An immaculate virtual model of the boutique LeFay Herr Schwarz bass guitar, sampled by Simon Grove (Plini).
- Transform MIDI into a realistic bass performance.
- Hear it in action
GroveBass
Late 2021 marked our collaboration with Plini’s virtuosic bassist, Simon Grove, leading to both our first signature virtual bass, as well as the birth of the renowned truBass technology - taking sampling to a whole new level.
GroveBass is a meticulous virtual recreation of Simon’s LeFay Herr Schwarz bass, as heard on innumerable Plini records.
With its signature punchy, round tone, and Simon’s renowned fingerstyle technique, GroveBass remains one of our most unique sounding virtual basses.
With a tone that’s equally at home on chill progressive rock as it is on heavy metal, GroveBass is a true versatile workhorse. A sound very much in the ‘classic’ ethos of production, where the bass was intended to support and augment guitars, rather than step on top of them.
The Herr Schwarz’s aggressive preamp in concert with Simon’s punchy playing style creates an exceptionally dynamically-controlled, professional basis for your low-end.
Tones
Our design ethos behind GroveBass is to channel Simon’s distinctive sound as authentically as possible. A veritable studio engineer in his own right, Simon has included 5 different tones:
DI: The raw sound of the instrument, captured directly via high end, studio-grade recording hardware. Process as you would any other bass - using your favourite plugins, pedals or amps. This allows ultimate flexibility; mix the bass on your own terms.
CLN: ‘The’ sound you associate with Plini’s records. Pristinely faithful to the timbre of the Herr Schwarz, the clean sound is a beautifully airy representation of the bass.
OD: Opening up the punch in the midrange, the OD sound is great for pairing with distorted guitars, or kicking the tone up a level into choruses. The Herr Schwarz’s rounded midrange never steps over your mix.
DIST: Like OD, but extra. We give the midrange more texture and gain for those times your desired flavor is decidedly more ‘hard rock’ or ‘heavy metal’.
LEAD: An exceptionally unique tone crafted purposefully for lead playing passages.
As always, for your convenience our tones come premixed for your convenience - so you can get to the art of being creative.
The Drive, Tone, Compression and Girth controls further allow you to perfectly match the bass to your music.
Features
GroveBass is a meticulously sampled virtual model of the LeFay Herr Schwarz 5, sampled by Simon Grove (Plini).
The tuning range
The tuning range of GroveBass is C0 up to D4. It’s been tuned perfectly across the entire note range, so it can act as a tuning reference whenever you’re recording guitars.
The DOOM button
Intentionally shrinks the round robin, giving you the most powerful, direct samples for reduced realism and greater consistency - for those times where variance is undesirable.
Humanize
The Humanization control injects natural variance into the playback, for adjustable realism.
The Position control is a convenient way to select where on the virtual fretboard you’d like the performance to take place.
For absolute control, our Force String articulation can select exactly which string each note is performed on, giving you the ability to tonally match your guitar riffs 1 to 1.
Use the Configuration menu to rebind keyswitches, set the tuning of the bass, and adjust the pitch bend range for ultimate customization to your personal workflow.
Native Instruments - Kontakt
As an official Native Instruments partner, UmanskyBass runs in the industry standard free Kontakt Player, meaning you don’t have to worry about any additional hidden costs.
Kontakt is the most widely used and widely compatible sampler in the industry, meaning there is a robust team of professionals available to make it work perfectly for you.
truBass Technology
Based on our next generation truBass technology, GroveBass features a ridiculously robust collection of articulations, including: Finger Picking, Ghost Notes, Slap Bass, Natural Harmonics, Hammer On/Pull Off, Tapping, truSlides & various mutes.
Multi-Sampling
The entire fretboard of the instrument is multi-sampled so that your virtual riffs sound exactly as intended. Ie. Playing an open D string sounds vastly different to playing that same D note on the B-string.
truSlides
Our truSlide algorithm can slide from any note on the virtual fretboard, to any other note, at whatever speed or velocity curve you desire, to perfectly match the slides of your real guitars.
Intelligent Alternate Picking
Our proprietary tempo-synced alternate picking algorithm has a robust round robin that never sounds like samples are repeating, no matter the speed of your music.
Packet fresh’ tone
GroveBass was sampled with brand new steel strings, meaning that you always get that lovely ‘packet fresh’ tone, with no wear down. The average professional bass recording session often costs several times the price of GroveBass in string packets alone.
Hear it in action
Testimonials
Plini
Plini
“I've spent hours over the years listening to the unique sound of Simon's bass & hands in my ears, both on tour & in the studio. Having that sound flawlessly replicated in a plugin, and hearing it come out of my speakers, playing whatever I tell it to via MIDI, is absolutely surreal. SubMission Audio & Simon knocked it out of the park with GroveBass. Was nice knowing ya, flesh-Simo!”
Misha Mansoor
Periphery
“Simon Grove is a force of nature on bass, both in style and tone. The ability to have his sound and talent readily accessible and on demand, is nothing short of a gift. So if you are a fan of good low end and you want to improve your mixes, GroveBass is a worthy addition to the collection!”
Simon Grove
Plini, Intervals, Protest The Hero
“A ridiculous amount of time went into capturing the sound of every fret of every single string in different tunings, multiple times, played by different picking fingers... After all that even just the programming logic of GroveBass is insane... I cannot wait for people to check it out, and I look forward to seeing what they can do with it.”
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