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BassFlex vs Bass Slapper
Waves Bass Slapper and BassFlex are both bass plugins with slap in them, but one is a specialist. Bass Slapper is a Waves instrument built for one technique: slap bass, with thumbing, popping and muted playing on five strings, from sampled recordings. BassFlex is modeled, not sampled: presets for electric, acoustic and upright basses, a standalone program and a VST3 plugin for Windows, a 24.3 MB download, $79.
What they have in common
- Slap and pop. Bass Slapper is built around them. BassFlex plays them when ComposerFlex's parts call for them.
- Five strings. Bass Slapper plays five strings. BassFlex has four strings, and five in some presets.
- An amp and effects. Bass Slapper has 4 amp and cabinet options, with pre-amp and post-amp effects. BassFlex has a bass amp, cabinets, reverb and an eight-band EQ.
- $79 at list price, for each. The maker showed Bass Slapper at $29.99 in a Black Friday sale on 7 November 2026.
- A demo. Waves has a Demo link on its page; we haven't read its terms. BassFlex has a demo you can download and try before you buy.
Where Bass Slapper stands out
- Slap, in depth. 3,700 multisamples, 11 playing positions with automatic string switching, 5 legato modes and a selectable number of velocity layers.
- Waves licensing. Waves lets you move a license between computers as often as you like, and adds a free second license with its Update Plan.
Where BassFlex stands out
- More than slap. Electric, acoustic and upright presets, with palm mute, hammer-on, pull-off, slide, bend, vibrato and harmonic as well as slap and pop. They all arrive from ComposerFlex, our songwriting program, not from special keys. BassFlex has no keyswitches or patterns, and doesn't play slap from a keyboard alone.
- Small. A 24.3 MB download.
- Shaped by hand. Over 70 sliders, and four slots (A to D) to switch between sounds or layer them.
- 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, no online activation, one license for one person, to use on all of their own computers, and it never connects to the internet.
Which to pick
- For a bass built around slap, with positions and legato modes to set: Bass Slapper.
- If your plugins and licenses already live in Waves: Bass Slapper.
- For one bass instrument covering electric, acoustic and upright, with parts from ComposerFlex or a MIDI file: BassFlex.
- If you'd rather have no account: BassFlex.
Owning both
Bass Slapper brings a dedicated slap instrument and BassFlex brings a bass you can shape, and a project can hold both plugins. Check Waves' page for formats and systems. 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 Bass Slapper is from Waves' own pages, checked on 7 November 2026. Prices are list prices in US dollars; sales come and go.
| BassFlex | Bass Slapper | |
|---|---|---|
| How it makes its sound | Modeled. It computes every note as you play, from the physics of plucked strings: the upright and acoustic basses sound through the body, and the electric basses through a pickup, some of them with a bass amp and cabinet. It plays no recordings. | Sampled: 3,700 multisamples, with no looped samples (the maker's words). Slap bass only. |
| Price | $79, one-time | $79 list; $29.99 in the Black Friday sale shown on 7 November 2026 |
| Download and disk space | 24.3 MB download, 50.6 MB installed | Not stated on the maker's pages |
| Memory the maker asks for | 4 GB, with 4 cores or more and 100 MB of disk (the minimum we state for every Flex program) | Not stated on the maker's pages |
| Runs on | Windows 10 and 11, 64-bit | Not stated on the maker's pages |
| Forms | Standalone and VST3 | A plugin; the maker's page says it also plays as a standalone instrument |
| Needs another program | Nothing else | A host program for the plugin form; it also plays standalone |
| Copy protection | A license key and your email address, entered once for each Windows user on each computer. No account and no online activation. | A Waves license; a free second license for products covered by the Waves Update Plan |
| Computers per license | One license for one person, to use on all of their own computers | Moved between computers as often as you like (the maker's words) |
| Demo | A demo to download and try before you buy | A "Demo" link on the page (its terms are not stated) |
| Basses included | Presets for electric bass, acoustic bass guitar and upright bass; four slots to layer sounds | One slap bass with five strings, 11 playing positions with automatic string switching, 5 legato modes, 4 amp and cabinet options, and effects |
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.