Recording Nisko: one thing, all the way down

An envelope made of light

Press a key and a light bulb inside the unit lights up. An optical sensor watches the bulb and turns its glow into the voltage that shapes the note. The decay runs from a note that holds as long as you hold the key to a short, percussive pluck, and every shade between.

An envelope made by a light bulb moves the way a slightly imperfect mechanism moves, never clinical. One Perc knob controls all of it. The other knob sets the volume, doubling as an off switch at the far left. That's all the Basset does. Clearly not an instrument to judge on a value-for-money basis.

Onto tape

I recorded it to a Studer A62 through an all-tube path, committing the character while tracking, the way I always do. The sound was where I wanted it before it reached the tape.

Tape and deep bass don't go that well together. Tape gives up some of the very lowest frequencies, the exact part that separates a good bass sound from a great one. For once, digital would have been the more faithful way to catch the source. But I liked what the tape did to the focus, so I put the bottom back by hand: a 1950s passive Langevin EQ into a Klangfilm mastering EQ (now in Kolor), each leaning on the low end in its own way until the weight came back fuller than it started.

Then the range. Two octaves isn't much to build an instrument on, so I sampled every note twice: at the original speed, and at half speed. Half speed drops the pitch an octave and darkens the texture, so the lowest octaves don't just sit lower, they grow rougher and dirtier. It doubled a short instrument's range and handed the bottom a character the original never had.

I captured it just in time for its last breath. A week later it went to my tech's for a nice comfy stay at the synth spa.

When one kind of dirt is not enough

The Nisko page tells you the F! knob adds dirt. Here's where the dirt comes from. I knew from the start I wanted to let you push it. The only question was where to.

So I ran the instrument through two pieces that complement each other. Soviet LOMO preamps run bright; I've owned a few and they all share that built-in lift, clearly something their designers loved. The Presto, a US-made 1950s tube limiter, sits at the dark, heavy end. One brings the top, the other the weight. All of it deeply sampled, all of it on one knob, so you don't need to think about what's going on behind the scenes. You crank it up and smile. That was the intention, at least.

Everything has its purpose

Software always tempts you to add more: stack a second oscillator, bolt on an echo (on a sub bass?), drop in a chorus (on a sub bass?!), because nothing stops you. Constraint clarifies the vision.

So Nisko keeps the single oscillator. The waveforms sit on individual faders instead of switches, a deviation from the hardware I'm happy to take: the sine is enormous, the saw is gnarly, and their balance gets you a (relatively) wide range of bass textures. Phase sync resets the oscillator on every note, so the punch lands the same wherever in the bar you play it. The distortion is there to cut through. That's most of it.

Synth players know the usual trick: add oscillators to fatten a thin sound. Nisko doesn't need it. It's huge from the first note, the way the Basset always was. And a nice thing about keeping a single oscillator design is that it means the phase stays tight, which is huge for low end bloom.

Hardware is always better?

I think Nisko is better than the Basset itself. Yes, I get it, all plugin developer will tell you this. But hear me out: it sounds just like the Basset it's sampled from, with the processing that takes it from good to great, an the range doubled. These days I reach for it whenever I want a bass that fills the floor of a mix and then steps back, holding everything up without asking for attention.

It does one thing, so the price says so. A great bass should be within anyone's reach.

The Basset came back from my tech a few months later, repaired and working. I haven't reached for it since. The software does everything it did, and the things it never could.

The trial runs on your own tracks, free, with no time limit. Drop it under whatever you're working on, hold a low note, and feel the floor settle. That's the whole instrument.