I'm often struggling to get a decent bass tone on my songs. They often sound 'woofy' or 'flabby' The strings are in decent nick and I'm not quite sure where I'm going wrong. I record DI into a focusrite solo and have tried a couple of plug ins along with reapers own cockos compression preset for bass. Any tips, tricks and advice would be greatly appreciated!
Mark
Hey Mark, I just did a huge project for a major children's publisher. I had to record four 45 second music beds -- bluegrass, surf, R&B and reggae -- over which we are dividing the 26 letters of the alphabet, adding vocals and sound effects for the animators. Projects like this are the last home for old power pop guys like me, resurrecting cool old sounds and recording techniques for the kids. Hopefully we subvert some young minds along the way over to cool sounds...but I digress...
One night I was going down a YouTube rabbit hole when I found a video by Boulevard Recording in LA, where the owner shows you how they recorded McCartney's bass at Abbey Road in the mid-late 60's. They put him through an amp, of course (VOX in the early days, 50w Fender Bassman from about '67 on), but they put a big condenser in front rather than a dynamic mic, and kind of pointed it down at the polished floor in front of the amp. Hmmm.
My bass amp is out of service at present, so I used a little Fender 15 watt Rumble practice amp, put it in the shower of the loo off the studio which I use as an amp chamber, with a KEL HM2D about 2 feet from the grille, capsule angled toward the ground in front of the amp; I believe I was using a Joemeek TwinQcs pre. We also took a D/I out and put it through Brainworx's free Ampeg SVT plug in, plus a bit of Altec compression. By combining the two signals we got a fantastic sound...full, punchy, warm and articulate with plenty of bottom end.
I've also had a lot of good luck exploring the presets various plugins have for electric bass. Even when I'm in a rush and don't have an hour or two to devote to getting a good bass sound, I can almost always find something usable. Also, check out Brainworx's free Cleansweep V2 plugin, a simple, effective and good sounding high pass/low pass filter that I almost always use on my bass signal.
We alternated between three basses, btw: a partscaster P-bass, a '67 Epiphone Rivoli medium scale, and an old Fender Mustang the previous owner had modified with a Barden style rail pickup. The first two have flat wounds, the Mustang has rounds.
If you're going to go this route, remember that small amps record huge; you don't need a bloody great stack of hulking cabinets sporting lethal arrays of 15" speakers to get a big sound! Good luck, and try to remember to have fun.
bw