question on recording Bass guitar with a Direct Box

A

adam_in_audio

New member
hi y'all!

I have actually been recording for a while but everytime I've recorded bass, I've mike'd my amp using a Sennheiser 421. I am now transplanted to an apartment with pretty thin walls, so I'd like to get some advice on how to correctly direct record my bass guitar. I probably should know this by now and I feel like an idiot asking, but that's how it goes :P Anyway, my bass has active electronics and I would like to run directly into my soundcard console bypassing the amp. Is there any techniques y'all use or are there good DI boxes you can recommend, I've heard good things about the Sansamp Tech21.

any help would be GREATLY appreciated!

Adam
 
Sansamp Bass Driver!

If you do a search on the Sansamp you'll get back loads of posts praising it. To be fair, you'll also get back some saying it's not what that user wanted, but from what I've seen the reviews have been overwhelmingly positive.

I've been using one for almost two years and love the results I get with it. Before that I was using my ART Tube MP, mostly out of necessity since it was all I had. However, it did a pretty good job. My actual signal chain is a combination of both beacuse I use my ART to provide phantom power to my SABDDI. This (bass -> SABDDI -> ART -> soundcard) works very well also.

I also have a guitar POD (2.3) which I tried on bass. It was OK, but I never found a combination of settings that I really liked. I came closest with the Tube Preamp and no cabinet but that always seemed noisy to me. So I went back to the ART and eventually got the SABDDI.

Does your amp have a direct out? If so, you may as well try that first since it's free.
 
Since you have active electronics, you should be able to plug your bass directly into your recording interface. It won't give you a huge variety of tone options the way an active DI box would, but it'll do the trick. Its worked for me with my Active Jazz and Layla interface.
 
For the most part I just go direct into the Hi-Z input of my Aardvark Q10 soundcard, with what I think are acceptable results. I guess to some extent it depends on what kind of bass you're using (I use a Peavey T-40).

I've also used a Johnson J-Station from time to time, which has some bass presets. The J-Station has been discontinued, but you can pick up a used one on eBay for around $100. The benefit is that it also has very good clean guitar sounds in it, and a pretty decent Rectifier sound.

At some point, and when budget allows, I think I'll get the SansAmp though.

There's also the Line 6 Bass POD amp modeller, but I think you'll do better with the SansAmp for less money.

My recap:
Most economical option: direct to soundcard
Fairly inexpensive: Johnson J-Station (around $100 used, with additional guitar sounds thrown in)
Least economical: Tech 21 SansAmp Bass Driver ($140 used, $190 new, but probably has the best sounds)
 
If you guys haven't heard the Ampeg SVPCL preamp yet... you might want to give it a listen. ;)

Some of the other preamps I have are the Avalon U5, SansAmp, Countryman, and yes I even have a ART Tube MP Studio V3... lol... and a bunch of others. The two I seem to use the most are the U5 and SVPCL. Just to give you an idea of the sound I like... I play a Rick 4003 and Fender American P bass and J bass. I play through Ampeg SVT amps and like "adam in audio" I too like miking my amp with a MD421.
 
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If you go from your Sans into a clean setting on a JStation, it sounds pretty good, and the JStation will give you a good amount of additional volume/tonal controls.
 
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