Waves Maserati B72 Bass Phattener

Tony Maserati is one of the kings when it comes to things like R&B and pop music. He's helped produce and engineer stuff from Destiny's Child to Tupac, and he knows this genre inside and out. Considering how famous he is, it's no wonder he got his own signature plugins. This one is for the bass buss. To use this, simply enable it on your bass buss inside of your DAW, and you're good to go. The plugin itself is laid out in a very easy to utilize manner, so there should be no issues when it comes time to use this. The plugin has knobs for sensitivity, bass, treble, output, fx, tone and fx out. There are also buttons to select between different settings and whatnot.

SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE

Waves is, by far, one of the best software companies out there when it comes to things like performance and stability. First of all, this plugin is cross platform compatible. That means that nearly anybody can use this without any issues. As a Mac user, that's a huge plus for me. The plugin itself is rock solid, and I've never experienced a single crash directly related to utilizing this plugin inside of my DAW. There is one one issue that I did experience, and it's why I rated it a 9 instead of a 10. This plugin is a 32 bit plugin inside of OS X. Today, we're mostly living in a 64 bit world. For Logic Pro to utilize this plugin, it needs to run a special bridge application so I can have my higher RAM limit inside the actual DAW. I realize that the plugin is kinda old, but I'm hoping Waves will update this for 64 bit operation in future updates. I've been using the Mercury bundle for the past half a year or so, and it's been a wonderful experience.

OVERALL OPINION

Bass doesn't usually need a ton of attention compared to, say, drums. However, it's very easy for bass to totally destroy a mix if you don't know what you're doing. I find that a heavy hi-pass and lo-pass filter to solidify where the bass will sit tends to work the best. This plugin has helped me in a few ways for rock productions, but I wouldn't really use this on a metal mix. Worth checking out for sure, though.

The Waves Ltd. Maserati B72 Bass Phattener is a unique bass enhancer plug-in that is part of the Tony Maserati Collection of plug-ins. It isn't available as an individual plug-in as you can only get it within this bundle. I didn't have any issues installing this bundle, as I did so when I installed all of the other Waves plug-ins in the Complete bundle. As far as the make up of the interface is concerned, it's pretty easy to follow but this isn't your typical processor so it did take me a bit to get used to how each of the parameters will affect your sound. These parameters include sensitivity, bass, treble, output, and an FX mixing section. It also has two different modes for either DI (direct input) or synth. Those are the parameters at hand, so a manual shouldn't be necessary - just practice with it for a little bit and you should be good to go!

SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE

I'm currently running the Waves Ltd. Maserati B72 Bass Phattener and the entire Waves collection of plug-ins on my Mac Book Pro computer and in Pro Tools LE 8. The computer has a 2.2 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 4 GB of RAM, while I run Pro Tools with a Digi 002R audio interface. I've only had a need to run this on one or two bass tracks at a time within a standard session, and it hasn't even come close to taxing my system enough to affect it.

OVERALL OPINION

The Waves Ltd. Maserati B72 Bass Phattener is overall a really awesome plug-in to have around. It is kind of like a beefed up Renaissance Bass, which is one of my favorite plug-ins for fattening up bass. It's got the same sort of effect but there's a bit more that you can do with it. It definitely does as advertised, as it's perfect for juicing up your sound a bit. I've only used the plug-in to date on bass guitar, but being that it has a synth mode it would be cool to try it on a synth bass sometime as well. The Maserati Collection is overall a very impressive bundle, so if you're interested in the Bass Phattener I'd definitely recommend checking out the full bundle as it's the only way you can this one...