Native Instruments makes a plug called Driver that works good for that.
Great for bass distortion.

Thank you all for your suggestions. All are good, and can get  the job done, but I was hoping there was a way to handle this in an elegant way (meaning, not having to create duplicate tracks and/or extra buses or buy expensive  plug ins). I have been handling this with buses and only for effects that allow me to shut off the dry side, such as reverb, and thanks to this post I can also do it with duplcate tracks.
 
I feel a bit better now, as I have been searching on my own for sometime to come up with a more general/tidy solution then generating duplicates. If the gurus don't have an elegant solution, that means it's the system, and not me!  Not a big deal, just was hoping I could be rid of the duplicate stuff.
 
Although I had mentioned saturation , and that is definitely one I'd like an elegant solution for, I was really looking for a technique that could be applied in general.
 
Thanks again everyone for giving it a try!
 
 

Seems to me that setting up a send bus with whatever effects you want, including an eq at the end to tailor the frequency range, is a quite elegant and simple solution. Also very common. Not sure you will find anything more "elegant" than that.

Sanderxpander
I get this but my question was if you can mute/exclude a band - I don't think you can.

 
You can solo multiple bands. So for example if you want to exclude band 3, solo bands 1, 2, 4, and 5.
 

So if you can only solo you would need to create multiple copies of a track just to get the rest of the clean signal. Let's say you want to distort the mids only, then you will end up with a minimum of three tracks (if you use three bands - low, mid, high).

 
No, just two tracks, assuming you want to process a specific frequency range AND have the remainder of the signal dry (if all you want to do is process a restricted frequency range, that requires only one track and can be done in multiple ways).
 
For example on Track 1 you would set up the multiband to solo the range you want to process, then adjust the range accordingly. Next you would copy this to Track 2 (which of course would retain the multiband settings from track 1) and solo all but the band you processed. Now Track 2 provides the dry sound minus the band you're processing in Track 1.
 
As far as I know, I'm the person who invented multiband distortion (the Quadrafuzz, 30 years ago) so I've used many techniques over the years to get that sound. What I like about having the different bands on different tracks is the ability to add EQ and other effects that are tailored for those tracks. By using a multiband compressor and not adding compression, it's basically serving as a crossover.
 
Also note that with Guitar Rig, you can use the Splitter function to create parallel effects within a single plug-in that inserts in a single track.

Anderton
 
Also note that with Guitar Rig, you can use the Splitter function to create parallel effects within a single plug-in that inserts in a single track.

Now that you mention it, so does TH2 Producer. I would imagine TH2 SONAR does too, it appears to be a basic design element of TH2.

scook

Anderton
 
Also note that with Guitar Rig, you can use the Splitter function to create parallel effects within a single plug-in that inserts in a single track.

Now that you mention it, so does TH2 Producer. I would imagine TH2 SONAR does too, it appears to be a basic design element of TH2.

True, but I don't think you can get more than two parallel paths. With Guitar Rig you can split the splits, so if you want for example four bands of parallel distortion, you can do it.

Of course you are right, I had not considered loading multiple splits in Guitar Rig.

scook
Of course you are right, I had not considered loading multiple splits in Guitar Rig.

I'm glad you pointed out the TH2 parallel path aspect. It's what makes TH2 eminently suitable for bass, where I almost always want to have an effect added "on top of" the bass sound in order to maintain the low end.
 
The "splits within splits" is not something that NI's patches exploit, probably because the crossover is only two-band so it gets complicated to do lots of bands...but it is possible. I have a sort of "Quadrafuzz Construction Kit" Guitar Rig preset that can at least provide a starting point if I want to go the GR route. But most of the time I just copy the track, it seems easiest that way.
 

Ah that's great about the multiple solo bands, Craig, I didn't realise that. Seems a very good universally applicable solution in that case.
 
For whoever mentioned Driver by the way, I have it and I have never seen a selectable band distortion in it. You can filter, but that affects the entire signal.