Micing an upright bass

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pathdoc

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Does anyone know which mics are considered industry standard for micing upright bass?
thanks
 
I recently tried using a Yamaha subKick bass drum mic and was surprised how good it captured the woody tone of my bass. I usually mix it with a signal from a condenser.
 
i had to mic an upright once, and used a U87 through a neve 1073, and it killed

that being said, almost any decent condenser will probably work pretty well
 
Ironklad Audio said:
i had to mic an upright once, and used a U87 through a neve 1073, and it killed

that being said, almost any decent condenser will probably work pretty well
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That's good braggardly information for those of us home recording afficionados :D
 
I have, on occasion, been party to doghouse recordings. The bleed has to become your friend so positioning is all important when micing only. That being said, the 'best' sound I was able to coax out of a 3/4 scale German box involved a Beyer M500 wrapped in foam and litterally stuck under the bridge. With this I had a 2' square piece of 1/2" plexiglass and a Crown PZM mounted to it on a mic stand out about 18" from the bridge. I gobo'd off the bass from the guitar amp and the drums and the piano was(thankfully) out in the piano room. While there was still some bleed, it wasnt obtrusive to that track and kinda fleshed things out at the mix. The bass was solid and had that 'woody' acoustic sound that we all love when we can hear it and distinguish it from the other instruments.

This was achieved after several HOURS of experimentation with mics and all things acoustic.
 
it is a hard instrument...I just stick a SM57 in foam sandwich under the bridge, found this best all around, especially outdoors.
 
I am in the wadded up foam, omni crammed in the bridge camp myself.
 
Lectric_Lab said:
it is a hard instrument...I just stick a SM57 in foam sandwich under the bridge, found this best all around, especially outdoors.
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Yeah, the good old 57, wrapped in foam under the bridge. That's about the worst upright sound I have ever heard.

In my former post I have a link to a thread at gearslutz that got five stars and was participated by some brilliant and well known engineers. And yes, it was about recording the upright bass, one of the more difficult instruments.

And please don't use a 57 under the bridge, or an MD421, or an MD441, or a Beyer M201. These are fantastic microphones, bur for this application they suck donkey balls.

If you insist in putting a microphone under the bridge, go for a Beyer M88, a Sennheiser MD416 or the el cheapo Behringer ECM8000, yes it's an omni, so what?
 
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I used a neumann KMS105 wrapped in foam under the bridge mixed with an AKG solidtube at 45% pointing down onto the joint of the neck & body at a distance of about 1 1/2 feet

worked well

I also had a pickup signal that I thinned out & chorused
 
That's good braggardly information for those of us home recording afficionados
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well...for whatever it's worth, all that good shit belonged to my school, not me

i guess i was trying to make the point that a nice LDC with a nice preamp, not necessarily the ones mentioned, is capable of giving good results

now that i think about it, i also took a DI track as well, and used that due to the clear low end, and used the mic'ed track to bring out the character and dynamics of the strings being plucked
 
pathdoc said:
Does anyone know which mics are considered industry standard for micing upright bass?
thanks
Click to expand...

Sorry, nothing I do is ever "industry standard." :) I've had great success with true omni mikes such as the RE-55. However, I sold my upright bass a few years ago. I'm kinda wishing I had one, once again.

Cheers,

Otto
 
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