bass with balls, please

[dobro]

This might be related to a thread by Cordura in these parts.

I usually record my bass right through the Mindprint Envoice with a shitload of compression and no EQ. Well, I decided to explore my options for the sake of a different bass sound. So I plugged the same bass into an ART Tube MP and sent it through my Behringer compressor (loads of buttons and knobs and control).

But the problem was I couldn't get the gain I can get with the Mindprint. To get decent gain, I have to crank the ART to the top, to the max, and then there's noise.

How come?

[TexRoadkill]

The noise generated by preamps varies. Generally better quality preamps will be able to give you more gain with less noise.

[powderfinger]

i don't know if you do your recording on computers, but the waves renaissance bass plugin can do wonders for getting different bass sounds

[sjoko2]

ehhhhhh s'cuzze my ignoramosity,
if you put your bass direct into a mic pre, your signal is to low.
A mic pre is made to bring mic level up, instrument level is lower, and you will need a direct box for that, which brings the instrument up to line level.
Second - I REALLY don't understand all this going through compressors, eqs, washing machines, microwaves to track something. All it does is fuck up what could be a good sounding signal.
Why does it seem that everyone has forgotten the fist, foremost essential ingredient of recording:
MAKING IT SOUND GOOD AT THE SOURCE.
See those buttons on the bass? USE them. Play with all the settings until you have a good sound, then track.
If your playing includes velocity variations, by all means use some compression to even it out. SOME compression, like maximum 2:1, not compress the shit out of it. If you have to do that to mask peaks and bring up throughs, practise playing!!

(as a side-note - that's why I love working with bassplayers like Mel Brown http://members.aol.com/melbass/ I plug him in, get the sound, ask him to play the lowest note for the song we're tracking, set up for that note to be just under 0dB, and push start. He won't go over that, everything is played with feeling, but without peaks - unique)

If you question my advise, just think.
1. You are going to compress the bass when going to disk
2. The you do some mixing, no doubt add some compression here and there
3. Then some mastering

What do you think your bass sounds like having been compressed 2 or 3 times? As good as the original??
Think again...............

[The Green Hornet]

Yo Dobro:

I like what Skjoko the 2nd says.

When I'm doing the music, I have many bass patches on my DX-7 and all of them can be programmed one way or another right on the DX-7.

On some bass patches, I like to up the low EQ and lower the high EQ. On other patches, I leave the eq stable. But, it's all in one's ears. However, I never used to run the bass signal through anything. Nowadays, I often run the signal through my ART dual channel. It's a matter of the tune and effect you are looking for.

But, I agree the less you mess with it the better it can be.

Green Hornet

[cordura21]

a friend told me that the best tone processor for a bass is a screwdriver to play around with the height of the pickups.

[cordura21]

SJOKO2: you said that the signal of a bass is to low to put it in a mic pre. Does it also count for active pickups, with or without active circuit? TIA, Andrés

[littledog]

Originally posted by sjoko2
ehhhhhh s'cuzze my ignoramosity,
if you put your bass direct into a mic pre, your signal is to low.
A mic pre is made to bring mic level up, instrument level is lower, and you will need a direct box for that, which brings the instrument up to line level.
.
See those buttons on the bass? USE them. Play with all the settings until you have a good sound, then track.

What do you think your bass sounds like having been compressed 2 or 3 times? As good as the original??
Think again...............

As far as these three interesting points:

•I must be the one suffering from ignoramosity here. I always thought instrument level was hotter than mic level, and a direct box is used to bring instrument level down to mic level (while also balancing the signal for long cable runs). Try plugging an instrument directly into a mic pre and you usually have to pad the pre to get anything useable.

•As far as buttons on the bass - I'm not a bass player, but I can't remember seeing buttons on basses. What do they do? (Keep their pants up?)

•It is very common to use multiple compression stages on various instruments and vocals in pro mixes.

See - I told you I'm the ignoramous here!

[Toki987]

I`ve always just turned everything wide open on the bass and let the engineer handle to db's and eq. Now that I do it myself I still do it the same way. But do use an ART compressor on the way to the channel, with a 0bd setting on the B string as hard as I`ll hit it. (like sjoko2 said). That way I have everything and can pick what I want to take out.

[MISTERQCUE]

Ohhhh dobro-ther, you have been blessed with most excellent advice to your bass query!
May I also add that I run my bass thru a DI box straight to board.
Depending on the style, mood and flow of the music along with
particular technique I'm using (either fingered, percussive thumb-slap or chord strum), I always add eq to track insert allowing me to tailor freq'y's according to taste.
I luv my bottom to be out front and clear blending in as integral piece to the production and not as some lower end filler.
I do this by boosting the upper freq's by 3-5 db's and shaping
the lower end (75hz and below) with either boost/cut by 2-3 db's again, dependent on technique/song-style for clarity. When comp'ing is necessary, I go against the norm incorporating a low thresh and quick attack. I ABSOLUTELY do not run my basses thru any pre's except dI'ing and apply no efx! I concentrate on my bass perf more than anything so as not to incorporate any peak-levelling,enhancing or expansion.
Overall, simply watch your levels tracking the bass,boost/cut freq's according to taste and treat bass track as important as you would gits or vocs and not just some sort of bottom dweller!

[sjoko2]

Oooops! sometimes it helps to think while typing.
Littledog is, of cause, right. I typed lower - the rest should have been quality, not level. I have failed! Where is the gun? Put an end to it already!

Just to clarify the difference between mic and line level (which should also explain why you need a DI.:

Line level for instruments is high impedance (10.000 ohms) and unbalanced. Line level is normally maximum 1.5 volts, useful for short distances only, and prone to interference like EMI and RFI.

Mic level is low impedance (200 ohms) and balanced, normally only a few hundred milivolts.

[pipelineaudio]

Bass is tricky! For old jazz and oldies rock, its not too hard, but today's modern slap n pop n funk piano-ey spanky heavy bass tones are no easy task!

For most albums I do, I have the bass player go buy some lite strings....and a LOT of them. This is for recording NOT live, so take the scowls off your faces Buy LOTS of extra "A" strings " if the store will sell them that way.

We'll put on the new strings exept that the normal " E" string is thrown out and replaced with another " A " string. The intonation will immediately suffer, so you gotta keep messing with that truss rod when you do this. Also there's a danger of the neck actually twisting. The sonic benefits are worth it tho if this is the sound you're after.

Change the "E" and " A" strings after every 5 to 10 minutes of playing if you want to keep the " zing thing " change the others every few hours as well, and KEEP checking the intonation.

Be careful that the pickup bobbins arent messing up your sound or string behaviour also

I like to both record a Direct sund AND get " moving air " from an amp and cabinet at the same time.

I like to use direct boxes that split the signal so I can get a clear sound in the DI and whatever processors the bass player likes, going to the amp.

I perfer passive DI's with Jensen transformers

very very easy and cheap to build a world class DI box right here :
http://www.jensen-transformers.com/as/as066.pdf

Usually for the cabinet Ill just use whatever mic seems good for a kick drum; akg d-12 or d-112, Audiotechnica ATM 25, EV RE-20, sure beta 52 ( my current favorite! ), or nuemann fet 47

move it around till it sounds good and there you go

at this stage for an oldies rock or jazz sound, I will filter off at the mic pre pretty much everything above 3k. For modern sounds I will try not to eq at all at this point, but I will mess with the EQ and see whether or not it WILL make the sound I think i might be after, but then turn the EQ off.

If you are track count limited, and need to summ both DI and mic to one track, now is the time to experiment with phase. MAKE SURE the two are in phase, they most likely WONT be. while the bass is playing, move the cabinet mic back and forth until you find the point where the summed signals are the loudest.

For dynamic compression at this stage, Ill usually leave the amp signal alone, but I may throw a normally NASTY limiter on the DI, just to make sure there arent many digital overs...if its going to analog, dont even worry about it...unless you dont have enough compressors to use later.

When it comes to mix time, Ill use delays and such to line up the DI and mic signals into phase or move the trakcs relative to one another in a DAW.

EQ'ing and compressing, I like to think of the DI signal as carrying the information, the words you got to say, while the cabinet signal tells you how loud you are saying them, what you are feeling about these words. The DI will contain lots of nice hi's and lows, and maybe a little too much movement, so some compression is prolly in order. The amp signal can get by without usually.

Ok so now you say " alright damn my bass sounds good, but OH NO, now it is fighting with the kick drum and the whole mix is a muddy mess"

no problem, you got a tool for that

take a split from your kickdrum track at the patchbay or wherever.
Plug this into a compressor's SIDECHAIN input.

plug the bass track(s) thru the compressor's normal audio path.

Make sure your comp is in sidechain mode. Start with a ratio of around 6:1. SUPER FAST attack, and around 80 Ms release.

The trick here is to make it so that the bass " ducks " everytime the kick drum hits, so they are not fighting for the same sfrequencies at the same time. Also the added benefit is, it now will sound like the kick drum is " playing " the bass. You KNOW the sound, you've heard it a million times...Keep messing with the attack and release till you can get it to sound somewhat natural.

Aaron Carey
StudioZ/Pipelineaudio
www.studiozpro.com

[GalacticCelt]

what I've done is use the "Doug Pinnick" method of sending the main signal through an A/B box....one going either direct or into a clean amp, one going through a distorted guitar amp (or POD, etc)...I usually roll some of the lows out of the distorted track, as well.

This gives you the control of adding or taking away gain, but it is a different 'sound' then the usual mean bass method...

[Aurora]

I'm going to agree with pipelineaudio in saying that it is best to record a direct AND a mic track at the same time. Exponentially better control over the bass tone.

But I'll take it a step further:
I almost always despise the tone that comes out of a DI. It's flat and crappy 95% of the time, so roll off as much of the high-mids and highs as you possible can, and boost it to your heart's content in the lower frequencies (I normally go for around 120hz, just make sure that it's a higher freq than your kick's main low freq). This way the direct is ALL lows and low-mids.

Now EQ that lovely, lively, beautiful mic track for all the mids and highs so that you get that wonderful tone one can only achieve with a cab mic, but roll off all the lows.

You now have a lot of control over your tone (ie, two tracks' worth) and can nuke some of those typical bass annoyances (fret buzz, string squeaks) by keeping the DI higher in the mix than the mic, but you don't lose any of those thundering lows. Best of boths worlds! Works perfect for the "felt but not heard" bass tones that certain styles of music demand.

R

[sjoko2]

Originally posted by Aurora

I almost always despise the tone that comes out of a DI. It's flat and crappy 95% of the timeR

I'm sorry but that is absolutely not the case with a good DI

[pipelineaudio]

yup. build one out of a jensen transformer and I bet youll like it
Also the direct in that Brent Averill sticks on the calrec 1061's sounds freakin awesome for bass!

[sjoko2]

As do :
True Audio Precission 8
Summit TD100
My absolute fav. for bass, the Avalon U5
and Groove Tubes DTD
to name just a few.

HOWEVER - as with all gear, a good DI costs money (and is very much worth it)

[pipelineaudio]

I've got a precision 8, but they stuck the DI in combo connectors on the back, so I never got to hear it!!!

The mic pre's are stupid nice for the money tho. I wish they could pad down the input more, then you could take 2 or three of em and make the ultimate mobile rig

[sjoko2]

Funny that, I had a long talk with the designer of the P8 at the AES yesterday afternoon.
I told him I would like a 2 rackspace model with the DI inputs at the front
The 2 channel model does have the DI inputs in the front.

Best pre available currently I think. There are other ones very good, like the Forcell, but I find them to clean and sterile.
The pre 8 has warmth - just the perfect amount. Here its first choice for just about everything.

[littledog]

Like sjoko, i am a huge fan of the Avalon U5.

My clients love it too.

I have heard that Aguilar and Evil Twin make really nice ones too, though I haven't tried them personally.

[FURAX Eric]

Bass with balls? I'm not too experienced with recording, but we got a really nice, meaty sound with a lot of tone by using a Beta52 about 3 inches away from the cab.

[jake-owa]

My favorite for bass is the senheiser 521. It has a nice woody tone to it.

[Matt303]

Lots of ideas her so I thought I'd add my 10p worth. I had a lot of trouble recording bass, I tried DI and mic. I had the sound I wanted from the amp but found it aounded very different when recorded and placed in the track. The things I found out after many failures was as follows:

1 The bass in the track is very different from the bass you hear on its own i.e. what sounds like a great bass sound is often shite when in the track. Conversely a clicky buzzy apparently top heavy sound ofen changes completely when listened to with the rest of the track.

2 I always make sure before recording that I have some EQ sensitivity in the mid range sweep with the sound from source without worrying too much about how it sounds at that time. I found that the bass players normal sound used live had no real 150Hz ish 300Hz component so when it came to EQs during mixing I had no ability to change the sound in this range. The bass sounded 'woolly' with no real desinition whan placed in the track. I did this by asking the bass player to adjust the knobs on his bass until a mid sweep made some real difference to the sound. I think this is what Sjoko2 means?

3 Very small changes to the mic position has a profound affect on the recoreded sound (by very small I mean 1-2"). I found it so difficult to get this right that I abandoned using mics on their own and use a combination of direct into the desk and mics. I try to get as clicky a sound as possible from the mic. (Someone on this BBS had a link to an article about recording Chuck Rainey where they recorded the sound of his bass by close micing his fretboard it was a good article but i dont have the link anymore)

4 I use some compression to get control of the source as I'm recording to digital HD but try not to colour the sound. THe only time I added more was when I had a tune that had slap and finger style techniques but this was not entirely succesfull.

5 For a quick fix I use a J Station. This is the most usefull single £100 box I have. I can get better results with mic and DI and lot of effort but this does a great slap / fingerstyle combination. I used this on "I feel for you" www.nowhereradio.com/mobounce/singles
if you're interested.

Just my thoughts, I am no expert, the above has been discovered after many failed attempts.