bx_bassdude

1960’s Tone With Authentic Tube Overdrive

The great irony of the Fender® Bassman® is that it was primarily designed as a bass amplifier, and while it has certainly made a name for itself with bass players, it has become one of the most iconic guitar amplifiers ever made. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the this amp is the mother of rock and roll guitar amps, as its design was the basis for Jim Marshall’s celebrated JTM45 amp, which went on to influence countless other amp designs.

While there are many different versions of the Bassman, ranging from the tweed combos of the 1950’s to the “Silverface” units of the later 1960’s, many people point to the blonde units of the early 1960s as being the ultimate choice due to its sweetness and range of vintage tones. The first Bassman to be configured as a separate amp and speaker cabinet, often referred to as a “piggyback” model, delivers warm cleans until you hit about 4 on the Volume dial -- then a magically smooth tube overdrive, with incredible harmonic content and a dynamic, touch-sensitive response emerges.

For this reason, Brainworx chose an early 1960’s model (#6G6-B) for its faithful amp emulation plugin: the bx_bassdude. The Brainworx bx_bassdude delivers all of the tone and nuance of the original amp. Plugging in your guitar or running a track through the bx_bassdude and stepping through the presets is like taking a tour of rock and roll history as you’ll recognize tone after tone from hit records covering the last five decades. Guitar legends ranging from Stevie Ray Vaughan to Tom Petty to Brian Setzer have used these amps and now it’s your turn.

While the bx_bassdude, like the original amp, is primarily a guitar amp, it sounds great on basses too. This means you not only get great guitar tones, but by simply switching the plugin to “Bass Instrument” you can also warm up a bass track quickly and easily.

As anyone who regularly records electric guitars will tell you, just having a great amp tone only gets you halfway to getting a great recording. You also need a great sounding room, expensive microphones, preamps and outboard gear and most of all, an engineer with loads of experience to get it set up properly. The bx_bassdude plugin includes 35 Recording Chains, also known as Impulse Responses or IRs, which include a dizzying array of guitar cabinets, high-end microphones and other studio gear. Dirk Ulrich (Owner/CEO of Brainworx) was a rock producer for 15 years before entering the plugin business.

Working with musicians from bands like Dream Theater, Toto, Michael Jackson’s band and many more, he produced these IRs at the Brainworx studio using different speaker cabinets, nine different high-end vintage and modern microphones all running through his NEVE VXS72 console (which is one of only nine such consoles in existence) and using outboard EQ from Millennia, SPL and elysia. The resulting tones, which would take tons of gear, time and expertise to achieve, can be selected from a simple menu inside the plugin.

Features

• Faithful reproduction of an early 1960’s Fender Blonde Bassman guitar/bass amp
• 35 impulse responses from multiple speaker cabinets recorded in a state of the art room with stellar gear
• Bass and Instrument channels make it great for guitar or bass
• Record DI guitar or bass, then edit and process them in the DAW completely using the internal amp simulation, the recording chains and the FX Rack
• World-Class guitar sound right on your desktop via faithful recreation of the most copied tube amp design in the history of rock and roll
• Features not found on the original amp include a Noise Gate, High/Low pass filters, a lo-fi delay effect and a newly developed Power Amp Simulation including on-board Power Soak

System Requirements

Mac

• macOS 11 - 14
• AAX DSP, AAX Native, AU, VST2, VST3
• Display resolution: 1440 × 900px or 1280 × 960px or higher
• Memory: 2 GB RAM

PC

• Windows 10 - 11
• AAX DSP, AAX Native, VST2, VST3
• Display resolution: 1440 × 900px or 1280 × 960px or higher
• Memory: 2 GB RAM