So just for the hell of it, I connected my bass directly to the Digitakt to see if I could get enough of a signal that I could boost with the built-in overdrive. Much to my surprise, the signal was more than enough and the results sounded pretty good. I even had to turn down the level of the bass track in the mixer. Can anyone explain this? I just expected the DT was expecting a line level signal and wouldn’t be capable of handling instrument level signals very well. Will see now how it handles my Tele.
Does your bass have active pickups, or a preamp on board?
I don’t think so. It’s a Squier Tele Bass.
It works. I’ve done it with passive guitar (also a Squire) going into DN and OT before. It won’t sound as optimal as using a preamp or amp sim pedal and using DT without distortion, but it does the job well enough on occasion.
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Not using a DI usually dulls the highs, which I imagine isn’t such a problem on a bass.
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Guitar didn’t sound as good. That is, until I turned the bit crusher up to one hundred and eleven.
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Guilty as charged. Love the bitcrusher!
Do this with guitar and the analog heat
I think this phenomenon (or at least part of it) has been covered on this board before. The Digitakt / Digitone inputs have a ton of gain. I think unity gain (for line level sources) is something like 25-30 on the knob setting. So it’s not surprising you can get a decent level on a bass / guitar. As @craig mentioned, it’s probably not the ideal situation for adding gain to your guitar / bass, but it works in a pinch. And maybe that’s all you need it to do. This reminds me, I should try running a mic into my Digitone and playing my wooden drum along with it. So many ideas, not a lot of time to test them out!
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