Neural DSP Darkglass Ultimate review – the best in-box heavy bass tones you can get?
€119, neuraldsp.com
Bass distortion is, famously, difficult. There’s a tightrope walk of pleasingly articulate aggression that hangs over two canyons of failure: sounding like a sub-sonic fart, and sounding like a wasp in a tin can. One of the most sure-fire ways to sound good is to grab literally any Darkglass product, bass preamp/distortion pedals that have long been the go-to for bassists looking to raise any amount of hell.
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On the digital side, Neural DSP has already offered a suite recreating the B7K Ultra and Vintage Ultra pedals – which makes sense, given that Neural founder Doug Castro was also a co-founder of Darkglass. That was Darkglass Ultra – and now for 2026, we have Darkglass Ultimate, an expanded version of the suite.
Image: Press
Neural DSP Darkglass Ultimate – what is it?
The core idea is not particularly new, nor are there any new preamps on offer here. What is new is the more extensive signal chain – where Ultra just had the preamps and speaker simulation, Ultimate adds a set of pre- and post-effects to bring the full signal chain more into line with the rest of the Neural suites. The full signal chain – which will be familiar if you’ve ever used another Neural plugin – now consists of a set of pre-effects, the preamps, speaker simulation, post-EQ and post-effects.
The pre-effects are a pretty standard – but unsurprisingly well-executed – set of virtual pedals. You’ve got a compressor, auto-wah, octaver and a fuzz – each of which with the bass-friendly bells and whistles you’d expect, including a clean blend for the fuzz and compressor. The post-effects aren’t as extensive as some of Neural’s more guitar-focused plugins – there’s only a chorus and a delay, so no reverb here, but that’s not too surprising given its bass focus.
The two preamp pedals simulated are the B7K Ultra and Vintage Ultra. The former is much more in the realm of modern, tight, clanking distortion and bright cleans, while the latter is more rounded and full for the cleans, and has a more old-school approach to its saturation – a little more ragged and tube-like. And finally the cabs – there’s a choice between a 2×10 and an 8-10, for similar applications –one brings a focused sound, the latter brings an excess of weight and impact.
Image: Press
Neural DSP Darkglass Ultimate – usability
Neural has had years to tweak their own take on the ‘virtual gear suite’ format and interface, and its experience in this regard is pretty evident. Everything is exactly where you’d expect it to be, and the virtual gear all presents clearly. There are even tooltips that appear (unobtrusively in the bottom bar) to explain each virtual knob as you mouse over them. Neat!
I’m also happy to see some changes made to how the base suite software is working – you can now lock the output gain and transposition intervals so that when you scroll through presets, you’re not constantly re-adjusting. This isn’t totally new for this plugin, Neural has been doing this for a while – but it’s a welcome result of the upgrade from Ultra to Ultimate. All of the other features of Neural’s full suites – transposition, a tight noise gate, a tuner, a metronome and so on – are also good to see.
Image: Press
Neural DSP Darkglass Ultimate – sounds
So, you may be unsurprised to hear that Darkglass Ultimate sounds pretty damn excellent. The sounds you’d want from a modern bass plugin are all here – all the way through from the glassy, bright cleans to the more chuggy, bright and articulate heavy tones. If you’ve heard a real Darkglass pedal before, you’ll know they have a particular knack for keeping that articulation present while never really undermining their own aggression – this is faithfully recreated here.
The preset library is pretty extensive, mostly thanks to the artist side of things – each one is well-considered and does what it says on the tin, which is ideal for both finding a good sound quickly, and for having a starting point to tweak from. The nature of the two preamps – and not to mention the sheer size of the bucket of positionable mics Neural provides – means that an unbelievable amount of sonic ground is covered, and, to be honest, I couldn’t really find a bad sound within it.
Neural DSP Darkglass Ultimate – should I buy it?
So, is it a totally transformative upgrade? Yes and no – there’s obviously a lot of good things added in terms of sounds and usabilities, but the core appeal remains the excellent simulations of the B7K preamps. So would I recommend grabbing an upgrade if you already own the first version of the plugin? Well, given that Neural has generously made this a free upgrade for people who already own it – absolutely. For everyone else, give the free trial a spin and see how it goes.
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
