Novation Bass Station Rack

This is my third bass station altogether. i owned one in the late nineties/early 2000's.(rack) and one a yr ago. first one sold due to financial hard times. second because i just didnt trust how cheap the keyboards felt. seriously ive had three sk-1s and they felt waaay more solid, come on now thats kinda scary because the sk-1 is actually a toy. this is most likely as easy as monophonic synthesis gets. if you cant get this you should just give up.

While knowing theres a super bass station its easy to say that its very lacking. however i think that its different for each user. i personally dont like onboard effects for the most part. some instruments its half of what makes them. such as the lush juno chorus. i never owned a juno but i had two poly800's the cheap korg alternative. and half the sounds were useless without the chorus. well my point is that if you were to gripe that it needs effects theres the super. if you were to gripe that its not simplistic enough theres the bsr. i think its perfect for what it does. which is analog bass. Ok and on the whole its not analog arguement. well its not 100% analog no, but its about as close as you need to get. from what i know it has vco's that are digitally modeled. this is closer then alot of what is out there currently including nord, virus,jp8000,ms2000(which sounds horrible) and so on. however the prophet 08 and the new moogs are more analog from what i understand but thats like comparing a vespa to a muscle car. its just stupid and a waste of time. i might be wrong but i think its as analog as the juno 106? what people or younger ones today dont understand is that analog was replaced because of its lack of being reliable. it took many parts to build analog boards, and the parts didnt always work well with eachother. you might have played on a moog and thought it sounded beautiful. but you never had to rely on it in a live atmosphere. that can be scary. especially when the occilators randomly go out of tune. im young only 28 but ive used moogs live and when that happens its not fun.

well i purchaced my first one at a music shop in austin texas. it was a blast but after hard times in my early twenties i had to let it go. looking back i shouldnt have but i was young and stupid. my second one was a buy i wont ever make again. theres alot of flaws with the keyboard and in my opinion the only reason it sells still is because radiohead made it famous. the biggest flaw is no presets and only 6 user patches 6, 7? well anyways if you want the best of both worlds novation has a midi controller floating around outthere that is a basstation minus everything but the wheels and keys. same case and everything. if you want that asthetic value. these buggers keep getting more expensive each time. i know i couldve got it cheaper but didnt feel like making a hobby out of the search. i dont have time for that crap.

its very barebones. no arp,no fx, all the standard front panel analog editing features. osc,attack, that cutoff knob that everyone loves, etc. i dont think its fair to dead on compare it to the tb303. personally i say screw the tb303. i hope i never own one. can i play it?nope. can i put it on a rack? nope. does it have midi? nope it has din sync. this was before midi and youll have to buy a whole other piece of gear to use it with midi, even though you just blew 2 grand to buy it. is it at least solid metal? nope its chrome painted plastic. so what do i do with it? you write annoying repetitive bassline that melodically makes no musical sense and just play with the cutoff... cant i do that with about every other type of synth out now?......yupe. is there any sound in it that hasnt been used to death yet?...nope. anyways you get my point. you can do more with the bass station. so do it. ok for its size, features, fact that its analog in all the right ways, this should be a legend of its own altogether.

yes id gig thats what it was built for.

good i hear, i also own a drumstation v2 so if anything goes wrong theyll be hearing from me.

if anything happened to it id assume god doesnt want me to have a bass station and give up on it. maybe get a super next time. this is my last bass station i plan to own. ive owned alot of gear. id like to think i know a few things. there was a time in my life where synths were my only love. yeah geeky as hell but if your a synth geek you get it. heres what ive owned/own to give my background.

moog rogue,moog mg-01,cz101,dx21,tr707,tr606,tr626,tr505,jv1010,jv1080,poly800,fizmo,esq-1,akai x7000,mirage,eps16+(turbo),dr synth,korg delta,cs-5,cs1x,bskb,m-vs1,drumstation,sh-201,er-1,ea-1,mc-303,nanobass,v50,sk-1,rx-5,r-8m,sp-808,sp-202,dr-202,jp8000,mmt-8,mc-50 etc. i went to software for about 7 years and have recently gone back to hardware. ive owned all that and the bass staton sat near the top of my list for what i would own agian. for its price, stability, size and quality very little can compare.

the manual is great and is easy to follow. so even beginners to synthesis will be able to understand how the unit works with ease.
the factory patches are surprisingly very usable and give a good overview of what the unit is capable of..

for the price i paid, this unit was a real steal.
its MEANT to be monophonic and monotimbral, being a bass/lead synth and all... basically, it does what it promises to do. nothing more nothing less..
it also has midi/cv converter built in!

for the price i paid, this unit sounds great! very convincing tb303 sounds and mono leads!! i tried the vst plug-in version and its also pretty good, but you can't beat actual analog!

bought mine used and it was badly packaged. when i opened the box, one of the rack ears was bent suggesting that the package had some sort of fall (the rack ears were fine in the photos the seller sent me). i checked the unit and everything was working fine! nothing loose... built like a tank!

never had to use them!

this unit is a real steal when bought second hand..
come to think of it i wouldn't mind paying more! if this unit was lost or stolen then i would probably spend a bit more to buy the Super Bass Station as it is the same sound with more features.

Extremely easy to use. Just power it up and your off. All important controls are on the front panel.

I'd say well loaded with features.
2 Osc - 2 Env (filt & amp), PWM, LFO, Sync, velocity sensitivity. LFO & Env mod on Osc & Filt.
It has analog filters 12dB and 24dB switchable. External audio can be processed through the filter.
It can be used as a MIDI to CV converter. It has CV and Gate inputs and outputs.
Fantastic in a 1U 19" synth.

A second env for the filter would've been good but I prefer the fact it all sits in a 1U 19" rack. A power on/off button would have been good but I use it in a studio and I power evrything up at once so I don't actually need it.

I love this thing. Its could for basses and leads. The fact that the filters are analogue just warms everything up. Along side my other synth like the nord lead 1 and the MicroKorg it wins everytime. It just sounds good and can squeal properly not like that farty wheeze that comes from the nord.
It's a monophonic lead/bass synth and as such does what it does extremely well.

No Problems yet.

A knobs came off when I was moving and the extremely kind and generous people at Novation immeaditally posted 2 over to me free of charge.
Can't get better than that. No questions asked and sorted me out within a week.
Fantastic.

I think its a great little synth. Its very european with modelled Osc and analogue filters. Even if I paid 200 or 300 hundred euro I still trink I would be happy.
If it was stolen I would absolutely by it again no hesitation... in fact I'm thinking of buying a few anyways to increase the polyphony.

this synth is very easy to use. you must have the maual for lfo sync and things like that. all the knobs transmit midi and recive it too. very nice touch. the manual is very comprehensive and a great tool for beginners. nothing was left out. the cv to midi/midi to cv converter works well. i found it a little hard to use with the 2 digit display.

2 dco's. 2 adrs envelopes with velocity. 1 lfo with saw,tri,s/h. 1 12/24db filter. there is osc sync with envelope/lfo control on both osc. 40 presets, 60 user slots. portomento control. lfo midi sync works well, only to some clock values. a valuable midi to cv converter. not the easyest to use but it works very well. control your sh101 or cs10 with this. or use them to control your bassstation. no effects but they arent really nesecary for this type synth. overall a very well equpt synth for the money.

i personally love the sound of this unit. the osc. wide open sound very agressive. with some filter they smooth out to be real smooth sounding. the 12db filter makes things much more brassy and raw. the 24db filter is more roland than moog but the osc are more moog than roland. the portomento sounds very fluid and works very well unlike some other synth(juno). the lfo is very flexible and the delay function really works well. i would buy it for that alone. now. there is alwasy some underlying noise. it isnt real bad untill you really crnak the volume. its analog so this is to be expexted. as for the stepping of the filter... its not as bas as many people make it seem. it is notiable at extreme settings and when using the front knob for sweeps and such. when you use the lfo and or envelope it is not .

i bought it used and have never had a problem. novation is still going strong so im not worried.

never had to deal with them thankfully.

i traded my juno 1 for this beast and feel i made thge right decition. i love the delay on the lfo. it is very musical. i use this synth more for lead lines than bass line but it does bass well. the sync sounds awesome and the 12/24db filter sounds great. basically this synth sounds awesome. it doesnt take up any room in my studio and i can control my vintage gear with it. for 200 usd its a steal. dont hesitate. if you dont like it sell it, you wont loose anything.

The Bass Station is a mixed bag as far as ease of use. Some things are obvious (cuttoff, reso and many other parameters are one knob per function), some things require a little bit of thought (envelope 1 and 2 share pots) and some things require you to decode a tiny screen and consult the manual (saving patches, setting up MIDI and CV functions). Editiing patches isn't too hard though, and all the knobs just beg to be tweaked.

This is a monosynth rack with no built in effects. It has 2 DCO's capable of producing a pulse or sawtooth wave, osc sync, 1 LFO, 2 envelope generators, 1 resonant LPF switchable between 2 pole and 4 pole modes. The filter can be used to process external audio, and is capable of self oscillating in 24 dB/oct mode. The architecture is pretty simple. For the price I paid, a good amount of features are included

This is the most important category IMHO. I like the sound of the Bass Station. In fact, I initially bought a Bass Station keyboard and sold it, but missed it enough to buy the rackmount version. The NBS is a monophonic analog synth, so you can't expect realistic emulations of traditional instruments. This synth is best suited to sounding analog and crazy. Its oscillators have a sweet tone to them. They are stronger sounding than those on an Access Virus, but weaker (yet prettier) than the DCO's on a Waldorf Pulse. The filter is Roland-y, and can produce a nice acidic squelch with high resonance settings. The filter is also quite well suited to producing powerful kick drums when self oscillating and swept with an envelope. The fact that the filter is switchable between 2-pole and 4-pole operation is a plus, as it make the NBS more verstile. For bass sounds, the NBS is ok (it was good enough for Radiohead!), but not as powerful as you would expect of a synth with Bass as its first name. I like it a lot for sustaining melodic leads and for blippy arpeggio paterns though. As I said, the osc's have a sweet tone to them, especially when run through some chorus and distortion! Aftertouch is not supported as far as I know, but velocity can be routed to VCA envelope or VCF envelope.

The Bass Station is great for electronic music in general, and is very effective for me in synthpop/EBM/Industrial. It could be used by anyone who needs some analog in their life though. Pop-punk/emo, rock (RADIOHEAD!!!), jazz, rap, etc...

The knobs on mine are a little loose now, but it is a few years old and I bought it used. I don't know how well it was treated before I got my grubby hands on it. I don't gig, I'm a bedroom warrior with a fun home studio... If I was going to gig, I would never only have the NBS because it's a rack and it's monophonic, so I would need to have another keyboard to slave it to. I'm not concerned that it will need repairs any time soon.

Dunno.

This is my 2nd NBS, so it's pretty obvious that I enjoy having one around. If I could, I'd upgrade to a Super Bass Station for the added sub ocs, analog distortion and chorus. The keyboard version is cool as well, but I have a soft spot for short keyboards. I've been playing a few years now, and I've owned a decent amount of synths. I currently have the Bass Station, a Waldorf Pulse, an Akai Ax-60, an Access Virus KB, and an Emu ESI-2000. I like the sound of the Bass Station, especially for the price I paid. There isn't anything about it that I hate; it's a good synth. It has a simple architecture and only 2 osc's, and therefore can't produce some of the more complex synth sounds that the big polysynths can, but for monophonic bass and especially leads, it's great.

Pretty easy to use. Also the Manual is very good.

Monophonic, 2 oscillators. The 3rd oscillator would've been nice. No efx. The filters sound very digital i.e. you can hear the tone getting filtered in steps and the sound is very harsh. But then again I think this synth was in the first wave of the modelling analog synths so..

In my opinion this thing ISN'T for bass at all. It just doesn't go there and I've been using it mainly for efx and leads. specially I've been doubling the leads with it since it sounds quite weak by itself. also it gives out quite a lot of hiss/interference ?? also as mentioned the filters sound horrible, since you _always_ hear the steps.

I've had this one for ages and still keeps going on. Although it has pretty loose knobs and the headphone-out has gotten loose (should fix that someday)it's still okay. I was thinking of replacing the knobs some time ago, but then I thought why the heck bother.. Doesn't like it that much.

--

Wouldn't buy it again. I'm not even sure if you can get this from the stores anymore. Looks and feels very toy-like and I don't think it can take that much damage (been using it on the studio/rack), sounds harsh + you can't get any decent bass from it despite the name.

Almost too easy to use, all parametres you need are knobbed up so little menu diving, presets aren't great for the most part- but this aint a preset synth- patch editor is good if have an aversion to knobs. Manual is gash but who needs it?

mono- no efx, midi is good, likie the external input- someone said this synth isn't velocity responsive in a previous review- well it is and in fact has a knob dedicated to velocity to amp/filter envelopes...it does exactly what it says on the tin

great for bass (obviously)- v easy to set it up to respond like a 303 would, leads efx and even the odd bass drum easy to get, i have bass sound ive made that i use in over 50% of my tunes (house/techno/downtempo) i would cry if i lost it- great with distortion and spend time getting a good compression setting for it and you can practically leave it hard wired....

pretty reliable- sometimes does odd things but thats probably more due to my midi chain

never had to for this unit

i would buy it again if i had it stolen, been playing two years- havent got bored of it yet, dont hate anything but would like it have an lfo keysync option (no biggie really), its always on when im composing.

Seems easy enough to use. Haven't explored all possibilities yet, but I dig it. Draw back: 2 digit LED display. Yuck. But that is its only weakness. That being said, display is it's only weakness, that is great.

Bass synth sounds for days. This is a tweaker's toy. I have heard people say of many models of many brands, "the presets werent what I was looking for, I had to tweak it to get what I want". Yeah. WHat did they expect. All things are that way. Even guitar amps.

BASS!

No probs yet.

See my Drum Station review for info on my experience with Novation.

This item does not leave my project studio. Paranoia. I don't want it damnaged.

it's very simple to change sound and use the knobs in real time:very funny and fast!

it's a monophonic synth , with about 40 presets sound and other 40 free to save yours sounds.
midi in , out ,thru;no velocity control.
one analog audio input that goes to the filter section (cutoff, frequency , release, mod. depth,) so you can use this filters , with anthing audio source.
i'm a guitarist and this feature is very funny!
a lot of knobs like portamento ,oscillators, lfo , envelope section with attack, release etc
no sequencer inside
that's a monophonic synth, that's all

easy to use and very creative gear.
sound very very well with giant & round bass, but also great lead possibilities.
The filters are simply great!!
IF YOU SEARCH AN ANALOG DEVICE FOR A RIDICOLOUS PRICE THIS IS THE GEAR FOR YOU.
i've a roland sh1000 , yamaha cs1, dx-7 and the bass station stand up in the match!

it's not a solid gear
it's not to be trusted , like a toy , but for this price it's GOLD!

i don't know...

it's a gear for who look for a good REAL and funny monophonic analog synth for use in a creative way for all type of music from rock to dance to...music!

This is, like all synths with logic layout and knobs for almost every function, very easy to use. Of course, you should read the manual to learn what the knobs and buttons do. I give it a 9 in ease of use because I sometimes get lost in the double use of some of the knobs.

Monophonic and mono it is and it totally lacks effects. The biggest problem is that it sounds so right for me, the monophony is a big problem. Often when I make songs, I'll have to sample patches I make because I need to make another one. I often end up using the Bass Station plus two sampled pathces from it in every song I make right now.
The lack of effects is not a problem for me, when I need reverb, I use my Alesis Wedge, when I need something nasty, I use a distortion pedal and when I need something wicked, I use my Korg AM8000R. I allways use compression on this baby.
The MIDI implementation works fine for my needs, as most mucisians, when I program control changes, it is for the cutoff 99% of the time, and it works splendid.

I originaly bought this synth to hear for myself the difference between analog and digital or viritual analog synths. What I've learned is that a seemingly simple analog architecture can be very powerfull (it has only two oscilators providing saw or pulse waves and a 12/24 dB filter!).
The fact is, since I bought my Bass Station Rack, it has supplied me with all my bass sounds and a lot of leads. I just love this machine, and friends I have owning microQ's have also been impressed by the sound of this machine.

I have had no problem whatsoever.

I have no idea. The thing works as it should.

I definitely buy this unit again if it were stolen. It has a sound, and especially in the bass region that I can't do without when I make dance tracks (but then, I don't own any VA yet). Also, It is so lovely tweakable, I time and again come up with new cool bass sounds that realy takes my tracks to a new level. Of course, if you have synths you already are happy with, you may not need this one, but if you some day want to know how a real analog synth sound, and why people love them, try this one out. You may find out that this was the missing piece in your studio.

This unit is easy to use if you know the basic stuff, what those
cryptic "osc" "lfo" "pwm" etc. mean :) Everyting can be edited
through 16 midicontrollable (!) knobs and a few buttons. I bought
my unit 2nd hand, got no manual but I found one in .pdf format
on the novation website.

This is a monophonic unit, two oscillators with saw / pulse waveforms.
Switchable 12/24 analogue lowpass filter with resonance. It has midi in, out, and CV in out for using your old pre-midi synths! Also has an
input which leads to filter / envelope section, which is cool. There are more, check out the specs somewhere..

Midi is rock solid, too bad you can hear the 0-127 midi steps when you turn the cutoff knob fast while resonance is high. No fx, but sounds are amazing. This is first analogue (or ASM as novation says, is it truly analogue hmm) synth and man you can do all really good sounds with this! Not even my dear old Kurzweil K2000 can't beat this machine in some things.

Well, I bought 2nd hand. The "calculator like" dialing pad on the unit didn't work, but I opened the unit and got it working, some wires had been disconnected but they could be plugged easily back.

You know, those wires should not have got off the circuit board by themselves ;)

Haven't had time to test Novation's customer support, got this unit 6 hours ago.

If this unit was lost I would buy another one. If it was stolen - well, too bad for the robbers. They wouldn't need the unit anymore. It's hard to play synths when your arms are broken :)