Direct In Recording Vs Amplifier (for bass)

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frankthetank727

New member
I will try to word this to make sense so here it goes:

I was doing some recording this weekend, and I had never used my distortion pedal with my bass while recording DI before. I have a Fulltone Bass Drive, and what I noticed in the recording is that with the pedal off, the bass tone clean sounds great, its full bodied and present and everything, but when I put the pedal on, the volume and tone decreases dramatically, no matter what volume the pedal is on. If i turn the mic pre down, then clean bass gets quieter, then the distortion pedal proportionally cuts out the sound still. Is this something with the DI box cutting the signal from the distortion pedal? Or would miking the amp make these changes sound less drastic? Because If I try to compensate for this issue by turning up the pedal all the way, when i turn on the pedal, it is just way to loud and drowns out the guitars while we play (recorded live btw).
 
For a start I hate distortion on bass, and I am a bass player as well as an engineer. However if the music needs distorted bass I have found that you need to mic a cab to get a good fat sound as the distortion pedal seems to kill the signal from the bass guitar, where by the cab / amp seem to fatten it back out. Having said that I always record both miked up cab and DI to separate tracks for mixing together later if needed.

Alan.
 
Distortion pedals and DI never tend to work well in my experience. It makes any guitar or bass sound extremely small and tinny. I would go with a mic'd up bass amp.

For live, just adjust the volume knob on the pedal. If you click the pedal and the bass sound is too loud than lower the volume on the bass pedal more until it's a good medium for all the songs? Theres going to be an equilibrium between the bass amp volume and the pedal volume (Or track the parts seperately?)
 
Thanks guys. I will definitely try the blend of DI and Miked sounds. The "tinny" effect seems to be the issue I was having that I couldn't quite put to words. Glad you guys could actually understand my problem. Thanks again!
 
Personally I think some saturation sounds great on bass after its recorded. Distortion sounds bad IME through a DI. I just use the built in stuff in Ampeg SVX like the OD sometimes but the cleanest possible on the way in I can.
 
Its had to find a Bass Distortion/Overdrive that doesnt roll off the low end. The best way I have found to get a great overdriven bass sound is pretty much what everyone else is saying except I do it all direct instead of miking the bass cab. I run my bass signal through two channels the first runs through a heavily modified Bad Monkey pedal and the second is direct into my interface. I blend the overdriven signal with the straight signal to get the best of both worlds, usually about 50/50 depending on what Im going for, when your mixing you can always adjust to taste
 
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