Is plugging a bass directly into your mixer bad?

jonniebgoode

New member
Hi, i'm new to home recording and i hope this isn't too much of a dumb question. i have a behringer usb1002 10 input mixer and was wondering if it would cause any damage to it if i plugged my bass straight into it. Thanks in advance for your help.
 
It won't really cause damage, but you should go through a DI box first.
This will fix the input impedance of the pickup and make it suitable for recording.

Some times, you'll get away with plugging an instrument directly into a line in jack. Other times, you'll set up all sorts of weirdness and end up with either a crap signal, hum, or even "clicking/Pulses" as yo uset up standing waves between the pickup and the first opamp on the mixer...
 
It will meake less of a difference if you are using an active bass. The active circuitry keeps the pickups from being loaded down by the impedance of the board.
 
That is the ONLY way I record bass tracks. I live in an apartment and can not use a bass amp. I tried using the line out on my guitar amp but it caused lots of hum. So I tried going from my bass directly into my Behringer Eurorack UB802 Mixer and it works PERFECT. It have no hum, no noise. I would recormend it with out a doubt...


Peter
 
well, you can do that..however, i strongly suggest you DI it first. The important thing in capturing a "full" sound is impedance matching. i don't know whether you understand how impedence works, and if you don't it doesn't really bare much concequence, but it's still important to "obey" the impedence rules.

A bass's output has a high impedance, and the line input on your mixer will probably have a lower impedance, which means the bass could lose some of its "fullness" and "life". A line-level output from an amp would be ok, or from a DI box.

the whole impedance thing is a bit complexe, but if you think of the analogy of water in a pipe its a bit simpler: the bass's output has a small pipe full of water, whereas the input of your mixer as a very fat pipe. the same amount of water is still there, its just not as full.

For impedence matching, remember the following:

"High-to-low won't go"
"Low-to-high will fly"



and also try out, for the fun of it, plugging your bass straight into your mixer. who knows what it could be like! see if you can hear the quality loss due to bad impedence matching..

hope this helps and makes sense!

try reading this thread for some more help, or using the search function, there's quite a lot of posts about this..



MD
 
MessianicDreams said:
well, you can do that..however, i strongly suggest you DI it first. The important thing in capturing a "full" sound is impedance matching. i don't know whether you understand how impedence works, and if you don't it doesn't really bare much concequence, but it's still important to "obey" the impedence rules.

A bass's output has a high impedance, and the line input on your mixer will probably have a lower impedance, which means the bass could lose some of its "fullness" and "life". A line-level output from an amp would be ok, or from a DI box.

the whole impedance thing is a bit complexe, but if you think of the analogy of water in a pipe its a bit simpler: the bass's output has a small pipe full of water, whereas the input of your mixer as a very fat pipe. the same amount of water is still there, its just not as full.

For impedence matching, remember the following:

"High-to-low won't go"
"Low-to-high will fly"



and also try out, for the fun of it, plugging your bass straight into your mixer. who knows what it could be like! see if you can hear the quality loss due to bad impedence matching..

hope this helps and makes sense!

try reading this thread for some more help, or using the search function, there's quite a lot of posts about this..



MD

I'd say that pretty much sums it up. I used a Behringer board with my Jazz Bass plugged straight in for about a week before I manned up and got a decent preamp to use as a DI. The difference was amazing.
 
so far the sound i've been getting from it will pass for a bass. i'm on a strict budget so for now i'm just gonna have to experiment with what i got. i thought i'd try micing the amp and going direct in. i do agree that the bass doesn't sound very natural at all. thanks for the quick responses.
 
You can do it. I did it until I could afford better. In between times I used a multi FX unit as the DI - ran the bass into it, added some 'verb & then to the mixer - NO PROBS. If you have an effects unit that would siffice.
A good DI is a good investment BUT I'm still into pushing air & mic'ing that up.
Cheers
rayC
 
Back
Top