BassDrive

BassDrive is truly a secret weapon, in that it’s a pet plugin for the notorious Slipperman! I kept it under wraps for years but now the secret identity of Slippy is known, and so too the secret of the plugin can be. I will tell all. And to be fair, this one isn’t becoming a freebie. I’m going to tie it to Golem, another Slippernian plugin, and with a bit of luck he will approve of me not starving and all, and appreciate me not outright throwing it in the freebie bin.

Remember, you have to know how to use these things. Here’s why BassDrive found favor.

All it is, literally, is an early four-band EQ implemented Airwindows fashion. It’s not even all Airwindows EQ code, it’s the only example of ‘cookbook’ EQ curves Airwindows has. Technically, they’re implemented like little convolution kernels, and they are also interleaved (which isn’t normal).

But more than that, they are implemented in such a way that every EQ band gets a saturation curve. The harder you ‘push’ the bands, the more they come forward in the mix. This is vital to voicing up-front sounds, it means you can spatially contour a sound rather than just fiddle with frequency components.

The bands are super-aggressive, though the highs are crazier than the lows. Then, there’s the drive control on the end, which is just another saturation stage.

Be aware of one thing: CStrip (and its precursor EQ) do the same thing as this. They do it less extremely and less aggressively, but they’re doing the same thing. BassDrive is just the one that can throw on sick boosts, the one that voices the bands differently and more rigidly than CStrip does, and with an extra gain stage to gel everything together.

If that works for you, you can have BassDrive. To get it, buy a copy of Golem (yes, a basic sort of utility for $50 but now you know it comes with a secret plugin) and ask for BassDrive in email. I’ll send it.