Love their guitar sound, meh on their bass sound for some reason.
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Yeah, for me, I think I would characterize the major players for bass like:
Fender: dat scoop. Sounds broadly good in lots of genres, and has character. Far from neutral.
Ampeg: great slightly compressed/driven sound, warm, rich low mids with great options for boosting the extremes without adding mud. Maybe the most distinct character out of the bunch. Everyone knows this tone.
G-K: Kind of like Ampeg if you slid them up into more higher mids focus but kept a real deep bass too.
Darkglass: Great sounding low mids, kind of scooped mids, and boosted high end - signature clank. Much colder and more modern sound.
Orange: Kinda muddy on low mids but not really in a bad way, just thick and strong; higher mids overdrive well, like their guitar amps. Been a while since I dug in to some of them though and that’s mostly based on their bigger amps in to 4x10s 
Feel free to shoot these down but that’s what they sound like to me
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I feel like the scoop works well on their guitar amps (I have a Princeton and Deluxe) but not so much with bass frequencies, in a mix at least. Great at home solo though!
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While I knew something about the Fender scoop, I had no idea how it actually worked.
I mean it’s the sound I’ve been looking for which I got a P in the first place but to see how it comes together is fascinating!
Thank you!
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Definitely setting this up.
I had everything at noon. Figured that was the starting point lol
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It is! 
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Yeah. Strangely I listen to a lot of music made with Orange amps but that’s not what I like to play really. Speaking about guitar amps, I’m way more into the Marshall sound. And also the Vox sound and the boutique things directly derived from Marshall’s and Vox’s. (especially Bad Cat and Matchless)
Yeah, same thing, both sound good and quite in the same family, but still different. I like listening to GK amps but when it’s about playing, I’m absolutly into Ampeg’s. GK’s are quite scooped compared to Ampeg’s, but way less than Fender’s obviously. The frequency range of the GK scoop is really narrow.
My overdrive sound is basically a Darkglass preamp into an Ampeg.
I can understand. The Orange guitar amps sounds kinda like a different iteration of Marshall’s, but Orange bass amps sound kinda tasteless to me. The cabs are good, tho.
I would talk about “growl”. That’s what I love on Ampeg’s, especially the old tube ones.
yeah but there is still a narrow scoop somewhere in the midrange
I’d say that Orange amps sound solid, but a bit tasteless. Their guitar amps are better really.
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It is definitely easier to mix mids-forward amps. But that scoop is also hugely important for some styles (especially slap).
Yeah! That awesome, slightly overdriven growly sound.
Yeah that’s a better way to describe what I was trying to say. They do the Ampeg overdriven thing but more up in the mids to high mids, and there’s also a great deep bass, but there’s a scoop out between them. It’s a cool, aggressive (to me) sound.
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I guess the overdrive on this amp is how I would approximate that growl as well?
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sure !
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On Fenders, the overdrive will add some nice warmth and natural compression, sure. You’re going to have to boost the mids to get an Ampeg-like sound though, and really, I would see more about leaning in to what makes a Fender a Fender and see how you like it for a while. You might love it!
That clean, scooped sound is kind of their trademark.
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The Ampeg growl is something quite unique, it’s a slight (tube) overdrive in the low mids. It’s something you can fine-tune on a SVT because the tonestack is before the effective gain stages. That’s the Ampeg thing. Not better than something else, just very … Ampeg.
Honestly you won’t get that from a Fender amp, but that’s not where the Fender amps are good. The overdrive will still work quite OK.
The current Fender bass amp range is good.
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100%, nothing wrong with them at all, and Fender did a good job replicating their classic sound with them.
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Personally I like to add a tubescreamer in front of an (pre)amp. This works really well with Ampeg to get that growly sound without sounding too distorted. It functions more as a boost since I prefer passive basses.
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nothing wrong with overdrive pedals
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