The 7 best bass VST plugins you can get right now and add power to your track
It’s time to talk about the best bass plugins you can downlaod for your music right now.
We have a mixture of bass synth VSTs and bass guitar plugins to talk about, and some are free plugins whilst others are paid.
These 7 plugins will allow you to create powerful basses and write basslines that are as simple or as groovy as you like. By the end of the article, you’ll be confident enough to decide which you think is the best bass plugin for your musical style!
Without further ado, let’s talk about the 7 best bass VSTs you can download in 2022!
1. Ample Sound – Bass P Lite II
The first bass plugin we want to tell you about is a highly renowned bass guitar VST that’s completely free. Please welcome Ample Bass P Lite II.
This free bass guitar plugin features 443 bass guitar samples with a number of articulations that give you authentic bass tones. In fact, the recordings are sampled from a Fender Precision bass guitar, and includes hammer-ons, pull-offs, and sustain articulations with various accenting.
Ample Bass P Lite II captures the tone of the guitar and gives you an authentic sound. Moreover, this bass VST has realistic finger noise that compliments the deep tone of the instrument with multiple capo logistics for unique fingerings.
While playing, you can use two sampling cycles at once and use your modulation wheel to achieve a vibrato effect. Further, Ample Bass P Lite II’s dedicated Tab Player module can load and play several prevalent guitar\bass tablature file formats which allow you to load, display, and playback any specific track inside a tablature file!
Ultimately, this is the best bass guitar VST there is. Its sound quality is next level while offering a number of onboard effects. Its user interface is simple and easy to work with, and all you need to do is hover your cursor over any parameter you’re unsure about, and a small pop-up informing you as to what that control does appears.
2. Spitfire Audio – LABS Bass Guitar
The next bass VST on our list is another bass guitar plugin. Spitfire Audio is renowned for curating high-quality software instruments, and their free LABS instruments are no different.
Therefore, it should come as no surprise that their LABS Bass Guitar instrument sounds epic whilst packaged in a neat UI that’s simple & user-friendly. This free bass VST plugin offers you a few presets – Classic Bass amp; DI; Warm Bass amp/D, and each has a unique sound.
Additionally, LABS Bass Guitar gives you several controls for fine-tuning the sound, while an additional 5 parameters include Reverb, Tightness, Variation, Attack, and Release. As a result, you can dial specific amounts of these effects and dynamics while crafting your bass sound.
The instrument itself was recorded by Spitfire Audio developer Leo Wyatt and then re-amped through a vintage Ampeg unit at Hackney Premises Studios.
LABS Bass Guitar lets you turn those recordings into expressive basslines pretty easily. For example, the small selection of parameters makes it easy to reform the electric bass sound into deeper, more sustained tones that work well in numerous genres.
Finally, the LABS Bass Guitar VST sounds best when coupled with a MIDI controller that allows for expression. Think modulation & pitch bend wheels, macros that are available on a variety of MIDI keyboards. In fact, the fader on the far left of Bass Guitar’s user interface controls the amplitude of the sound, and the second fader controls the dynamic (which minimizes any variation in velocity and offers only one level of velocity at full).
3. Diginoiz – Subdivine Lite
Subdivine Lite is a lot more particular than the other bass VST plugins on our list. It’s the “Lite” version of a premium plugin – Subdivine – that specializes in creating high-quality 808-style bass sounds.
This bass VST offers six presets with professional quality, responsive ADSR, and pitch bend controls, and it’s totally free.
All Hip Hop producers who love the sound of 808s need this plugin. It’ll allow you to generate your own 808 basses, and you’ll no longer be reliant on samples. But, of course, there’s nothing wrong with relying on samples.
The user interface itself is clean and easy to work with, but the plugin isn’t capable of much more than generating 808 sounds.
Though it’s not an overly versatile plugin, Subdivine Lite excels at creating great 808 sounds. However, this VST bass plugin does offer a fantastic glide parameter that tells the bass to bend and swell in pitch across notes.
Furthermore, Subdivine Lite also offers a high-fidelity drive knob that applies clean saturation to your 808 basses. It’s great for giving your 88s more power to hit hard in your mix and make themselves apparent in smaller speakers.
The Subdivine Lite bass VST does lack many of the parameters that you can get with the full version, but it does give you the same awesome 808 sound.
4. Monoplugs – Monique
The Monoplugs Monique VST instrument is a free software synthesizer capable of producing huge bass sounds with its morphable oscillators with advanced automation and modulation options.
This subtractive monophonic synthesizer produces a variety of rich bass tones. For example, you can generate clean sinewave subs, rich top basses, and all kinds of aggressive low-end with heavy distortion.
The three oscillators in this bass synth VST have their own filter rows routed to a versatile selection of effects, and you can enhance the sound with modulation and make it as simple or complicated as you like.
In fact, Monoplugs Monique was primarily made for creating aggressive basslines and heavy 808s. It features so much detail, and virtual instruments and soft synths with this amount of detail tend to be fairly pricy – but Monoplugs Monique is completely free!
Consequently, you can design superior bass sounds with all the complexities and character you desire without spending a penny. And Monique even offers an onboard arpeggiator so you can create more melodic basslines easily.
5. Heavyocity – Scoring Bass
Heavyocity’s Scoring Bass VST instrument is every film composer’s dream software instrument. It offers a huge array of sampled bass guitars, a number of loops, and along with 3 playable bass guitars including a Warwick, a Ken Smith, and a Sire.
All in all, the content library offers you a variety of useful bass-rich sounds. With almost 6GB of samples, Scoring Bass uses the same user interface as the Gravity pack by the developer. That said, you don’t need to own the original library of the Gravity pack, so the bass VST plugin will work with both the free or full version of Kontakt 6 or higher.
A number of snapshots demonstrate a set of presets that show off the individual basses or blends of all three. Further, the presets give you the option of various processing options. More on effects, the user interface gives you a variety of effects that let you adjust the sound of the instrument to your own taste.
6. Steinberg – Model E
Next, we have another analog bass plugin with three oscillators, a total of six waveforms, a noise generator, and two envelope generators.
Steinberg’s Model E is a powerful soft synth that offers a huge bass sound. It offers three oscillators in addition to a noise generator, neat filter modulation with 2 & 4-pole low-pass filters, and assignable velocity routing.
These tools allow you to create a variety of analog bass sounds, and its huge selection of presets will show you what it can really do. Further, it has 6 waveforms per oscillator, the LFO frequency is assignable to the tempo of your DAW project, and key tracking and glide settings allow you to create expressive basses – even in mono mode.
Finally, Steinberg Model E won’t swallow your processing power either.
7. u-he – Tyrrell N6
The final VST on our list is Tyrrell N6. This synth offers over 580 presets explosive presets, and it’s one of the most popular free synth plugin VSTs you’ll come across.
Our final bass VST offers two oscillators with sawtooth, square, and triangle waveforms with an additional noise generator. Further, you’ll have two multi-mode filters to play with that offer low-pass, high-pass, and band-pass modes.
Then you have three envelopes that let you adjust the signal amplitude, filter, and pitch. Though it’s a pretty simple synth, it’s more powerful than you’d think.
For example, you’ll also have a ring modulator to play with to create some pretty complex tones. And two LFOs with 8 waveforms let you apply various amounts of modulation to your signal. Then, you have an audio source mixer with authentic overdrive and filter feedback!
Okay, so Tyrell N6 isn’t a bass synth – but it is more than capable of creating huge bass sounds. The presets alone demonstrate the low-end power and warm analog sound of this synth.