What is the best way to get electronic "distortion?"

[Incinerator Drone]

Basically I'm doing an electronic project with a huge rock/hardcore edge to it. And the moment I'm getting some decent fuzz sounds by applying BOSS overdrive effects (SD-1, etc.) to a bass VST. However I want to get a more "guitarish" feel, and all of the guitar VSTs I know of sound kind of crappy.

Even with bass there is probably something better to use than an overdrive pedal.

Anyone know any good ways to emulate guitar-ish distortion outside of recording actual guitars? Or any interesting ways to get to a cool distorted sound, doesn't even necessarily have to be guitar based.

[Dj Mokram]

Guitar Rig isn't too bad when it comes to fuzz & distortion, even for bass.

The basic overdrive effect tend to try to render an electric guitar effect,

so it may not be as convincing for say, an electronic bass or a synth either.

Try this:

-Mixdown your guitar/bass part, import it in your wave editor, and use distortion plugin on the part.

-Then pass it through a noisegate to add grain while avoiding sound saturation.

-Finally add a phaser filter on top, and normalize the average rms to -16dB.

I get a really nice fuzz sound, free of clipping by doing that.

Hope that helps.

[LuketheXjesse]

Sixto's got some good guitar VSTs here, if you're interested. I use KeFir in my rock recordings.

[James_The_Composer]

I think that loads of things will work, but most important is variation in each instrument.

Like dead notes, slides, etc... for any instrument will add a genuine quality that will beat high quality yet same samples I think. It's also really easy to play once you've created a custom patch in your sampler.