BassFlex vs Ample Bass

Ample Bass and BassFlex both play a bass from MIDI on Windows, from two directions. Ample Bass is Ample Sound's line of sampled basses, each bought separately: six electric basses, an upright and an acoustic bass guitar, on Windows and Mac. BassFlex is modeled, not sampled: presets for electric, acoustic and upright basses in one program, a download of 24.3 MB, and $79.

What they have in common

• Windows, as a standalone program and as a plugin.
• Electric, upright and acoustic bass guitar. Ample sells each as its own title; BassFlex has presets for all three.
• An amp and cabinets. Ample has three amp heads and cabinets from 1x15 to 8x10. BassFlex has a bass amp and cabinets up to eight 10-inch speakers.

Where Ample Bass stands out

• Mac as well as Windows, with VST3, VST2, AU and AAX plugins.
• Choice of basses. Nine titles, bought one at a time at $119 each ($149 for the upright), with a discount for three or more.
• 13 articulations, including slap, pop, tap, hammer-on, pull-off, slides, harmonics and dead notes.
• Riffer 4, a piano-roll and bass-tab editor with a library of bass riffs. BassFlex has no patterns or riffs of its own: its parts come from ComposerFlex, a MIDI file or your playing.
• Tab Reader 4, which imports Guitar Pro files.

Where BassFlex stands out

• Small. A 24.3 MB download that installs at 50.6 MB. Ample's libraries run from 4.26 GB to 5.2 GB each, and it asks for over 10 GB of disk space.
• One price. $79 covers every BassFlex preset, where Ample Bass is $119 for each title.
• A demo. BassFlex has a demo you can download and try before you buy. Ample lists no trial for its paid titles, only audio demos and videos, and offers a free edition of one bass.
• Your own settings. Over 70 sliders, in panels from the pluck to the EQ.
• Four slots (A to D) to switch between sounds or layer them, with Compare, Vary and Randomize.
• Your song to a file. It renders a MIDI file to FLAC, or to WAV with the included command-line renderer.
• No account. A license key and your email address, entered once for each Windows user on each computer, with no online activation and one license for one person, to use on all of their own computers.
• Built to play ComposerFlex's songs, our songwriting program, on the same PC with no setup. Its articulations (palm mute, hammer-on, pull-off, slide, bend, vibrato, harmonic, slap and pop) arrive from ComposerFlex, not from special keys.

Which to pick

• On a Mac: Ample Bass.
• For a riff library and a bass-tab editor, or to import Guitar Pro files: Ample Bass.
• On Windows, for a small download you can try first: BassFlex.
• If you'd rather have no account and a single price of $79: BassFlex.

Owning both

Ample's riffs and tab tools suit one kind of work, and BassFlex's small, shapeable instrument suits another, so they can share a PC. Ample lists no trial for its paid titles, so go by its audio demos on amplesound.net, or try its free edition of one bass; BassFlex's demo is here. This page doesn't compare how they sound. That's for your ears.

The facts side by side

Every fact about Ample Bass is from Ample Sound's own pages, checked on 7 November 2026. Prices are list prices in US dollars; sales come and go.

More: virtual basses compared: modeled and sampled, a table of 15 products, and all about BassFlex.

If something here is out of date, write to [email protected] and we'll correct it.

Sources

• https://www.amplesound.net/en/index.asp
• https://www.amplesound.net/en/purchase.asp
• https://www.amplesound.net/en/pro-pd.asp?id=23
• https://amplesound.net/en/pro-pd.asp?id=21