Putting a bass heavy song on the last minutes of a vinyl?

WarmJetGuitar

New member
Hey there!
This is my first post on the mastering site, hope you can help me out.
The band I'm in have been messing around with a record for quite a while. One of my bandmates wants to put a really bass heavy song as the final track on side one and as it stands the side will be around 22 mins. Will this ruin the sound? I've read different places that this can be problematic as it'll either cause severe loss of loudness for the whole side or that the guy/girl in the cutting room will sacrifice the bass.
Is this true?
 
I've heard the main reason vinyl is bass light is for two major reasons, the required cutting of the grooves to accommodate the bass (it would cut too deep, making the record unstable) and the rumble from the bass that could make the record skip.

That was my understand from some readings I have done about vinyl and bass. When digital came along, all of those limitations were removed.
 
Thats why there were 12" 45rpm singles, there was more room for the grooves and you could get more bass onto the record, plus you could put a 7min version of the song on it. And yes they do sould better.

Alan
 
don't ruin the vinyl mix just to support heavy bass.

simply find the correct area to roll off, and let the bass remain hot in the mix.
 
Placement might actually make a difference.
I'm told that one of the reasons that quieter, simpler songs tend to be at the end of a side is that because as the needle is more prone to jump from the groove as it gets closer to the center of the disk. That or the grooves are longer farther out, so the needle travels a greater distance per revolution and picks up the bass frequencies better.
Or something.

I'd do some research, but I think you're better off putting it near the beginning of a half.
 
use MS EQ to cut out the bass from the SIDES only, that's all you have to worry about, keep the bass mono especially sub bass, you can actually have quite a lot of bass on vinyl and it won't skip as long as it's not in the side channels.
 
Thanks for the valuable advice guys!
Was aware of the mono bass thing and we're usually mixing that way. Though I wonder how sixties records was cut, they sometimes have the bass hard panned.
 
Have you considered applying the standard EQ settings used for standard phono inputs on most phono era amplifiers? RIAA settings are reasonably standard and seemed to have worked for quite a while.
 
Thanks for the valuable advice guys!
Was aware of the mono bass thing and we're usually mixing that way. Though I wonder how sixties records was cut, they sometimes have the bass hard panned.

In the sixties, music never had bass as loud as some music nowadays does, so they could easily get away with panning it all the way to one side.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top