Tech 21 SansAmp Bass Driver DI Programmable

Operating the unit without reading the manual will let you get your tone in first place, but probably you will not understand how to save your settings. After reading the manual it will be easy to change and save your settings (Also there are a bunch of useful advices how to set this unit up). There are three channels to store your sound settings. I am using actually one channel for my personal setup and keep trying out some other tones with the other two channels. Rating is 8 because you will have to read the manual to understand the way the unit works. But pretty near to plug'n'play.

I am using: Warwick Corvette $$ 5-String into Boss PSM-5 then LMB-3, DD-6, CE-2B, ODB-3, SYB-3, all mounted in a pedalboard. And then the signal comes to the SansAmp Bass Driver. After that, signal goes directly in my Trace Elliot 122HSMX 210 Combo (2x10" speakers) used with Trace Elliot 2x15" cabinet. I tried to use the bass driver in parallel effects way. Also tried with XLR-DI-Out and in front of my FX. But the Setup after my FX in front of my amp satifies me the most. I think a lot of people have problems with this unit, because it will not let an all-valve amplifier sound more "tubeish". IMO it's got smth. to do with the amp simulation. Yes, it is an amp simulation unit! Which is simulating tube-amps and -sounds. So, if you already own an all valve amp, this unit will probably sound weak in your setup. But if you are using an hybrid amp or MOSFET amp like in my case - boom! Noise on this unit is due to settings. Cranking up the Drive, Presence and Treble knobs will add -of course- some noise to your sound, but mostly this is a very silent unit. Settings described in the manual will let you get actually almost the Sound (i.e. SVT, King's X, Bassman styles). IMO it depends also on cabinets, guitars and amps used. For my suggestion of good sound (Rock and Metal orientated), this unit is the s**t! Adds a lot of warmth to your sound, a lot of tube overdrive . Rating: 9

Been using it by myself for two weeks, but bought it already used, so it is about 9 months in use. Seems very reliable. No battery change necessary 'til now. If this unit was broken or stolen, i would get another one, but due to its price i will not by another one for backup. Rating is 8 due to the short time beeing using it.

Never dealt with them, but as long as they are existing i think you will get along good with them. So no opinion in Rating

In the end i recommend all interested people to test this unit with their own gear to make an opinion. Sound samples on youtube or the homepage(www.tech21nyc.com) are helpful, too. Although it's not a cheap pedal, it's more a kind of preamp; the unit is very valuable due to its price. I just love the sounding.

Very easy to use.

It would be nice to see the knob settings on the presets.

I just switched from an SVT3pro to a GK800RB and got the pedal to try to compensate for the lack of tubes.

After experimenting with many settings I am going to return it because I don't like the sound.

3 main reasons:

I was hoping that this pedal would add a rich fat low end enhancement to deep playing, but I find that it muddies up the sound instead. Low end lacks definition. It also adds a type of compression that I don't like, I feel that my attacks get muffled while sustain is not as deep and rich as it is when playing clean.

I also hoped that this pedal would add a little bit of dirt and grit to the mids of that J-bass bridge pickup finger style playing. Instead I found that it smoothed over the natural "bite" of the bass. If I turned the blend way down to let the dry signal through I did retain the bite and get some richness to fill in the tone behind it.

Finally I think that the pedal colors the tone even when off. After several back and forth tests I think that I hear a slight mid cut and slight compression when playing through the pedal even when it's bypassed.

I found a couple of usable sounds but overall not worth it for me. Ultimately thought that it masked rather than enhanced my sound.

A bit of advice from a guitar player who's used the Tri A.C. with great success for years (and is about to purchase one of these for his bass rig);

If trying to use this with an amp, try to set it as clean, uncompressed, and eq'd as flat as possible. This is going to add it's own eq, compression, distortion, etc, to the sound; too much of any of these things is going to sound like a big pile of ass. If you insist on using it on top of a 'set' amp, keep your eq boost/cut to minimal, small levels. Cranking the knobs on this like a Boss distortion pedal is going to get mediocre results.

A 'tube emulation' circuit is basically trying to add compression, eq, and gain/distortion to a sterile signal. If you're trying to run this through a very warm sounding amp, that amp sounds warm because it's circuitry adds compression, slight distortion, etc, to the sound; adding more of the same isn't likely to yield good results.

For my part, I've used the guitar version (probably a bit more problematic, as far as achieving tones goes) with great success, through power amps live (my favorite), through guitar amps both big and small, and DI, and it performed great - once I started using my head and didn't expect Tech 21 to wipe for me. As far as bass sounds goes, I'd personally get a nice, high wattage power amp, use this as a pre, and add your cabinet(s) of choice. It's a weird concept to get used to, but this is a preamp in a pedal housing; if it was a single rack space unit with a detachable three button footswitch, I doubt people would tend to get so confused over it's application.

This thing is a rig-in-a-box; aside from your effects du jour, you need only your axe and this thing to go anywhere in the world and rock, so long as there's a solid state amp and cab waiting when you get there.

Good sound straight out of the box using "SVT style" & "Distorted Bass" patches from the comprehensive user manual. A few EQ tweaks and bosh, a tube sound without a broken back. Good functionality for connecting to stdio desk. Easy editing, just watch out you don't accidentally save something live. -1 point for this.

Great faux-tube sound - Steve Harris to Rob Wright. Fuzz can get a little muddy if cranked & hisses a bit with too much presence - so turn it down. Sounds great DI'd straight into the desk for studio work. Using a Fender Geddy Lee Jazz with Rothstein JSP series/parallel switching (buy one, they rock - www.guitar-mod.com), Boss LMB-3 Limiter, 500w Ashdown ABM EVOII rig. Could do with a mid-range control. -1 point for this.

Used every gig & practice for 2 years - solid as a rock, good battery life, appears to be lager-proof. Who needs another?

Needed a fresh user manual - emailed Tech 21 & got a pdf by return.

Punk / metal / rock / country / funk (myspace.com/evolvecore)- that SVT sound does 'em all. 20-odd years playing & this is probably the best thing I've bought. Wish I new someone stupid enough to lug an SVT or Bass 400+ and their associated cabs round for me, but until they come out of the pub, I'll stick with this, ta. Could do with a mid-range control, but hey, there's one on the amp.

Like said many times before the knobs are very touchy. This makes it a little difficult to get the right sound. The manual is helpful for starting out. Editing the patches are fairly easy once you get the hang of it. The footswitches are a little too close together and I can sometimes hit two at the same time. Could also just be my inability to work my feet as well as my hands.

Now I am rating this a 5 for a very important and specific reason. It sounds good half of the time. The only reason I own and still use this pedal is for when I play a gig on someone else's poor sounding bass rig. Most of the time if you use this pedal on a cheap amp, it will sound much better. When I am playing on my own rig, Ampeg SVT pro 5 with an SVT 6X10, the pedal DOES NOT improve my sound but on the contrary takes away all the beautiful mids which make me heard. If you have a cheap amp or are playing in a heavier band and would NOT like to be heard, this is the pedal for you.

Hasn't broke yet.

Haven't needed it yet.

Easy set-up with the suggested settings, editing settings on the fly is easy and the manual is all it needs to be. The only flaw is the ability to store a setting by inadvertantly pressing the switch twice. I've only done it once, though and I have the usual bass players' balance issues.

The "Fat-Tube" setting with a touch more bass gives that classic tube sound and "Crimson-Style" (!) for other-wordly distortion. A bit noisy with the distortion /presence / treble whacked up, but what do you expect? High output even with a passive bass and the level wound down, but the pad button sorts that out. Works great a straight DI without any effect. Could do with a mid control, maybe? Using a Fender Geddy Lee Jazz with a Rothstein JSP series-parallel switch (http://www.guitar-mod.com/rg_prewire_bassoption.html), Boss TU-2 tuner (any tone suck can be fixed by the BDDIP) and any amp that someone else will lift for me (it doesn't matter with the BDDIP). Live and studio, I wouldn't be without it.

Had it 2 years, use it all the time, batteries last for ever, dropped it, tripped over it, poured beer / orange juice / vodka / redbull all over it and no problems at all. I'd get another if I had money to burn, but I can't see this failing.

Just send them an email.

Punk / funk / metal / country (www.myspace.com/evolvecore), it loves them all. 20 odd years playing and I wish I'd had it when I couldn't afford a decent amp, if I lost it I would get another within 24 hours. Not got an all-valve SVT or Boogie 400? - buy one of these, got an all-valve SVT or Boogie 400? - what are you reading this review for?

For my money it's a simple enough box to use and program. The suggested patches in the manual are a good place to start, and the SVT and Bassman style sounds are, to my ear at least, the best examples of what the DI can do. If you spend a bit of time working with the thing rather than going straight from the shop to a gig, you'll have it programmed with some good rock tones in no time.

If anything, for live use I'd have appreciated a little more distance between the footswitches, as my size 13 CATs sometimes end up hitting either the same switch twice (bypass) or two switches at once (unpredictable)! Also, as a piece of live equipment, maybe some sort of edit 'mode' would have been better than being able to inadvertantly brush past or even vibrate the controls and screw up your sound live on stage!

I don't have many bass idols... maybe Dave Ellefson and Marcel Jacob. I can hit the old Megadeth and Talisman sounds quite accurately with this box, but that's not really the point is it; I don't know what gear those guys used and I don't really care because it's all about getting your own sound, and this box helps me achieve mine.

It's not noisy, it's a good clean sound and I always feel that the bass and amp I'm using have some bearing on the tone too; it's not in any way generic.

Depending on what I'm doing I either go direct through a PA or through my 2x15 400w SWR rig (or both!) and play 5 string active Warwick, BC Rich and Ibanez, and passive Yamaha basses. Everything works quite happily with the DI, as you'd expect it to!

I feel that I can depend on the DI, but I never gig without a backup - in my case it's either my Bass POD XT and FBV controller if I'm using multiple tones, or just a single SansAmp Bass DI if I'm not.

I've had a couple of instances where the controls move due to vibration of the floor (I presume, anyway) so I'd be tempted to go with the single DI anyway if I was only using a single sound.

I had a query with regards to the ground connect switch - the manual says the unit only draws phantom power when the ground is connected, but mine drew it all the time if it was available - so I emailed Tech21 and got a timely, friendly and technically helpful response from a guy called Lloyd. Can't ask for much more than that!

The DI will give you a good set of tones for most fingered and picked bass styles (I don't play slap, so can't comment about that). I play in an acoustic singer-songwriter duo, an 80s AOR covers band and a thrash / death metal band, and with a passive bass and a PA system for the acoustic, an active bass and my 2x15 rig for the AOR and downtuned actives for the metal, the same set of tones work fine for everything that I do. I realise some people may not have my luck in this respect, but hey... I can only speak as I find!

I've been playing for a good 10 years or so, and in that time I've never found a single tool that does so much in such an un-fussy was as the SansAmps - ok, it could do with a bit more room for my boots and be a bit better prepared for live work, but the sounds are great and it allows me to take that sound with me in the front pocket of my gigbag.

All in all, take it for what it is, and it's a great bit of kit!

It is quite straight forward to use. The settings are very very sensitive so you have to watch when setting up to get the right balance. To begin with I used the settings in the manual, which are quite helpful.

I use mesa boogie 400+, ampeg classic svt 810 and use 2001 Fender USA Jazz.

To begin with I thought this pedal sounded awesome, it sounded powerful and kicked ass. After a while I noticed that I was losing a lot of clarity and it turns out it is down to the loss of mid. I found the more you added any of the setting over 5 the worse the thing sounded.

Whilst recording I also noticed a lot of surface noise came through the amp as a result of the pedal, it was a nasty noise that I really didnt liek the sound of at all. I can only imagine what goes through a PA system with this pedal :(

The sound of the pedal also changes very dramatically between cabs.

No problems with it so far, used it for over a year now.

never had to use it

For the money you pay for this pedal it is very dissapointing, I am looking to sell the pedal and continue searchign for something that wont dilute my tone.

Dont be fooled by the constant 10/10s

I bought this unit about a year ago, I think. I have used it a lot. It is actually a preamp with some nice features linke blending tones and adding drive to your sound. Even though the technology behind it might be rocket science, using it should not be so and fortunately, it isn't. It does ask some patience and investment though to get the most out of it. Lots of tweaking so to say. Besides that there are some more options like boosting the overall output and padding the DI output. If yoy want or need to use those depend on the amp you're using and the venue you are playing. More on that later. Overall, this unit actually _has_ the features to tweak on! Saving patches is easy too. I'll give it 8 points because of the slight complexity. That should not hold you back though.

This is the most important part. In a way, this unit can be _very_ complex. If you can get a good sound out of it depends totally on your bass, your amp and the other effects in the chain. It is quite sensitive to differences in volume which does affect your sound. I use the unit with a Hartke HA3500 amp. When I plug it right into the preamp, it is LOUD even when the volume knob is very low on the SansAmp. But if I plug it into the effect send, the volume is gone and I have to crank the Sansamp up all the way to get the volume back. Not so long ago, I plugged it into the poweramp of a big Eden amplifier. This caused an amazingly boomy sound through the cabinet and the PA. I removed the XLR plug from the Eden and put it straight into the Sansamp. The sound was different but still very boomy. Tweaking the EQ or padding the DI output did not help much. My conclusion: the volume from the unit was too high for the PA to handle. So I had to remove the entire unit because of lack of time. That is what I meant with the unit being complex. Overall I'll mark the sound 8 points because you actually _can_ get amazing sounds from the unit. But there's some points off for the crap that comes out of it on some occasions :o)

It never broke on me so far. Looks like it won't anytime soon. I should not worry and neither should you. Everything is rugged and stage ready.

Forget this. Nobody needs it. Just go back to the shop if you still have warranty.

Okay, now for some conclusions. This unit is actually an Ampeg sound simulator. That means you'll get the classic rock sound from the unit. Your sound will become more woolly with less mids. You can tweak it to be agressive with more drive or tube-like warm. Do not expect sizzling, clanky slap sounds. Slap will sound ballsy and thick! The unit is definitely not hifi with crisp ans clear Marcus Miller sounds. Balls and warmth is what you get. This unit will never sound cold. That is what you should understand if you buy it. Thus try before buying! It is _not_ a one trick pony, but you may be easily temped to think it is if the initial sound do not appeal to you or if you expect something from it that isn't in it. I do not use it on every occasion. Also, make sure you use it with a good amp or it will not give you the quality that it is capable of. I am considering buying a new amp for that reason. Same for the other effects in your chain (I already solved that issue by dumping all the crap units). Overall 9 points from me! Goodluck trying it!

The pedal has 6 knobs, and 3 buttons. The 6 knobs are: Drive, Bass, Treble, Presence, Blend, and Level. Each knob is pretty self explanatory, but the catch is that Tech 21 makes all of their knobs VERY sensitive, meaning that you need to be careful how you go about adjusting these knobs to find your sound. I would not say it is very easy to get a good sound out of it the first time you try as it does take some tinkering to find something worth keeping. Thankfully, the unit is extremely easy to program, allowing you to store up to 3 of your favorite tones with just the double-click of a footswitch. I could go on and on about the other features of this pedal but they are all explained very well in the manual provided. I would have liked a mid control on it. The three buttons handle your connections; phantom & ground connect, xlr out pad, and 1/4" out boost.

The sound is incredible on this unit. Using the presets in the manual and working off those, I was able to get any distortion from biting to warm and fat. In addition, it is possible to use this as a basic EQ and tone-shaping unit, and the Blend control allows you to mix the original signal with the SansAmp signal (100% dry --> 100% wet). I have also used this pedal as a straight-up clean boost when necessary. I run an '06 Warwick Corvette through a Mu-Tron III+ Envelope Filter and I use the SansAmp at the end of my current signal chain. I usually run direct into the console because I can't afford an amp yet (ha-ha). Sounds great, start to finish!

It's a high-quality and reliable unit that is very sturdy. I would definitely (and definitely have) used the SansAmp without a backup at gigs.

Nothing yet.

I play funk, funk rock, hard rock, and its derivatives. I use the unit as my primary distortion and also as a nice boost for slapping. I have been playing for about 6 years and have used the SansAmp for about the past eight months. I would have loved a mid control, but it still does well without it. If it were stolen or lost I would get another one, but it's not a cheap peace of gear by any means. I choose a lot of my gear based on what I think something should sound like, and when I hear it, I know it's what I want. This hit the spot for bass distortion, plain and simple.