Recording bass at home....

J

jonn

New member
Hey, I was wondering what the best room of your average home would be to record bass in. I know everyone says the bathrooms are good for vocals but what about bass? I'm guessing most people would record via a pre-amp/DI but I'd like to give micing the amp a try.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Jon
 
All I can add is maybe consider the smaller the room the closer the walls = louder the relative level of the reflections, and the shorter the delay time of those reflections. Whether reflections fall outside the Haas zone or not (a fairly large room), plus their overall level in general can say a lot about if they tend to smear' and diffuse or not.
I guess your typical home bath might be in the tight-bright-mid resonance-haze-around-the-voice range? For bass? Beats me.
:)
 
I want bass as dry as can be. I don't want room in my bass sound. Nothing muddies up a mix like boomy roomy bass.
 
jimmys69 said:
Bathroom for vocals???
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Absolutely. Guitars sound awesome as well. Bass I ain't as sure. Usually I get the medicine cabinet rattling and whatnot, so a SansAmp RBI still works best for me. I mean, if you record the bass at a low level you shouldn't get any rumbling, but then what fun is that? Unless you have a treated room, or can live with a low level, I wouldn't be anxious to record a bass cabinet. If I can convince my wife to give up our walk-in closet............:rolleyes:
 
Farview said:
The biggest room you have with the most carpet and furniture.
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+10000... last thing you want is reflections.

I've recently attempted miking a small Cube bass amp with awful results, so I've gone back to using a channel strip in lieu of having a decent bass amp and the ability to play at a decent volume.
 
jonn said:
Hey, I was wondering what the best room of your average home would be to record bass in. I know everyone says the bathrooms are good for vocals but what about bass? I'm guessing most people would record via a pre-amp/DI but I'd like to give micing the amp a try.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Jon
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Who said bathrooms are good for recording vox???

Whoever it was, put them on ignore.
 
ranjam said:
... If I can convince my wife to give up our walk-in closet............:rolleyes:
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Not that I end up using the hall or 'bath that much anyway, but I've been really draggin my feet on putting the doors back on the towels closet..
What, and see all that free deep trapping right off the main room go to waste? :eek:

She plays too so.. lots of slack goin' on between the two of us here. :drunk:
 
Armistice said:
+10000... last thing you want is reflections.

I've recently attempted miking a small Cube bass amp with awful results, so I've gone back to using a channel strip in lieu of having a decent bass amp and the ability to play at a decent volume.
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Are you close micing it? At the least it should make for a usable alt to the di.
 
A bathroom is the best room to get that "farty" tone. <pthththt>. Leave the fan on to let the tone "breathe". Shower can add "wetness" to your vocals. Gotta go pinch one off now and then lay some tracks!:rolleyes:
 
I heard a kleenex box with a mic inside is best for vocals.

That way its closed off and like, nothing really interferes with it.





.......................................:confused:
 
jonn said:
Hey, I was wondering what the best room of your average home would be to record bass in. I know everyone says the bathrooms are good for vocals but what about bass? I'm guessing most people would record via a pre-amp/DI but I'd like to give micing the amp a try.
Any help would be much appreciated.
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Any room can do if you are going to record the bass amp, depending on what kind of bass you're going for. Personally, having been through the whole FX'd bass thing and found it a nightmare to mix, I like the bass dry and uneffected. I'll do things like combine the amp with DI {and sometimes line out} and mix the two. You can get a variety of tones where bass is concerned. Where you do mic, go close up to the amp, unless you are specifically looking for a very reflective bathroom reverb-y bass for a sparse, airy song {or section of a song}. When I mic the bass amp, I go close so it doesn't really matter what room it's done in.
 
mixsit said:
Are you close micing it? At the least it should make for a usable alt to the di.
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Yep - it was just a crap amp, or perhaps I didn't take sufficient time to work it out, but the normal DI issue of some notes being much louder than others seemed to be exacerbated. I've learnt when DI-ing to play different notes/strings with different velocities to compensate, so I can get a reasonable DI sound.

I'll have a go again some time when I have more time / patience...
 
since i was in charge of recently recording my bands first EP, i decided to not take into any account that whole 'recording room' crap, and decided to record EVERYTHING in my big open room basement with awful acoustically terrible concrete walls. when i mic'ed up my bass, i mixed 4 inputs:

an e609 on the edge/center of 1 speaker in my cabinet,
a samson kick mic on the center of 1 speaker on my cabinet,
an MXL V63m condenser 4-5 feet back from the cabinet,
direct line out XLR from my head to mixer

mixed all 4 of these to how i wanted, and bam, a nice big bass tone to my liking!

check some of it out here, Dinosaurs Take France

and check out this tone:
Dinosaurs Take France - Heatseeker by Jay Ochs on SoundCloud - Create, record and share your sounds for free

all bass was recorded with the same method, i think it fits in the mix REAL well, seeing as i recorded all the other stuff in the same exact room lol...trick is, don't keep the "room mic" condenser that loud...i had it very low in the mix, just a little bit to hear the surroundings...but other than that, i really dug the straight on the cone sound mixed with the direct out
 
Armistice said:
Yep - it was just a crap amp, or perhaps I didn't take sufficient time to work it out, but the normal DI issue of some notes being much louder than others seemed to be exacerbated. I've learnt when DI-ing to play different notes/strings with different velocities to compensate, so I can get a reasonable DI sound.
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A bunch of compression can take care of that. Most of the time that is a function of the bass. Some basses have dead spots in the neck, which keep the string from ringing as loud as the other notes. EQing can bring up certain notes a lot. Compression and possibly distortion is your friend.
 
Best thing to happen to my bass tracks was a compressor. If you are using a pick, try a felt bass pick.

Best room to mic a bass is outside. Bass playing is honest labor.
 
I use a 12x 12 room - the ceiling is beveled on one side due to the roof - i also have acoustic foam about 6" away from the amp in the back. I use a small 15 watt 8" speaker peavey amp. Mic (usually an sm57) is about 6"-10" away - but I also use a DI box to a separate channel and then mix those 2 signals to a 3rd channel - usuing the bass / treble/ pan pots on my mixer (tascam 488) i can usually get it as deep or as punchy as I like.
my specter bass seems to give more punch than my Fenders with this setup - maybe due to the active electronics - but the fenders sustain better in the mix - that's probably just my tastes interfering
 
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