Any decent bass guitar plugins?

[RICHARD HUTCHINS]

Hi all,

Firstly, I hope this is the right forum section, if not let me know. I have a couple of tracks with bass parts on them, I usually use my Juno as a MIDI controller to add bass but this track was written on a guitar and the bass part is tricky to do on a keyboard. Does anyone know a decent VST plugin similar to my guitar plugins but with a good bass sound?

Richie

[Craig Anderton]

In terms of bass VST instruments, I really like IK Multimedia's MODO bass. It uses modeling rather than sampling, so it can be quite expressive and also offers a number of bass instrument sounds (Ric, P-Bass, Hofner, etc.). It's $299, but if you have the bucks, I think it's well worth it.

A cheaper, sample-based alternative is to use the TX16Wx free sampler and bass samples. The TX16Wx is full-featured, and certainly, the price is right   I don't know what sample packs are available for it, other than the 3-bass pack of sampled Gibson basses I originally did for Rapture, and ported over to the TX16Wx. However. the pack costs $40, so you might want to look around and see if there are any free bass sounds for the TX16Wx.

Hope this helps...

[InstrEd]

11 minutes ago, Craig Anderton said:

In terms of bass VST instruments, I really like IK Multimedia's MODO bass. It uses modeling rather than sampling, so it can be quite expressive and also offers a number of bass instrument sounds (Ric, P-Bass, Hofner, etc.). It's $299, but if you have the bucks, I think it's well worth it.

I'm glad I picked it as one of my freebies when Ik had their Super Sale last year.  Same with the Hammond Organ! It was a nice deal buy one and the group buy went up to four free!   

[RICHARD HUTCHINS]

Thanks will look at this. Until I get my recording deal it'll have to be at the cheap end of the market sadly.?

[John]

Ample Sound is a good place to find high quality bass guitar MIDI instruments.  

[MisterX]

As to VSTi electric basses you may try one of Amplesound ones (119 $ each):

https://www.amplesound.net/en/index.asp

or some of Kontakt instrument libraries (99 $ each) like Scarbee:

https://scarbee.com/collections/basses

or Ilya Efimov:

https://www.ilyaefimov.com/products/bass.html

All 3 have audio demos on their sites.

[John Vere]

I have used the Ample P Bass  lite free VST on all my backing tracks for a few years now. Only issue is it is a 4 string bass so no going below low E. When I need that I just use SI  bass on those notes using a separate midi track 

I find it very accurate and it sits in the mix perfectly. I even fooled my self once thinking it was my real bass. 
I play all my parts on my Yamaha bass and drag them to a midi track then use that to trigger PBass lite 

So even though I’m a seasoned veteran on the bass I prefer to use the VST. That way there’s a consistent sound from song to song which is important to both my backing tracks and my albums. 
Bass is actually a hard instrument to get a good tone and articulation from. 
For acoustic bass I useDim Pro. It has a wonderful rubber band slide in the upper velocities 

Edited May 19, 2021 by John Vere

[Toddskins]

Hey Richard,

I bought Orange Tree Samples' guitar bundle in the past, and am considering their Bass bundle (6 different basses).  I like what I hear in their demos, but I'm not an expert in evaluating bass.    

During the year, they run 40% and sometimes 50% discounts on anything, especially come Black Friday, and Christmas time.  They also have a signup for some type of group interest on their facebook page, and sometime through their own website, where if they meet a certain number of interested people, they will run the sale at a discount.

So, just to bring it to your attention.

https://www.orangetreesamples.com/products/categories/basses 

 

[murat k.]

2 hours ago, RICHARD HUTCHINS said:

Does anyone know a decent VST plugin similar to my guitar plugins but with a good bass sound?

I think Cakewalk's Studio Instruments Bass Guitar plugin's sounds good actually. And it comes with the Cakewalk for free. 

[Herky Acuff]

I have gotten decent results with the SI Bass Guitar, too. It does take tweaking in the plug in itself, or I have found the bass sound can take over a mix. Usually that has meant dialing off some bass and dialing up some mids, treble.

[RICHARD HUTCHINS]

Thanks everyone, I'll check these ideas out.

[Kevin Bias]

I second MODO bass. I also got it on sale for $50. The $50 version only includes 2 basses and limited pickup options, but I find that to be sufficient for my needs. There's all sorts of articulation options, from picking style, EQ, string style etc.

[mark skinner]

How about a decent bass envelope filter for jazz ??

[RICHARD HUTCHINS]

Okay, I downloaded ample bass P lite. Have to say Sounds ok especially for free! To those with patience here's my question; it works ok using the mouse, I get the bass notes on to the track. But my guitar wont trigger it. Now often  I use a plug in like TH-U for my rock guitar sounds all works fine, I click on the + sign and add the effect from the VST drop down menu. Simples.

 

 But not this. I've messed around for a long time trying various things but I reckon this is filed under the head slap Duh! category. Can someone save me an hour or two and tell me why it isn't working? ( To those of a short fuse disposition just make a cup of tea and count to 10! I even try my own patience with questions like this)

[John]

Ample Sounds are meant to be triggered by a hardware MIDI keyboard.  They are good at being triggered by MIDI in a track too. How you get that MIDI into a track is up to you.  I have more than one hardware MIDI instrument. All of which can trigger an Ample Sound instrument. If you have a MIDI guitar it should work too. 

Cakewalk has as its core one of the very best MIDI implementations around. 

[Byron Dickens]

For bass guitar plugins, I just plug in a bass guitar....

[Craig Anderton]

36 minutes ago, RICHARD HUTCHINS said:

Okay, I downloaded ample bass P lite. Have to say Sounds ok especially for free! To those with patience here's my question; it works ok using the mouse, I get the bass notes on to the track. But my guitar wont trigger it.

Play the bass part on guitar, use Melodyne to convert the guitar part into  MIDI (i.e., drag into MIDI track), clean up the data as needed, drop the notes down an octave, and trigger your bass instrument of choice.

[RICHARD HUTCHINS]

Aha! I didn't know melodyne did that. I dont have a bass, my tiny "studio" is full up and more guitars would trigger a Divorce. Thanks all.

[scook]

All the plug-ins mentioned here are not effects like the ampsim TH-U, they are synths.

Like most synths, these bass plug-ins use MIDI for input not the audio from a guitar.

[MisterX]

Tools like JamOrigin MIDI Guitar 2 or MIDI Bass (VST plugin and standalone version) are capable of performing audio to midi guitar signal conversion in realtime. Free trial version available here:

https://www.jamorigin.com