Indeed! Thank you!
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What he said is really important - you already have most of the controls these things will give you on your amp already.
What they will give you is slightly different tone coloring or flavor added by the preamps.
The Ampeg I have has kind of a generic Ampegey sound it adds. You can hear it subtly in the soundcloud link I posted.
The BDI-21 sounds like another famous and popular preamp/DI, the SansAmp Bass Drive DI. Which has a nice coloring it adds as well.
But you can already do a nice bit of tonal changes with your Rumble 25 too. It has a nice preamp with overdrive built in.
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The problem is, when I mess around with the controls on the Rumble (Treble, Bass, Mid), and experiment with the buttons (Overdrive, Contour), I get interesting tones, but I also get a lot of residual noise that I donāt otherwise hear. My skin scraping along the strings, a clicking sound with the release of the string from the fret, etc. I can almost hear my heartbeat!
Would a preamp give me the tones without all those residual noises, or would it be just the same?
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those noises are pretty normal when you increase the gain or treble ! an external preamp wonāt change much about this.
itās not really a problem in fact : a dirty sound is not necessarily a bad sound 
that said, some techniques like a very neat string muting are helpful.
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Hereās a helpful video on the SpectraDrive. This is the one I think Iām going to get.
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It looks like a great pedal. Very neutral preamp that doesnāt add any color of its own, a 4-band EQ with TCās thing that EQs different freqs when boosting vs cutting, a bunch of different compressors and overdrives to choose from, and a nice headphone amp with cab sim for the 'phones.
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Not to confuse the issue but another one you might want to check out is the Electro-Harmonix Battalion. I found it along the way when I looked in to this and it sounds good too. Not as versatile as the SpectraDrive but a lot cheaper.
Nice if you donāt need a headphone out, fills a gap between the Behringer and the TC or Ampeg. I think it sounds pretty killer.
SansAmp makes a few excellent ones but the Behringer is literally a clone of them and is much cheaper. I am probably going to buy one at some point because $35 and they have a great sounding bass drive. Used they run about $20.
Aguilar, Darkglass, Gallien-Krueger, and some other classic amp and pedal makers make them too but they are more expensive. There are literally between 50 and 100 good options to choose from. The ones I have posted about here are the ones I boiled things down to 
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I was not sure about this : with the Spectradrive you can change the overdrive model with the USB port, like for the compressor, right ?
very interesting one ! thatās the kind of agressive saturated tone I like 
but itās hard to figure how a Fender would sound with this preamp, as the bass used for the demo sounds very scooped in the middle. I might search for more demos ā¦ 
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Yeah with SpectraDrive you can upload new compressors or overdrives either through USB or by holding the phone app up to your pickups on the guitar.
I think the Battalion sounds killer too!
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I like the sound of the Battalion, but itās considerably higher prices than the Spectrum on Amazon. I donāt care much about the headphone jack, but do like the USB upload feature of the Spectrum.
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I recommend Sweetwater over Amazon for price checks on this kind of stuff. I generally only buy used myself, but thatās a whole different ball game.
https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Battalion--electro-harmonix-battalion-bass-preamp-and-di
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Wow! Okay, thanks!
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yeah ! note that a lot of tones on the demo you posted overlap somewhat with the tones you can get with the BDI21. not to say itās the same thing, but again the price tag is not the same, and the BDI21 still is a killer sounding preamp.
that said ā¦ hum ā¦ I watched some other demos of the Battalion (with Fender basses) and Iām saying to myself that Christmas will come soon ā¦ I just have the time to think about my pedalboard and choose which pedals Iāll put on it ! (I already know for some of them)
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My only complaint about my SCR-DI is its overdrive is just meh. Maybe I just havenāt gotten the hang of it yet but it feels like it is gated weird. Maybe thereās a trimmer pot on the inside.
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yeah thatās what Iāve been told about the SCR-DI, that the overdrive is not interesting.
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I was going to addā¦ But itās really well covered.
I have a multitude of amps, fx, cabs. But I do prefer to DI direct and shape according to needs with pedals and amps. Still canāt quite capture my noise acoustically. So now I DI and play āin the boxā (use software algorithms of the model of the āreal thingā). Phew.
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This is a music video, not a live performance or a video of actual studio recording. Everything you see is there to make the video look good and has little to do with what youāre hearing. The musicians are most likely not plugged in and are probably juct mimicking the recording like in all music videos. The bass player may or may not be using a Ric through and Ampeg with overdrive on the recording, but it looks good in the video. Studio recordings have engineers and producers who work with the band to use the studio equipment to get the desired results. Often, they have more control than the intruments, amps and pedals used. Live, any given band typically sounds quite different than they do in the studio and instruments and amps are often chosen dependent of the venue, the set list and the other musicians. Professional acts also have a soundboard with a sound man to further tweak the sound. Beware modeling amps. I have a practice Marshall guitar amp with 99 presets and infinite customization. I can spend hours and hours playing with sounds, but quickly learned to find the handful that I like and fit me and my music and disregard the rest so I can actually practice and play. Back in the old days of rock and roll (50ās and 60ās), there were no effects and modeling except for maybe a wah wah pedal and whammy bar (tremelo bar). Sound was base on your instrument, your amp and your technique most of all. You can find recordings of two different contemporary artists paying similar rigs with completely different sounds. Jimmy Hendrix was more about technique than he was about technology. Same for Jack Bruce.
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Main components of tone are:
ā¢ the bass itself
ā¢ the amp used and its tone settings (i use all settings as flat)
ā¢ the finger style versus area of bass the strings are plucked (picks bring out brightness)
ā¢ the strings
That considered, you can achieve a great tone with a cheap bass. You donāt ever actually need an expensive bass. For as long as the bass fits your physiology, is easy to play, and looks good, the real money ought to be spent more on the amp as that is the main interface with the listener.
Moreover, using good bright strings, round wounds (not flatwound), will create a very bright tone as heard in this song.
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Same here! 80% Rickenbacker, 10% some kind of drive/distortion, 10% amp sound. Check out Chris Squire on Roundabout, same type of bass, similar tone:
Also @joergkutter, I have an old Boss ME-50B - donāt get too excited about it. Lots of effects, none of them particularly good (classic multieffects problem).
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Yeah, you have to be careful with that. I havenāt found any distortion or overdrive that I like as much as analog. On the other hand, the modulations like Chorus and dynamics like Compressors on mine sound fine to me.
A good number of the factory patches are straight up crap though. I rarely use them and just use the individual stompboxes with it instead, which seems to me to be the way to go.
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