Gday all.
I’m looking to get a good Bass guitar VST and just wondering what bass VST’s my fellow Cubase users are using? What ones do you recommend and what ones are crap, etc.
Appreciate your thoughts.
Cheers
Been using Trilian here after trying quite a few others…
It’s pretty deep if you want to get the best out of it but it’s about the next best thing to the real thing from what i’ve seen and heard myself.
Compared to the real thing it does have some limitations but that’s from an ex bassist’s point of view…
+1 for Trilian. I use it all the time in many different genres with great results.
It would depend on what kind of sounds you want, for what kind of music and what kind of functionality, and also what you already have. Are you looking for a software close to playing a real bassguitar, where you can simulate for example string vibrato, pull offs and hammer ons and slides/glissando, or are you satisfied with a plectrum down stroke? Do you want to have different playing styles on key switching or velocity? Or use multipe instances for each style. There are a zillion basses out there.
To pick some without knowing your needs is difficult, but anyway:
The Ric bass from Native Instruments is very good (and free tutorial on MACProVideo), and it works in the free Kontakt player - if you want to get into the Kontakt world and, in my opinion, close enough, in most cases, to a real bass.
I have several soft basses, including Trillian, but the Ric from Native Instruments is my mostly used, due to sound and the “real life” functionality.
Trillian is huge and contains more than just guitars. A lot of bass synths for example. The chapmanstick is very good in trillian. Best I have heard. Trillian is very CPU heavy, think they must have sampled every millimeter of those basses. Moving into spectrasonics world is something you will not regret, It is however very expencive and they never have sales. I would suggest you rather buy the brother Omnisphere. That too has some pretty nasty bass guitar sounds avialable and the Omnisphere world is much greater than Trillian - but that would be on more than bass though.
When it comes to bass guitars I think Ample sound has some of the best sounds and the best gui and best functionality if you are not a bass player and if you are not a wizard on the kleyboard. They have bass grooves that you can use out of the box or tweak. Resonably priced and sales a couple of times a year.
I also like the sounds in the bases of Acoustic Samples, especially the fretless bass. You need the UVI engine to run it but that too is free. This is the cheapest well sounding bass I have found. Sales at least once a year.
However if you are on a PC and 32 bit, or MAC no higher than snow leopard (so it still has rosetta) the one I would recommend is Broomstic bass. Now an obsolete product, but great sounding, great GUI and a lot of grooves (even got a jam along drum set). I think you still can get hold of copies. But remember it IS obsolete. I like that software so much that I have a separate old computer running it, vst linked to my main mac. Some of the sounds have never been surpassed in my opinion. Downside is that it does not contain all finger movements on the fretboard.
Thanks for you replies everyone. I am looking for mainly natural sounding bass sounds, I write mainly Rock, accoustic, blues kinda stuff. I see that Trillian is HUGE! and probably has what I’m looking for but, yes pretty pricey, but if it’s got what I need then I don’t mind the outlay. I also see that Modo Bass is pretty impressive in regards to natural sounds. Could be down to those two…Thanks for the in depth write up Rumdrum.
I use the NI Scarbee Rickenbacker a lot. It’s phenomenal. Admittedly a Rick is maybe not right for every song, but with a range of amp, eq and compression available onboard, it’s pretty versatile and can do a lot more than just (pretty fine) Chris Squire tones. I can do all sorts of rock and although it’s pick-played samples, I can even get it to do strong deep reggae basslines. String selection and dynamics make it really come alive. The interface is staighforward and there is all the expected range of articulations - hammers and pulls, grace notes, trills, buzz trills, speed adjustable slides, harmonics, dead notes and pickup knocks, etc. Slides are especially good once you get the hang of them
I’m very happy with it, and the price is quite reasonable so I’'ve now gone for the NI Scarbee Pre-bass and Jay-bass too. Although I’ve not used them very much yet, they seem equally well featured and I’m reasonably confident that with this trio I now have all bases covered. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist!)
Plus, it behaves nicely with Cubase within the free Kontact player
Native Instruments, Trillian, and MODO bass are my favorites. I am a huge fan of Cubase and these all work really with it as well.
I love the MODO Bass guitar VST the most personally, because it uses modal synthesis! It sounds so good.
Yeah in the last few years this has become my go-to first choice for electric bass. But all the Scarbee basses are easy to get a good convincing sound from. I think a lot of it is the fretboard fingering accurately mimics how a person would play it.