Bassbox guide · PJ Herman

Getting started

Pick a starting point

Step through presets with the arrows at the top, or use the Bass Builder: one click per row (Body, Character, Shape, Movement, Space). Each choice sets a group of knobs and tells you what it did.

Play it

From FL's piano roll, the keys on screen, or your computer keyboard (Z S X D C… and Q 2 W 3 E…).

Ride the macros

Six big knobs do most of the work: WEIGHT, GRIT, GROWL, PUNCH, MOVE and SPACE. All automatable; the mod wheel rides MOVE.

Roll the dice

Bass dice makes a properly different bass every time, keeping your pitch, voice mode and loudness. Reload the preset to go back.

Drag it into FL

Drag the waveform at the bottom right into the playlist, Channel Rack or a sampler: a single note or a seamless 1, 2 or 4 bar loop.

The interface

How the sound is built:

Sub + OscPitch & ampFilterGritMoveMix

The sub skips the filter and the grit, so the low end stays clean however dirty the top gets.

Shape tab: the Gate x8 curve, looped and synced to tempo, turns one held note into a gated bass.

Bass Builder

The guided panel on the left. Hide it with the Builder button for more room.

Body / Character / Shape / Movement / Space: Five rows, one choice each. Each choice sets a group of knobs and explains what changed.

Sub & Osc

Sub: A clean sine at the note or an octave down. Sub shape adds warmth you can hear on small speakers.
Osc: Wave morph from sine to square, octave, 1 to 7 detuned unison voices, FM with a pluck, and filtered noise.

Pitch & Amp

Pitch / Fine: Tune the whole bass up to two octaves either way.
Pitch drop / Glide: A quick pitch drop at the start of each note, and sliding between notes.
Mono / Legato / Poly: One note at a time, sliding notes, or chords.
ADSR / Drift: Attack, decay, sustain, release, and a little analog wobble.

Shape tab

Level shape: The volume follows the curve you draw. Drag the gold handle to set the note length; Sync snaps it to beats.
Loop: Repeats the shape while you hold the key: gates, stutters and wobbles from one note.
Pitch / Cutoff shapes: Bend the note or open the filter over time. Depth sets the range.
Shapes menu: Ready-made curves: Pluck, Hold, Punch, Swell, Drop, Gate x4 and x8, Stutter, Wobble and more.

Filter & Grit

Filter: Two ladder types, SVF or band-pass, with resonance, drive, envelope and keytracking.
Grit: Tape, tube, fuzz, fold or rectify drive, level-matched, plus bit and sample-rate crush.
Clean below: Frequencies under this point skip the grit, so the sub survives.

Move & Mix

LFO: Tempo-synced, 1/16 to 4 bars, to cutoff, wave, pitch and level.
Duck: Pumps on every beat in time with FL. No sidechain routing needed.
Width / Room / Mono below / Glue: Stereo and a dark room on the top only, a mono low end for clubs, and gentle compression.

Drag & export

Bottom right of the window.

Single note: One note held for 1/16 to 4 bars, plus its natural release.
Patterns: Offbeat 8ths, Rolling 16ths, Gallop, Dub stab or Drone as a seamless loop at your project tempo.
Drag 12 notes: One file per note of the octave, for samplers.
Orange dot: The note on the keyboard that gets rendered. It follows the last key you play.

Hover any control in the plugin and the bar at the bottom explains it. The ? button opens the built-in help.

Settings

Under the gear icon. They apply to every copy of the plugin on your computer.

Interface size / Hover hints	75% to 150%, and the explanation bar at the bottom.
Polyphony / Pitch bend / Velocity	Voices in Poly mode, bend range and how much velocity matters.
Mod wheel controls	MOVE, GROWL or GRIT, or the filter cutoff.
CPU saver	Caps unison at 3 voices.
Export folder / format / Normalize	Where dragged files go, sample rate, bit depth and peak level.
Include Duck / Tempo in file names	Bake the beat pump into WAVs, and add the BPM to file names.

Tips

Shows up as “Bass Box” in FL's plugin list.

All factory presets are level-matched, so switching doesn't jump in volume. Hold one note on Tar Stutter or Gated Night to hear a drawn shape.

Dragged files are never overwritten: if the sound changed you get _v2, _v3 and so on.

Uses FL's note names: C5 is middle C, C2 is about 33 Hz. Play low, around C1 to C2, for the deepest sub.

Install

Copy

Unzip the download and copy the .vst3 folder to C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3\. Replace the old one when you update.

Scan

In FL Studio open Options › Manage plugins and click Find installed plugins. Tick Bass Box so it shows in your list, then add it to the Channel Rack.

Windows warning

The files aren't code signed yet, so Windows may say “unknown publisher”. Click More info, then Run anyway.