer is close to the sound you want, hook it up to the previously mentioned bass paralooper, and you should get the same tone but with more bass. I believe that the paralooper splits the signal between original bass sound and whatever stompbox is connected and mixes them to your taste. That way you have the original bass frequencies and the effect at the same time. Check out the clips. It seems like it can "bassify" just about anything. As a side note, you can tweak a lot of existing designs to work better for bass by increasing the values of the input and output caps. If you read the "cook your own distortion" article, there's some good info on calculating cap values for whatever frequency ranges you're looking for.

http://www.moosapotamus.com/paraloop/paraloop.htm

[ian87]

the only good thing about the ODB-3 is that you can mix dry signal back in. i think the actual "distortion" part is pretty terrible.

Modded Rats are far and away my fave bass dirt box. and green Russian Big Muffs (but those are fuzzy, which you said you didn't want).

haven't heard it, but the Paralooper seems like it would be awesome.

[petemoore]

How about for testing with Your Amp the following suggestion...
 If you already have many distorters, turn the Bass Down all the way or put a HP filter enough so bass is attenuated alot, then find the Fuzz or Distortion that makes you happy for the high end by trying some of them out. If the tone control/eq on the amp lets you do this you may get some further 'data' as far as what frequencies you like to hear fuzzed.
 Anyway the Idea of blending Clean or even compressed bass for low end note definition and OD/Fuzzing the high end...then having some control over where the LP filter for the clean and the HP filter for the Fuzz start rolling off, maybe socket/switch a cap or have a knob to help dial in...