Novation Bass Station II

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Novation Bass Station II Analog Synthesizer

Reimagining Novation's classic analogue monosynth for the new generation of electronic musicians, Bass Station II enhances and improves on the original in every area. Packing two oscillators (plus a sub-oscillator and noise generator), a multimode filter, amp and filter modulation, step sequencing and an arpeggiator, Bass Station II gives you everything you need to easily sculpt bleeding-edge basses, leads, pads and FX. 64 factory presets, 64 user slots and downloadable artist-created patches help to keep you inspired, with intuitively arranged controls and full sized 25-note keyboard to make it quick and easy to make Bass Station II your own.

Much More Than Bass

Equally at home on stage and in the studio, Bass Station II can sound as warm and mellow or aggressive and hard as you want it to. Modulate the filter to make it sing, crank the distortion to toughen up that bass, and push the resonance to self-oscillation to get those lead lines screaming.
Featuring two tuneable oscillators, a sub-oscillator for enhancing the all-important low end, plus noise and ring modulation, Bass Station II more than delivers when it comes to generating raw tones. It's also got two distinct analogue filter types – the Classic multi-mode filter of the original Bass Station and the all-new 24dB/octave Acid filter, with its darker, smoother sound – and plenty of modulation in the shape of two LFOs and a pair of ADSR envelopes.

Easy Controls for Complex Design

Bass Station II puts a powerful collection of controls at your fingertips, so you can totally lose yourself in discovering and creating new sounds. Of course, Novation have laid those controls out in the clearest and most useful way possible, to keep your sound design workflow fluid and fun.

Save and Load Patches

Bass Station II comes loaded with 64 diverse presets designed to showcase its incredible sonic flexibility. Visit the Novation website to download new artist patches to keep you inspired, and create your own sounds from scratch and save them in one of the 64 user preset slots. A free software librarian lets to manage your Bass Station II’s patches.

Instant Inspiration

When you need instant melodic inspiration, Bass Station II's pattern-based arpeggiator and step sequencer are ready to roll. Record your own patterns into the sequencer in real time, then store them for use with any patch. Sequences and arpeggios automatically sync to your connected music software or MIDI hardware, and swing can be dialled in when you really want to get your groove on.

Connect to Just About Anything

Being a class compliant USB device, you can plug Bass Station II into any Mac, PC or USB power supply and start playing. It also has MIDI I/O on 5-pin DIN ports, for hook-up to other MIDI gear, and you can even connect an external instrument and run it through Bass Station II's analogue filter and effects.

Paraphonic mode

Bass Station II is now a paraphonic monosynth, because you can control the pitches of each of the two oscillators separately in its single-voice architecture. Play two notes at a time rather than just one and get interesting interactions through the Ring and Filter Mod.

Components

The Components content manager allows you to backup and restore your patches and other content from your Bass Station II. It's available for free at components.novationmusic.com, perfect for free updates. Simply log in and connect your Bass Station II to your Mac® or PC running Chrome™ or Components Standalone.

AFX Mode

Electronic music legend Richard James, aka Aphex Twin, has already played an instrumental part in the Bass Station II story, having provided guidance for the implementation of the micro-tuning added with Firmware v2.5. His conceptual contribution to v4.14 is even more profound, however – hence the version number and release date, which pays homage to the Aphex Twin track ‘Avril 14th’.
Letting his imagination run riot, Richard envisioned the decidedly radical notion of having a discrete set of synthesis parameters assigned to each note of Bass Station II, either variations on a ‘seed’ patch, or disparate sounds designed to constitute a chimeric whole. Although this sort of thing could already be kludged using very fast program change messages, having multiple sounds active at the same time would clearly be a far more creative and efficient system.
AFX Mode is the realisation of Richard’s out-there concept. Put simply, it lets you modify your Bass Station II patch on a key-by-key basis. Use it to introduce subtle changes to a sound as you play up and down the keyboard; divide the keyboard into multiple zones (one per key if you like!), each playing its own sound; or create entire drum kits in a single preset for triggering manually or via the Arpeggiator. It’s a truly inspiring feature that really does open up a whole new world of sound design and performance possibilities.

Enjoy three years of warranty

Wherever you happen to be in the world, you can rely on a three-year warranty if any Novation hardware needs repairing or replacing due to a manufacturing fault. Novation will send you replacement gear in the UK and the US, and they’ll cover the shipping costs both ways. In the UK, they'll send you a replacement before you return your hardware to them.