Preamp Controls

CONTROLS

The controls of Studio Devil Virtual Bass Amp are pretty easy to understand. We designed them to be intuitive, simple, and able to let you get your tone quickly. If you’ve used a bass amplifier before, then you already know how to operate them. But just in case, here’s a description of the controls, what they do, and how to use them to sculpt your tone:

The PREAMP CONTROLS help you tweak your sound until it’s just right. Here’s a bit about what they do and how to adjust your sound:

GAIN: This knob controls the amount of bass guitar signal that’s fed into the amplifier. Turning this control up (to the right) means more gain, more distortion, more clipping, more compression, and more punch. Turning the gain knob down (to the left) results in a cleaner tone, less distortion, but more dynamic responsiveness. This knob also mimics the effects of gain knob capacitors, which controls a bit of your tone and the high-frequency distortion. But whichever setting you choose, remember that Studio Devil acts just like a real tube head…you can also use your bass guitar’s volume knob to achieve similar results. Experiment with both your bass’s volume knob and the gain control to see what works best with your playing style!

BOOSTSWITCH: Turning this switch on has the effect of increasing the overall gain and adding more preamp distortion. When you just need a little bit more gain…where can you go from there? 11? It’s one louder. Flipping the BOOST switch on gets you there. Here’s a trick: Even though a high gain knob setting with the boost switch off may have the same overall gain as a low gain knob setting with the boost switch on, they will sound very different. Try both to see what works best for your style of play!

TONE CONTROLS: (BASS, MIDS, FREQ, TREBLE) These TONE settings control the bass, mid, and treble frequencies. The BASS knob sets the level for the lows, the TREBLE knob sets the level for the highs, and the MIDS knob controls the level of the mid-frequencies. There are many different bass amps out there that all use different frequencies for the MID control. So, to give you the best of all of them, we gave Studio Devil VBA a FREQ knob which allows you choose what type of MIDS knob style you want! The FREQ knob allows you to set the center frequency of the MIDS knob from 40Hz to 4kHz. Pay close attention to the dramatic range of tones you can get from subtle changes in the MIDS and FREQ knobs. There are a lot of possibilities but it’s all about tone…experiment until you find what works best for your sound!

Now remember, these tone controls come before the power amp compression, so not only do they affect your tone, but they also allow you to control which frequencies compress more than others. If you want more control of your tone without affecting the power amp compression, refer to the description of the GRAPHIC EQ section that follows.

DEEPBUTTON: Pushing this button turns on the DEEP feature which adds more low-end to your bass. If you like your sound with lots of bass, push this button on! If you’re playing through smaller speakers, and want to back off the deep low end, push this button again to turn it off. This button lights up to let you know when the DEEP effect is enabled.

BRIGHT BUTTON: This works a lot like the DEEP button, except it controls the high-end. Some preamp settings can sound a bit noisy, especially when the GAIN or DRIVE is turned way up. You can help correct this by pushing the BRIGHT button off. But if you like crisp, punchy highs, then push this button on to add more high frequencies to your tone. This button lights up to let you know when the BRIGHT effect is enabled.

Studio Devil Virtual Bass Amp – User’s Guide, Page 6 of 9

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