Toontrack EBX: Heavy Metal

The Heavy Artillery

Bass, presets, and MIDI - all tailored for timeless heavy metal perfection.

Any heavy metal arsenal needs a proper power tool for when things are about to get rough - that lead-heavy, wrecking ball-like piece you wheel in when your mix calls for a tone that's straight-out-of-the-furnace molten hot. This is it.

The Heavy Metal EBX comes with a modern-day bass, handpicked for its ability to muster tones to span the entire gamut of heavy metal - from its formative 1970s, through the new wave of British heavy metal and up until today. In addition to the sounds, the Heavy Metal EBX also includes a custom MIDI library as well as a collection of presets offering tones tailored for anything from classically muffled, warm, and round to modernly bright, edgy, and distorted.

If you're looking for an instrument that offers extreme heavy metal firepower, you've got it.

Features

• A meticulously captured modern-day high-end bass
• Inspired by anything from Judas Priest and Iron Maiden to Pantera and Five Finger Death Punch
• Sampled with finger and pick options as well as a broad set of articulations for both
• Includes a wealth of presets for a wide range of heavy metal-inspired tones - from muffled, warm and round to bright, edgy, and distorted
• Comes with a Clean DI (direct input) preset option for easy external processing
• Includes a custom MIDI library inspired by classic and modern heavy metal

The Instrument

50 years of heavy metal, distilled into one bass guitar to rule them all.

When the Toontrack sound design team had their eyes set on a bass with its roots in traditional heavy metal but that still offered the detail, the clarity and the articulate expression of a modern instrument, whittling down the choices to one winning ticket ended up being fairly simple: Ian Hill’s (Judas Priest) limited edition, signature Spector Euro4. This bass was designed to celebrate the band’s five decades at the pantheon of metal and has all the traits of a classic '80s-era Spector - the solid maple body wings, the three-piece maple neck and the rosewood fingerboard - but also offers tons of features that takes it into the new millennium and beyond. One of the standout details of the lot is the onboard TonePump, an active preamp with an internal boost trim pot. The specifics of the circuitry in this preamp offers lots of tube-like characteristics, enabling you to really crank the output of the bass without the tone cracking up - it just gets warmer, beefier, and frankly, more heavy metal.

The Sounds & Articulations

The Heavy Metal EBX was sampled with both finger and pick articulations, allowing you to get a traditional and rounder stroke at the same time as you'll have the option of a more metallic and edgy approach. As for range, with a reach all the way down from A0 up to E4, you'll be able to create nuanced performances for any imaginable riff that comes to mind.

The Presets

While this EBX is rooted in the tones of the formative first couple of decades of heavy metal, it also offers an outlook on the genre’s reach into today. So, regardless of whether you are looking for a classic new wave of British heavy metal tone or something more apt for this side of the millennium, the included library of presets has the tones you need to complement even most dense wall of guitars or cut through in any layered production. Add to that the ability to use the DI (direct input) and Multi-Out options to process your tones externally and you'll have endless options to shape stadium-size heavy metal bass tones.

The MIDI

The included MIDI library covers riff-heavy material where there is no mistaking that the bass has a prominent role. Expect anything from old-school, late 1970s vibes and big 1980s-style riffs to more modern-sounding heavy metal of the past two decades. This collection of MIDI in conjunction with the onboard MIDI features in EZbass will have you producing ground-shattering material in no time.