Box of Bass 1.2: You Said Too Dark. We Measured. You Were Right.
A Reddit commenter listened to the default patch and said it sounded like a tone knob rolled to zero. That stung, so I measured it. They were right: summed against its own lows, the stock stack scoops the mids by around 17 dB. Not broken, it is how those cabs and mics really sum, but if your bass lives in the 600 Hz to 1.5 kHz zone you were fighting the plugin. Box of Bass 1.2 is the fix, and it is still free. Nothing you saved changes: every 1.1 session and preset loads sounding identical, to the sample.
TONE and FEEL: dials on the bass, not the rack
The two new dials sit ahead of everything, so they behave like the controls on the instrument, not another EQ at the end. Both rest at 50, which is exactly the 1.1 sound.
TONE below 50 is a passive tone pot: it rolls the top off before the drive, so the fuzz softens the way it does when you roll down a real pot into a pedal. Above 50 it brightens, with a shelf aimed square at that measured mid scoop. If you agreed with the Reddit comment, this direction is for you.
FEEL is pick versus fingers. I recorded matched pairs of the same lines played both ways on two basses, and the difference turned out to be a consistent, measurable EQ signature. Turn FEEL up and a fingerstyle take leans into pick attack, hitting the drive harder on the way like a real pick does. Turn it down and a pick take relaxes toward fingers. Recorded with the wrong attack for the part? Now that is a dial.
The phase window
Every channel in the rig is a real capture, which means the layers can fight each other in ways you hear but cannot see. The new PHASE window shows every audible channel's true response curve and the phase-true sum, live: the curves glow with your playing as the track runs. One button, OPTIMISE, tries every polarity combination and keeps the one with the most forward mids without trading away the lows. On the stock rig it finds about 2.5 dB of mids that were simply cancelling. That is free tone you already downloaded.
A panel that explains itself
The master bar now reads in three labelled sections: INPUT, DRIVE and OUTPUT. Hover a dial like SATURATE and the channels it actually touches light up, so the routing is never a mystery. Double-click any readout and type an exact value. The DI strip is now called RAW, which is what it always was. Buttons are bigger, the logo sits straight, and Windows finally renders the panel in a decent monospace instead of the chunky default.
Simple by default, if you want it
Some people want the whole rack. Some want a bass that sounds great with five controls. The Windows installer now asks which view new instances should open in, and there is a matching setting under the new cog menu on every platform. Sessions always reopen in whatever view you left them.
Small print, honestly
The usage stats picked up a few new anonymous fields (which view people use, where the new dials sit) and the footer gained a DONATE button that goes to the tip jar. Same rules as always: no personal data, no audio, visible opt-out, and the privacy page describes exactly what is sent.
Get it
Downloads are on the plugin page as ever, newest build always. If 1.2 fixes the darkness for you, or does not, tell me. The last two releases were built almost entirely out of what you sent back.