Favorite Bass recording approach & gear?

...there's really no substitute for fresh strings.

On the other end of the spectrum, my main axe is a Fender Jazz with Fender 9050L flatwounds. They're going on four years of regular play, and I've seen no reason to change them yet. ;)
 
Yeah, if you're going for the "aged flats" sound, the strings should be changed when they can no longer be tuned or intonated. In some cases that can take around a decade or so. They're a different animal. A lot of flats just keep sounding better with age.

That doesn't describe John Entwhistle. I don't think that describes Steve Harris either.
 
OP, DI is best to my ear. Many engineers blend DI with an Amp.
I'll compromise and put the DI through an amp sim usually.

Flats, especially aged, produce a really classic/motown town I love. I'm working mine in still. Really depends on genre and what sound you gravitate toward and you need to experiment with that. I'd also suggest learning with both a pick and finger because they produce different tone and feel and one might be better suited on a certain song. I used to be pick only because I came from a guitar background, but spent the past few months learning finger technique, and it's awesome.
 
I began with finger plucking and stuck with it exclusively for many years. After awhile, I developed calluses on the tips of my two fingers which became quite brittle at times and produced a sound in between finger and flat pick. Just a little extra attack I could control on the fly.
 
After lurking in this thread I bought a Radial J-48 direct box. I built a partscaster P-bass with parts off ebay....loaded it with some EMG Geezer Butler pickups.
I REALLY like the J-48 and the bass!!
 
that got me lurking Radials, how does that compare to the interface instrument in?


add- I went and grabbed a used J48 too, for my passive 91 Squier Jazz. (hard to believe its +25yrs old?yikes)
Ive read the ceramic pickups (squier&mim) are fine with the passive di box too but for some reason most seem to go with activeDi + passive Guitars. These Radials seem to be built tough and sound great per the bass players. My desktop setup wont have any cable length issues at 4ft! lol

a lot of great inputs on this thread! interesting reads.
 
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But impedance is almost never just one number. It is frequency dependent. The DIs are probably pretty close to flat over out frequencies of interest, but the pickup has a large inductive component which means the impedance gets big fast as the frequency goes up. That humbuckers might be 15K resistance at DC, but the impedance at 5KHz is 125KOhms! Even a 1M input doesn't quite get us to 10:1, but...

...The input impedance is usually in parallel with the load from the pots on the guitar. You'd probably have 500K for V and T for that pickup. Without getting too far into the math, when two impedances are in parallel, the total equivalent value is never larger than the smallest. If both are the same, the value is half, and as one gets bigger than the other, the total approaches the smaller value. So 500K V and T parallels to look like 250K by itself, and you'd like your load impedance to be about 10x that in order not to make things any worse.

Now, a passive DI doesn't have much impedance of its own in either direction. What it does is "reflect" the impedance of whatever is attached to it. In practice, that means that the effective impedance is some multiple of the device at the other end. What you multiply by depends on the turn ratio. In a typical DI this factor should be around 130. So, the InZ (the load the bass sees) will 130x the impedance of the mic pre you plug it into. That will very often be like 1.5K, which comes out a little bigger than the JDI you cited, but still not big enough for my tastes. To be fair, though, I think a lot of people like these because of the way they shave off the very top edge of typical instruments. 15K is not typical by any means. 3K-8K is more realistic for most people.

That active DI is also a lot smaller than most amp inputs. Again, I guess if you're trying to use this with as little processing as possible, it'll cut the zing maybe just enough. Heck, I've gotten some really great bass sounds plugging right into a 10K line input. It was like a free speaker sim and got us that deep, rounded, country bass feel we needed. OTOH - if you run into something more like 500K or 1M, you've got all the treble your bass could possibly give you available, and you can turn that T pot down if you feel the need.

I always just plug into a buffered-bypass pedal and that into a line input, probably an amp sim, and then I'm rocking.

you know I listed a bunch of impedances from U5 to Reddi DI and Bass units Ampbeg Bass Tube amps with Hi and Low, the ISA ONE has Hi and Low......but the site once, again timed-out and erased it all during sign int..lol ....so (F#*^ it)....

seems 1M is in the REDDI and 3M in the Avalaon U5......the Radials much lower and many in the 400k realm.
my interface instrument in impedance is 1meg.

Ive never really had a big issue with clipping or anything but its interesting Tech Spec stuff.
 
The instrument input on your interface - as long as it has enough headroom for your guitar - really is about as clean and flat a capture as you can get. If you really want to record exactly what your pickups are doing - and I usually do it I'm going to an amp sim or even for physical reamping - you don't need anything else.

If, OTOH, you're looking to distort and filter what's coming off the pickups so that it maybe doesn't need anything after, that's when transformers and tubes start to come in. But again, I'm perfectly happy with the ITB options I have to make those kinds of sounds. As long as I get what the guitar is actually doing, I can manipulate it at will and don't have to spend $500 on a space heater to do it. ;)
 
the radial j-48 sounds great. I like the sound better than direct into the interface.
I am finishing up a new recording with the bass going into the radial. I will post it in a few days.
 
CoolCat said:
seems 1M is in the REDDI and 3M in the Avalaon U5......the Radials much lower and many in the 400k realm. my interface instrument in impedance is 1meg.

Ive never really had a big issue with clipping or anything but its interesting Tech Spec stuff.

It's interesting, but it's not the only factor. At the end of the day, if it sounds good it's good regardless of any arbitrary numbers.

My brother ended up with an older USB interface and a middle of the road Ibanez Soundgear bass with Bartolinis and a 3-band preamp a while ago. He was bummed with the flat sound and lack of bass from the instrument. I loaned him a cheap DI box, nothing special really. It changed everything and gave him a big chunk of missing bandwidth. Not to say that all combinations of instruments and interfaces will react that way.

A while ago I picked up a Fulltone '69 pedal. It's basically a "germ drive" fuzz box. It has controls for volume, fuzz, input and contour. The contour control is a midrange boost to help the sound cut through a mix. The input control changes impedance. So with the input control fully clockwise and the contour control fully counterclockwise you have something very close to a Fuzzface. Not subtle by any means. As you dial back the input control, the sound changes for more bandwidth and headroom. "Subtle" and "fuzz box" seem counterintuitive when you put the words together but you can dial this kind of sound in with this pedal. Seems to work well if you want a super light overdrive effect, essentially cleanish but with some hair around the notes.

Of course the whole sound comes from the whole circuit and impedance is just one of the variables. You can use it as a tone control of sorts.

It's interesting seeing the comments about the J48. I've never used one, but I'm not really surprised people are liking it. My JDI is built like a tank and sounds great. Radial seems to be making some good stuff.
 
Radial is very thumbs up. common remarks: tank tough build, simple=enjoyable, sound is thumbs up, J=Jensen transformer , (passive /active) question ...J48 or JDI....the lucky winner has both. ha

the J48 arrived and my Squier Jazz plugged in, the mic cable plugged in. A first notice was the preamp/mic was cool at Center/12oclock w/ -6db volume, for perfect Tracking,no hassle. Pushed all the buttons no sound difference heard except for the 180 phase.

interface/instrument vs the DI/J48 was super easy to do thanks to the THRU jack. Track 1=> inst/interface and Track 2=> J48(micIn). Comparing both dry I could hear a difference, J48 had more clarity. Adding a Reaper ROCK BASS plug I felt matched the J48 really close. (see pic)

With all the street creds by real bass players &studio engineers the Radial DI reminds me of the SM7 and RE20 of mics, pro level, pro built, good sound, consistent, reliable great working mans tank built gearhead stuff, decent price for HR too.
OTB vs ITB, for those times when $10 is like $1000, ITB can get there. But it makes sense ProBass players going from gig to gig and studio sessions and p[ractices could rely on a DI box like this and get a solid track without hassles with confidence. Interesting stuff, love it....thumbs up. Of course having the DI-J48 T2 and the T1 playing same time is best :D (sound clip is dry T1 then dry T2 (j48) then both....20second mp3)
 

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did you have to process it at all?
im thinking one of the biggest benefits of the DI is not needing much work ITB...track it and done.
good boogie woogie track, chuck berry ish...the vocals were really well done, clean and nice tone. the bass was tight.

been obsessively reading about the JDI & J48 and the dude at Radial makes a comment the active one is more sensitive and im not sure thats always good when the player is mediocre(myself)...as it will capture more string scratches and inconsistency's of a lower level player. ...where the passive has the more normal natural transformer saturation that wouldnt clip, and kind of tame the signal some. splitting hairs maybe... I wasnt clipping with the J48.

jimi ..so is this your first DI or an upgrade?
 
The only processing I did on the bass was a limiter and just a hair of chorus. I also have reverb on the master bus that you hear on everything including the bass
 
I took the J48 back, the interface I have sounds fine. The tests do offer info the interface is alright, as so many like the Radial especially real bass players. I'd like to try the Passive too just to hear it, some hifreq loss would be good for me to remove the string scratchy-slides of a novice bass player. anyway....this interface is pretty good per the test.
 
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