One of the biggest obstacles bassists face when trying to make a dirty or overdriven bass tone sit in a full band mix is preventing the loss of low end in their sound. Sure, a dirty bass tone can really liven up your band’s mix and fatten up the overall sound, especially in a power trio setting or for heavier styles of music, but the last thing you want to do as a bassist is compromise on holding down the low end. Many overdrive pedals, even those intended for bass, have varying degrees of low end loss which may serve as a deterrent to many players considering an overdriven bass sound. Fortunately, there are ways to beef up your bass tone with overdrive while still keeping the low-end fundamental intact.
Why Does Overdrive Cause Low End Loss?
When you run your bass through an overdrive pedal, you are compressing and clipping the signal- such is the nature of any overdrive or distortion. The resulting compression may cause an apparent drop in volume or low end response compared to a clean bass signal. The clipping depending on how it is achieved and how it is filtered creates harmonics. Except for some circuits that use tubes or JFETs, the harmonics are all higher frequencies (or octaves) than the original bass tone. This will drown the lower tones out, leaving you with a bright or mid range heavy tone.
This is especially pronounced if you are using an overdrive pedal intended for guitar, many of which have trouble retaining the low end or they are filtered for guitar.
Also the clipping squares off the low notes, so they don’t ring out as they would without the added overdrive.
With tubes and JFET transistors, the square law effect is in play, so if the circuit is done correctly you get a lower note harmonic from the math. This is why Carvin Audio bass amps all have a JFET discrete front end, and most models except the BX250 and MB Series have a tube driving the amplifier to warm up the tone.
Tips and Tricks for Making Overdrive Work
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Adjust Your Amp Settings: Low end loss is definitely an issue if you are switching your overdrive on and off during a song. Any EQ tweaks you make to your amplifier to compensate for reduced low end from your pedal will affect your clean tone once the pedal is switched off, and possibly your DI signal as well if your bass amp is DI’ed. However, if you are using an overdrive pedal as an always-on component of your tone, feel free to use your amplifier’s EQ controls to further tweak the sound to your liking. The Carvin Audio B1000’s sub bass control is especially useful in this scenario, as you can bring back in any of the sub-lows that you have lost by using an overdrive pedal.
- Make Sure You Have the Pedal Set at Unity: As mentioned before, applying overdrive, distortion, or fuzz on bass will make you perceive the mids and highs more prominently. This in turn may cause you to think the pedal is louder than it actually is, since these frequencies are more easily audible by the human ear. In most cases, unity gain on your overdrive pedal will be much louder than your clean signal, so if your low end isn’t cutting through, or your sound is dropping out when you engage the pedal, try raising the volume on your overdrive pedal. It may provide you a quick and easy fix!
- Use a Clean Blend: A clean blend allows you to mix your clean tone with the distortion pedal of your choice, keeping the punch and low end intact while adding dirt. This design is used on many bass overdrive pedals and is extremely effective. An independent clean blend pedal can really extend the usability of any dirt pedal. If you have a guitar distortion that you like that loses low end, try running it through a clean blend pedal.
For some players, a clean blend creates too much separation between the clean signal and the distortion, creating a sound that’s somewhat disjointed. This is much more common with fuzzes and heavier distortions. However, in most cases, a clean blend is a great solution for an overdrive sound. In the case with heavy distortion, turn the clean high end and mid down if you can. Then you can just blend a clean low end. This may lessen or even solve the disjointed sound.
- Try Using Less Drive: A little goes a long way when it comes to bass dirt. If the low end punch of your signal is dropping out, try using as little gain as possible for a slightly overdriven sound. This will keep most of your clean signal intact and add only a little bit of grit, which may work way better in a dense mix. On many popular bass recordings, the bass is slightly overdriven rather than a full-blown distortion, and it really helps the bass to stand out. To see proof of this concept in action, check out the isolated bass track to Rush’s “YYZ” performed by Geddy Lee here.
Have you ever tried distortion on bass, and if so, what results did you get? Let us know in the comments!
16 Responses
mark skrivseth
I find that a folded horn cabnet worked well for me.
Marty Stick
I have been into bass distortion since I first heard Greg Lake’s opening notes on “The Barbarian” on the first ELP album. Even after about 40+ years of playing one of my favorite “rip-thru” sounds is a Morley Wah into a Big Muff Pi (original version), but, yeah, with a blending of ‘straight’ bass. One time a girl came up to me after a set and commented my solo was a bit “expanding”. I asked what she meant and she replied, “I felt like I had to go to the bathroom.” Might have been the best compliment I’ve ever gotten!
Del
The Inverse Square Law teaches us that for every doubling of the distance from the sound source in a free field situation, the sound intensity will diminish by 6 decibels. From- acousticalsurfaces.com
Ed Sullivan
The author presents an unfortunate example to demonstrate a bass with overdrive: Geddy Lee plays a Rickenbacker… no distortion required.
Busta Speeker
I have had great results (only recording; I have never tried this on stage, but it sounds fantastic in the tracking room!) with the ubiquitous Boss SD-1 Super OD pedal. Turn the Drive down to minimum, Level @ 12:00 to full up, depending on the output of the bass being used, and set the Tone knob to taste. Instant, totally satisfying ’’GRAUNCH’’ is the sonically blissful result. Not enough bottom? Patch in an EQ and adjust til you find what you want; it’s in there…….
I have also found that all the bass-specific OD pedals I have tried are completely wrong in their approach. Waaay too much distortion is the general rule here, ‘cuz a leeetle bit on a bass seems to go much further than the same settings on a guitar rig. Most bass ODs just turn one’s signal to mush. Not exactly the hot setup for a tight mix………
Michael Hamer
I use distortion sparingly, as most gigs I do don’t give many opportunities to use it, but when I do, I use the “clean blend method”. It works very well for me. The lows are retained to fill out audio spectrum, and the dirt on the harmonics gives the sound that accurately serves the song that I’m playing.
Karl Barnes Jr.
Never had a need for it, I let the guitar players blast with high gain, overdrive, saturation, presence, extra reverb, boosters and cranked, let them do all the “wanging and twanging” they want, they do that just fine without any help, I want to blast with enough clean low end that will split the ground, but, that is a good bit of information.
Isaac Jones
What is the square law effect referenced in the article, and how does it result in a lower note harmonic?
Curlytop
no luck with any pedal.they in my room collecting dust. Tried with different amps.downer I do like my carvin md10 .My GK combo with15 broke.Not old Somebody wanna buy some stuff so i can get more carvin
Robert Quance
Years ago I used an overdriven battery powered Microphone amp to create almost perfect square waves and then carefully adjusted the amp tone controls to get anywhere from a synth sound to a very sweet overdriven bass tone. Us Engineers do have a tendency to try weird things and sometimes they do work out great!
Thomas Warberg
My problems with distorted bass was with my amplifier and my speaker cabinets. Using any thing bigger the a 12" speaker couldn’t keep up, so I used a dual voice coil 8" speaker with midrange and tweeter.
That helped a lot, then switching to a solid state amplifier cured my problems and gave me my tone and articulation back! Used Carvin Power Amps and ACME speaker cabinets. “Let your ears guide you!”
Jonathan Hindmarsh
I used a second small guitar tube amp effected by an octave fuzz pedal. My regular bass tone stayed consistent through my bass rig and I would bring in distortion with a volume pedal to the dedicated distortion amp. The octave up really helped. I sounded like bass plus rhythm guitar when the guitarist did lead or when we needed to beef up certain sections.
ben
need more dirt? strike the string much harder.
Mark
I find the best solution (for me) is to run all my effects parallel into a mixer and mix down into my bass amp/headphones/recording input/etc.. That way I can have multiple levels of overdrive and/or modulation at my disposal and my clean, unaffected sound takes priority over everything.
I also find that a Boss LS-2 is one perfect tool for mixing any pedal with a clean bass tone.
Stone Jamess
How I keep my low end and use Distortion/Overdrive pedals is Run a Clean DI off my bass and a MIC on the cab ( A Natural Bi amp Almost ) To always have a Solid LOW under what ever I am playing
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Chick Sage
January 13, 2018
Those are some great tips. I don’t use an OD pedal very often but I’ve only ever owned this ODB-3, so, if I tried a different pedal, I might like using OD more.
Oh, and yyz is a great example. Geddy Lee played a ’72 Fender Jazz Bass on yyz.