Tech 21 SansAmp Character VT Bass DI

The pedal offers a broad range of vintage sounds, from clean to high gain. It feels sturdy. The coloured DI is very useful in live situations.

I would have preferred the in- & outputs at the top instead of at the sides, partly because it is not the last pedal in my chain. The noise level at high gain settings (character and drive past 12 o clock) makes me want to run it through a noise suppressor.

The knobs are sensitive: a small adjustment can change your tone quite a bit. Choosing a different kind of tone requires adjustments on several knobs, which is not very intuitive and make quick changes tricky. The knobs turn easily: quite often by accident. It is hard to remember settings with this many knobs.

At most settings, playing with my active bass with bridge humbucker, lower notes are distorted more heavily.

After a few weeks of recordings, gigs and rehearsals, I can honestly say: this is a very serious bass tool.

I use it in gigs as a direct box - on bypass, it delivers a very high quality direct signal, which is cool. But the true wow moment is when it's on. The majority of the gigs are played with no amp, monitored with in ears. What this box does to my tone is unbelievable. With the character knob between 9 and 11 o'clock and speaker simulator engaged, the high frequencies never sound metallic or clicky. The low end is huge, up to the point they need to be cut with the EQ. The drive adds more character, and together they deliver a huge tone. Fingers, pick, thumb, slap, it all sound much much better than a simple direct signal. This box does exactly what it's designed to do, and nothing less.

In recordings, I use it as an overdrive, in parallel to the clean signal. With the character knob turned above 2 o'clock, it delivers a real bad ass drive, which is very dynamic, touch sensitive and rich in harmonics. it's recommended to blend in the dry signal in that application, simply because the lows decrease dramatically with the character knob beyond the 12 o'clock position.

In rehearsals, I use it as a preamp, in any room that has an amp that I don't like its tone. I just connect it to the power amp input - and suddenly I don't hate the tone! If the room has a good amp (such Mesa Boogie/Ampeg all tube classics), I use the box as an extra drive, blended with the dry signal.

If I want a more "vintagey" sound for things like old school funk etc. the character knob just above the 12 o'clock position and a healthy amount of drive gets me there very quickly.

It's hard to believe how versatile this box is.

I never leave home without it.

Ok, heres my review -

Firstly the service from Thomann - great price and prompt despatch although it seems that DHL got my address wrong and i had to hunt around to find where my new toy had been delivered to. Not Thomanns fault and they were quick to offer assistance when i first thought it had gone missing.

Now the VT Bass DI - good packaging and the product feels well made. Its lighter than i thought it would be but still feels tough. I bought this after trying a Behringer BDI21 as a cheap Ampeg simulator. I was impressed with that product so thought i wouod invest in the Tech21. It has more tweakability due to the mid control and the character knob. With the character knob left of midday it sounds like an SVT, midday is sort of B15 and right of midday starts getting thinner. If i have the gain past about 9pm it starts breaking up the sound and the character and mid knobs really change the sound. I like it clean and fat so have settled on character around 9pm, gain at the same and mid backed a little off from 12pm. You can use it as a dedicated preamp into a power amp or effects return by engaging the little boost button. The speaker simulator button tightens up the sound even further and the bright button gets a real rasp going on if you like that sort of thing (you can back off the treble to tame it)
Great product, really pleased with it as an always on effect.

I was weighing up whether to buy this or just the standard BDDI and I went for this given the idea of "tube emulation"..

.. and what a good call it was. You'll never get a 100% perfect recreation of a full Ampeg stack as that's literally impossible in a little box but this is unbelievably close. I play mainly grunge/stoner rock stuff and this has all those Nick Oliveri-esque tones on tap, whenever you need them. I too bought this because I was sick of lumbering bass cabs and heads around the place for some sound engineer guy to pop a DI box on top of my amp and completely bypass my whole rig. Like, seriously? Anyway, I bought this because of the DI capability and it works perfectly. It even has a -20b button on the XLR out for the soundboard if you play a little bit loud and their systems can't cope with it.

Overall it's perfect, it comes with a little booklet that has loads of presets, my favourite being the Chris Squier "Roundabout" type preset, and the speaker emulation is incredible for recording out of the box. 10/10, wouldn't leave the house without it.