The perfect distortion pedal!

[cheyenne]

"THE" sleeper in the bass guitar world. Nothing like the BDDI, or the RBI. Much better, I love it.

http://www.tech21nyc.com/rpm.html

[jps]

I tried the BDDI but it lost the mids way too much for me. I could not get a match to the unprocessed tone of my basses like I can with the VTB. I can only guess that the RPM would do much better at that.

[cheyenne]

I tried the BDDI, and came up with the same conclusion.

I bought the RBI thinking that the dedicated mid control would be the answer....I flipped it on EBAY in less than a week.

The RPM is the one for me. It lacks the "presence" knob of the RBI, but adds a "Mid Frequency" control that lets you dial in your mid frequency, then allows you to boost or cut the notched frequency with the mid knob. The overall tone of the preamp seems to be more aimed at the bass player in my opinion. Noticably deeper sounding than the RBI.

It amazes me still how just a little tweak on the controls makes a huge difference in tone, and how they interact with each other. The RPM only has eight knobs but they are very well thought out.

Try one.

[jps]

Bring it to RIO!!!

[anoukane]

Where can I order this pedal?
Can't find one on Ebay..

[jps]

It is brand new and just recently released so you may have to try a Tech 21 dealer.

www.tech21nyc.com/dealers/intrntl_dealer_frames.html

[jwr2]

I got the Tech 21 vt bass pedal. I have been experimenting with it. I use it to emulate the Ampeg flip top. The SVT settings seem too boomy and the rage settings are unpleasant. But emulating the flip top tone gives me a tone very similar to my bass pod 1 when I set it to emulate the flip top amp. They removed the flip top model from the bass pod XT for some reason.

So currently I split my signal into 3. On goes into the MXR bass di+ for a clean modern hi fi sound. One goes into the bass pod where I model the flip top amp and I model the rat distortion pedal. And the third signal goes into the tech 21 vt bass pedal. I am tweaking the whol setup. I plan on adding a 4th completely dry signal to the mix as well.

The VT bass seems better than the bass sans amp stomp box. The stomp box had no mid control and the distortion seemed artificial, and the presence control added too much high end.

http://www.tech21nyc.com/images/VTBassControls_lg.jpg

[teeder]

APFVTB!

Gesundheit!

[jps]

I agree regarding the VTB vs. the BDDI and the GT2 I had also. Both of the latter pedals screwed up the natural tone of the basses but the VTB is capable of matching the bypassed tone so it makes it far easier to get the desired sound. The extreme setting of the Character control are not too great but anywhere from fully CCW to around 1:00 in combination with different midrange settings do sound excellent. With the Drive control fully CCW It makes a very nice preamp with minimal distortion but great tone.

[jwr2]

I set the character to 12:00 and the drive to about 11:00. Then I fiddle with the tone and volume knobs.

Actually the flip top tone on this pedal and on the Line6 bass pod 1 are pretty similar.

[jwr2]

So now I am running 3 parallel effects. When I isolate each one they have their own sound. But when I run all three together the Sound is quite nice. The whole sound is better than each of the individual parts. I have it set up where each of the effects is doing what it does best producing a nice round full sound with the character of a distortion pedal, a clean sound, and a growwly tube amp. The complexities of the sound are quite pleasing. I can see why Geddy runs 3 parallel signals.

[jps]

Are you running them into separate amps and speakers or back into one amp/speaker setup?

[jwr2]

I split the mono signal into 3 parallel signals that run into 3 seperate effects then into a Rolls 4 channel mixer that has a mono output into one amp.

The resulting sound has a nice complexity of low, mids, highs, 2 kinds of distortion, and a modern clean sound. Each effect is doing what it does best.

[jps]

I may try that with two channels. What do you use for your splitter from the bass.

[jwr2]

When I am finished I will use one of these to split the signal into 4 and use a 2nd one to recombine the 4 signals back into one.

http://www.rolls.com/products/mx41.php

When I was just running 2 signals I used this to split the signal and as an effect ...

http://www.jimdunlop.com/index.php?page ... d_e_detail