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BassFlex vs Scarbee Rickenbacker Bass

Scarbee Rickenbacker Bass and BassFlex both play an electric bass from MIDI, but they're built on different footings. Scarbee Rickenbacker Bass is a Native Instruments library of sampled bass played with a pick, and it runs inside NI's free Kontakt Player or full Kontakt. BassFlex is its own program and plugin for Windows, modeled, not sampled: presets for electric, acoustic and upright basses, a 24.3 MB download, $79.

What they have in common

A standalone program and a plugin. Scarbee Rickenbacker Bass gets both through Kontakt Player. BassFlex has its own standalone program and a VST3 plugin.
An electric bass played from MIDI.
Palm-muted playing. Scarbee Rickenbacker Bass has open and palm-muted instruments. BassFlex plays palm mutes when ComposerFlex's parts call for them.
An amp and effects. Scarbee Rickenbacker Bass has an amp, EQ and a compressor. BassFlex has a bass amp, cabinets, reverb and an eight-band EQ.

Where Scarbee Rickenbacker Bass stands out

Mac hosts as well as Windows. Kontakt Player installs as VST3, AU and AAX, and also runs standalone.
Played from recordings. The bass was recorded direct and is played back as samples, in a 6.75 GB download (12 GB uncompressed).
Kontakt. If you already use Kontakt, it opens there beside your other libraries.

Where BassFlex stands out

Nothing else to install. Scarbee Rickenbacker Bass needs Kontakt Player and Native Access. BassFlex needs no other program.
Small. A 24.3 MB download.
More than one kind of bass. Presets for electric, acoustic and upright basses, with four strings and five in some presets.
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. Native Instruments uses Native Access and allows two computers.
Articulations from ComposerFlex, our songwriting program: palm mute, hammer-on, pull-off, slide, bend, vibrato, harmonic, slap and pop. BassFlex has no patterns or keyswitches of its own: parts come from ComposerFlex, a MIDI file or the player.
$79, where Scarbee Rickenbacker Bass is $99 at list price.

Which to pick

On a Mac, or in a setup built around Kontakt: Scarbee Rickenbacker Bass.
For a pick-played bass built from recordings: Scarbee Rickenbacker Bass.
On Windows, as a standalone program or VST3 plugin with nothing else to install: BassFlex.
For electric, acoustic and upright basses in one program, at $79, with no account: BassFlex.

Owning both

Scarbee Rickenbacker Bass is a Kontakt library and BassFlex is a separate plugin, so a Windows project can hold both. We found no trial on NI's page, so check it before you buy; BassFlex has a demo you can download and try before you buy, here. This page doesn't compare how they sound. That's for your ears.

The facts side by side

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

	BassFlex	Scarbee Rickenbacker Bass
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: a recorded bass, played in Kontakt Player (the maker's words: recorded direct).
Price	$79, one-time	$99
Download and disk space	24.3 MB download, 50.6 MB installed	6.75 GB download; 12 GB uncompressed
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	Kontakt 8 Player: Windows 10 or 11; macOS 14, 15 and 26
Forms	Standalone and VST3	Through Kontakt Player: standalone, VST3, AU, AAX
Needs another program	Nothing else	The free Kontakt Player, or the full Kontakt
Copy protection	A license key and your email address, entered once for each Windows user on each computer. No account and no online activation.	Native Access, with a Native ID account
Computers per license	One license for one person, to use on all of their own computers	Two computers, not used at the same time (Native Instruments' license)
Demo	A demo to download and try before you buy	None found on the product pages
Basses included	Presets for electric bass, acoustic bass guitar and upright bass; four slots to layer sounds	One bass played with a pick: open and palm-muted articulations (2 instruments), with an amp, tape saturator, EQ and compressor. Three other basses in the Scarbee line are no longer listed on the maker's store

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.

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