GForce Novation Bass Station

Now a classic in its own right, Novation’s Bass Station gets the GForce treatment.

Back in the early ’00s, Novation’s ‘Virtual BassStation’ was considered by Sound On Sound to be “A stable, fine‑sounding software emulation”. However, all memory of that has been purged to make space for GForce’s definitive take on the Bass Station.

Station To Station

So, 22 years on, what’s changed? Well, it looks great. It’s a lot less distorted than the earlier one and feels much more comfortable in its skin. Compared to the hardware, they’ve added an extra octave to the keyboard, but that balances out once you add the extra modulation and effects section above the main controls to form the familiar Bass Station shape. There’s a very funky oscilloscope, and overall you get lots of lovely nostalgic Bass Station vibes.

It’s no surprise, given GForce’s track record, that it sounds marvellous, although perhaps a lot more epic than it should. It might have been nice to have a ‘Pure Bass Station’ preset category that gives you the original sound unfettered by all the fabulous modern updates. For that I guess we can start with an ‘Init Patch’.

The basic patch gives you a slightly detuned dual sawtooth, and from there you can explore everything the original Bass Station had to offer. This is made easier because all the doubled‑up controls, like oscillator modulation and envelopes, have been expanded to fill their own space. Without all the extras, it initially feels underwhelming in its dry simplicity, but as you tweak and pull on the filter, it starts to open up into the great‑sounding little synth that it is.

Sequencing

A switch above the keyboard replaces the keys with a detailed sequencer panel and arpeggiator. The arp is super simple with a handful of modes, octave range, swing, rate and a useful probability knob. With the sequencer, you have 16 monophonic steps with accent, slide probability and velocity for each. The pitch is shown as a grid of 12 notes combined with an octave setting. So your sequence always appears within those 12 notes, but the notes themselves could be octaves apart. The octave selection on the first note seems to transpose the entire sequence and is upside down for reasons I can’t explain. However, it’s brilliantly easy to program, has cool randomised generation of notes, length and velocity, scales for instant melodies, and you can step‑record. It’s the perfect way to get your acid on.

A second page reveals a cunning Macro sequencer where you can program per‑step values of the two macro knobs. The macros can be mapped and scaled to as many controls as you like. They are fantastic for pulling off radical changes with a single flick of your mouse or MIDI controller. I’d love to see the mapped knobs move in response, but apparently that’s not a thing. The macro knobs are also present and helpfully labelled in the preset browser, which is handy for auditioning sounds. Oddly, the labels are not carried through to the main page.

Extras

Along the top, we have a row of modulation and effects. The XLFO and XADSR let you map modulation to any selected parameter. You have multiple LFO waveforms, and control over the delay, sample & hold, smoothness and phase. There’s a little display showing the modulation output, and you can copy modulations from one parameter to another. You can modulate everything independently, giving the Bass Station enormous movement and possibility. While there are useful visual clues to what’s being modulated, I would really appreciate a bit of knob animation.

The effects offer a really decent level of excitement, depth, change and placement. The distortion lands just right for those ripping bass lines, the chorus fattens things up nicely, and the delay and reverb throw the sound out into the wilds with the right amount of presence. There’s even a high‑pass filter for those people who don’t think low‑pass filters are all you need.

Polyphony is not really what you look for when approaching a Bass Station but by golly does it add a whole new dimension.

Polyphony is not really what you look for when approaching a Bass Station but by golly does it add a whole new dimension. It becomes more Juno‑like if you turn up the Vintage knob and more Peak‑like as you lean into the effects. This is where all the modulation possibilities are given space to breathe, and it’s a lovely place to spend some time.