How do you get noise out of direct bass track?

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atomlow

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I'm recording digital and I've found I don't have any noise on any of my other tracks except my bass track. My bass player's amp is the modern fender bassman (made for bass players) I think 300 or 400 series, it's the highest power of the series.

Well anyway when I record him I take the line out of his amp which has a XLR and I send that to a M-Audio DMP3 pre-amp and then into my Tascam 788 recorder. When I get the levels set I notice his signal has a lot of noise in it. Is this typical with a bass amp direct into a recorder?

I would like to add that the tones we get are really good but the noise can be a little loud. I have taken the bass track and put it into noise reduction software to get rid of the noise and that seems to work pretty good. If I could find away to get rid of it before I record that would be more ideal.

Thanks,
Adam
 
try going just bass to your preamp. skip his amp. see if there is noise on that. also try another chord to see if it could be the chord. At least then you know it's the bass.

i had a problem with my friend's bass having MASSS noise... we titened the insert where you stick the chord in, and it got rid of it completely, might as well try that.
 
or go directout of the amp strsight into the recorder........
 
It's probably the M-audio preamp. Skip it!

Your takeing an already amped signal and then giving it more juice which is not needed.
 
Is it the same if you are going into a DAW? If I'm going into my MOTO 828 is it best to go from the Direct out from the bass amp to the pre amp, or go into the line ins on the 828.
 
Do you have the bass amp plugged into the same outlets as your pre and recorder? If not you could be getting a ground loop.

Amp DO's are usually worthless in my experience. Either mic the cabinet or plug the bass directly into a preamp or a combination of both.
 
I tend to go with roadkill on this too. Find the noise first, and eliminate it forever. Else you`ll be pulling hair trying to work around it.
 
All good comments, especially TRK's - However Atom, "noise" generally means ANYTHING you didn't want in your sound. More specific terms would be hum, whine, mixmaster noise, hiss, crackle, etc. and would probably help directing answers to more likely fixes.

And, LD, I prefer Em9 flat 5th, or Any of the Augminished Demented chords... :=) Steve
 
The noise of the bass track is kind of a shhhhhhhhhhh sound. It sounds like a guitar amp turned up when you're not playing.
I've used different chords and it still is there. So I think it is in the amp. but I do know that the basement I record in isn't grounded and this could be one of the problems(I know this is bad). No the bass isn't plugged into the same outlet. Even though the basement isn't grounded I really think the bass amp is the cause of the problem. The biggest problem with that is that it sounds so could when I record the direct out of the bass, so I think I will take the noise out by using Sonic Foundry Noise Reduction which seems to work really well to get the noise out.

Adam
 
If you had a grounding problem, the sound would be a hum rather than a hiss.
 
Idea -
This sounds like an impedance problem -
You are taking an instrument level (or possibly line or even speaker level from the amp) and putting it into a mic-amp input.
Try using a DI box.
 
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