 In my opinion this is easily the best free bass VST you can get and this is just the default sound. But the Clutort makes this free bass better than others and more versatile than a real bass is in its name, Modo Bass 2. Hi folks, I'm Mike and I hope you're well. That's a bold claim isn't it? More versatile than a real bass. I'll be trying to justify that claim later as well as looking at the differences between this free VST and the paid versions. But let's dive in and find out why I reckon this is easily the best free bass VST. Now our first clue as to the versatility of this instrument is right here on the front page where we can move our virtual playing position. That would be our right hand which we can move down here towards the bridge and get a more harsh tone or up here towards the neck and get a more mellow tone just like you do on a real bass guitar. Now the change is subtle but you should be able to hear it. Let's just have a quick listen now. And this is just one of many changes that we can make to this instrument and I can promise you many of them are much more obvious than this one. Now that means that even though we just have one instrument with this free version, the 60s P bass, based on one of the most popular bass guitars of all time, we do get an enormous range of sound and that's made possible by the fact that this is a modelled instrument. I said the clue is in the name Modo Bass 2. Unlike other instruments which are generally sampled instruments, we can easily change the sound of this instrument on the fly. Now sampled instruments of course are actual recordings of a real bass guitar. So in that sense they're very, very authentic but they're not very versatile because you're kind of stuck with the sound of that sample. Modelled instruments on the other hand work from the ground up. The plugin itself actually creates the sound. That means we can apply the physics of the instrument and change the sound. So things like the playing position but many other things as well and that's what we're going to take a look at now. Now one of the ways we can drastically change the sound of a real bass guitar is the way that we play it. Either using our fingers or using a pick or a plectrum or slapping it and we've got those options available here in Modo Bass 2. Let's just have a quick listen to those three now. Now I'm changing them here using the mouse on the interface but you can actually change them in real time while you're playing on your keyboard. Now we get a clue to that down at the bottom left here if we click on this keyboard symbol. That shows our keyboard. Now the white notes are the actual notes that are being played and the yellow ones are key switches. These are special keys set aside to change the sound of the instrument in some way. And you can see on these keys C sharp, D sharp and on F sharp here we can change the actual sound of the bass guitar or the playing style. Let's do that again using key switches. So we can just like a real bass guitar change it on the fly. Now one of the other ways that we can change the sound here on this play style is with muting. So we can gradually mute the strings more and more. This is something we really commonly do on a bass guitar. Let's have a listen. Now those are the more common ways that we can change the sound. I'm not going to go through all of the controls here but you can see just like a real bass we can change the sound of the instrument by the way that we're playing. Now one of the things that really changes the sound of a bass guitar are the strings and the string configuration. And even in this free version we have lots of options available here to change that. But I must point out there is one thing that we can't change. In the full version you can change this bass from a fretted bass guitar to a fretless bass. We don't have that option in the free version but let's face it for 99.9% of the time we are using a fretted bass guitar. But we can change a number of other things including the number of strings. So normally we have four strings on a bass guitar. We can change it to a five string bass just like that or a six string bass as well. So we get a much broader range of notes available to us there. Talking about ranges of notes we can also switch this to a dropped D tuning. That means the lowest or the lowest in pitch string, the E string can be dropped down to a D. Now that's significant because that means that that D note is an open string which has a different sound to a fretted string. The E now will be a fretted rather than an open sound. So the tone of the string or those notes does actually change so that's important. We can also change the action or how high the strings are from the frets or sorry from the body or from the pickups. We can also change the type of string round wound or flat wound. Let's have a listen to the differences between those two. Start off with a flat wound and round wound. We've got options like the gauge of string, medium, heavy or light. That's the thickness if you're not a player. Then we have the age of the strings. They're set by default to broken in. We can change them to old or we can have brand new strings. All of these things change the tone of the instrument. I just think it's amazing with a free instrument like this that we get so much control in this way. Now with this free version of Modo Bass 2 we just get one type of pickup, the 60s PSC. And it's placed here in the middle of the instrument. However we can move it around so we can drag it down here towards the bridge or up here towards the neck. And that makes a big difference to the sound of the bass. Let's have a listen to it up here near the neck. And then down here near the bridge. Now not only can we move them to different positions but we can also add a second set. We can move that up here on the left hand side to switch them on. And we can see a second set which we can also move around to different positions. And then we can blend the sound of those two together using the volume controls up here. In addition to that we can also blend in a piezo pickup. You can see the control for that up here. Now that's the type of pickup which is normally down here under the bridge. So we really do get an enormous range of sounds just with the pickups added to that. We can choose passive or active surgery and then we get tone controls here associated with those types of circuitry. Now when you think about this the fact that we can move these pickups around and instantly get a different sound to the bass guitar means this is really much more versatile in some ways than a real bass guitar. You can do these things on a real bass guitar but you're going to have to get a screwdriver out. Some other carpentry tools moving around. It's going to take time. You could damage things along the way, I don't know. But you can see here why I say that in some ways this virtual instrument is more versatile than a real bass guitar. So all of the changes we've made so far have been to the instrument itself. But we can further modify the sound by going over to the studio tab to make changes to the amplification and use of pedals. So we've got a couple of different amps included here. We've got this solid state one which we've been listening to so far and it sounds like this. And we also have a tube amp which sounds like this. And you can see that as we move between the two then the controls at the top change accordingly for those different amps. We also have four pedals in use at the bottom here. So I'll click on the first one of those. You can see they appear up here on the left hand side. And we've got four loaded up those being a compressor, a graphic equalizer, an octave pedal and an envelope or envelope filter. But we can swap these out for even more pedals. So for example, I'll swap this last one out for a chorus pedal and I'll switch that on. You can see we get controls at the top again which relate to that specific pedal. We'll have a listen to that one. So even in this free version of the plugin we get all of these choices amazing. Now throughout this video we've been listening to demos made from patterns included with this free version of the plugin. And there's a nice selection to kind of get you started. Things like the one we've just been listening to here. I've got it clicked on. We can press play at the bottom here to listen. And another variation here verse two. Let's have a listen to that. Now as well as being sort of played from within the plugin itself, we can actually drag these out to our door and use them and adapt them there. Now you do get a reasonably limited selection with this free version. However, with the full versions or the paid versions of this plugin you do get a lot more. Let's talk about those paid versions now. So apart from the free version, we also have a couple of paid versions available for Modo Bass 2. And I'm going to invite you to follow the link in the description down below to find out about the differences between these versions. But what I have loaded up here is the full version with everything available that you can get. Now I did mention earlier one of the differences is with the patterns. You get a lot of different patterns with these paid versions and you can see there's many different genres. There's different sections of songs. There's different play styles, etc. So I've got one loaded up here, which I'm going to be using for the rest of this demo. Another thing I mentioned earlier was in the string section where even with this free version, we can now select it to be fretless rather than just fretted. So with a fretted bass guitar, we sort of get this sound. If I change it to fretless, you can hear that difference in tone. There's less attack and you get that sort of nice change in the tail end of the note as well. But of course, it's when we bend the notes where we hear the difference mostly between fretted and fretless. So with the fretted version, when I use the pitch wheel to bend a note, we can actually hear the frets being slid over, which incidentally is a touch you don't always get on these virtual bass guitar instruments. So that is a nice touch. But if we then move to the fretless version, then it changes much more smoothly. So it's nice that we do have that available. I'll go back to fretted for the rest of this. Now the next major thing that you're going to notice is probably the most major thing is the different models of bass guitar available. I'll click on the model tab here. You can see a whole bunch of electric ones, some acoustic ones there. And there's just many, many available, a nice rick and back there, which I like. So let's have a listen to a few of the different electric models available. We'll start off with that 60s P bass and we'll change to some different things. So there's enormous range in sounds, obviously reflecting the character of the different bass guitars you can get hold of in real life. Now, because we've now got different bass guitars, that means in the electronic section, we also have some different pickups available to us. As I said, I've got the full selection here. So you can see the enormous selection of pickups. Now what's interesting about this is not only do we then have the pickups which are normally associated with this particular bass guitar, but we can mix and match with different pickups. So I can change this one from an F-Jazz to let's go to a punk there. We can mix them up, move them around and obviously change the balance between them as well. So this means you can really craft your own instrument in actual fact. So that's very, very interesting indeed. Now, of course, one of the types of instruments which doesn't have a pickup are acoustic basses. So I'll go back to the models here and we'll go to this studio upright. We have the studio upright and a rockabilly bass as well, obviously different characters for those. Let's have a listen. Now, although they don't have electronics as such, we can still mic them up so they can be put through the amplifiers. So that means with these acoustic basses, instead of having an electronic section, we have a mic section. And then if we go there, you can see that we can swap out the main condenser. Condenser 87 there, for example, for this 414 and ribbon mic. So if you're familiar with some of the most famous mics in the world, you'll know those three are some of the most famous mics in the world. So again, that can change the tone of the instrument. So I mean, I haven't hardly demonstrated it here, but with this full version, with all of these different bass guitars, you get an enormous range of sounds for bass guitar, probably everything you'll ever want from a virtual bass instrument. Surely this must be the best free bass VST around. Let me know what you think in the comments down below. Are you going to be downloading and using this? Are you tempted into the full version? I'd love to hear from you about that. Now that you've got some free bass guitar, you'll be wanting some free drums to go along with it. So I reckon you should watch this video right here to find out all about that.