When Novation released the Super Bass Station in 1997, they took their already-respected Bass Station and essentially doubled down on what made it special, packing in features that transformed it from a capable monosynth into something genuinely versatile for its time. The name wasn't just marketing—this was a serious upgrade that proved the company understood what musicians actually wanted from a compact analog machine.
The Super Bass Station is built around dual oscillators with selectable waveforms, plus a sub-oscillator tuned an octave below the first oscillator to anchor those deep, resonant bass tones. You get two LFOs instead of one, giving you far more modulation possibilities, and the envelope times were dramatically expanded compared to the original—attack now stretches from 500 microseconds to 20 seconds, with decay and release both hitting that 20-second ceiling. The filter is a classic 12/24dB low-pass design with keyboard tracking and dedicated ADSR controls for both the VCA and VCF. The mixer section is where things get interesting: beyond the oscillators, you can blend in white noise, a ring modulator for metallic textures, and an external audio input so you can process outside sources through the filter and effects. Speaking of effects, there's built-in analog distortion and stereo analog chorus, plus a stereo panner to spread sounds across the field. The arpeggiator is a nice addition for performance, and it syncs to MIDI clock via the clock output jack. Memory-wise, you get 150 RAM locations and 50 ROM presets—a massive jump from the original Bass Station's 7 slots.
The Super Bass Station arrived as a rack unit with a control panel that feels intuitive rather than cramped, and it integrates seamlessly into any setup with MIDI In/Out/Thru, CV and gate outputs, and those stereo outputs that let the chorus and panning actually breathe. Musicians who've lived with these units tend to appreciate their straightforward workflow and surprisingly fat sound for something so compact, though some note the lack of CV inputs limits certain modulation possibilities if you're deep into Eurorack territory.
