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...