mono or stereo bass?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Toki987
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Toki987

Toki987

Rock Steady
ok, here`s another old question. I just got my favorite bass back from the guitar shop with new pots,electronics, and some fret work. I have been aching to play record it instead of the jazz bass for a good while now. It sounds good both mono and stereo.
Am i just wasting processor load to record it in stereo since I never pan it out from center?
 
why would a bass be stereo ?

it's as mono as it gets.

If it would get any more mono than this the signal phase-cancels itself ;)



Herwig
 
Do you mean both balanced and unbalanced? There's no such thing as a stereo bass.
 
I think the original poster is referring to dual outputs, (one for each pickup). I believe the intent to this is sending the neck pickup to an 15"/18" and the bridge to an 8"/10" speaker.
 
esun127 said:
Do you mean both balanced and unbalanced? There's no such thing as a stereo bass.
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Those bastards at Rickenbacker have ripped me off then (I have a 4001 STEREO bass). I agree though, my opinion is bass should be mono.
 
I would run a bass in stereo pan it and offset the time just a bit to thicken it up. Might run a stereo chourus on it in some rare times. Other than that, it's kinda hard to tell direction from lower bass anyway.
 
Toker41 said:
I would run a bass in stereo pan it and offset the time just a bit to thicken it up. Might run a stereo chourus on it in some rare times. Other than that, it's kinda hard to tell direction from lower bass anyway.
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Doing that can and will get you into problems.. phase... mud...

put the bass where it should be: dead centre, unless you're doing XPriMenTaL stuff..


Herwig
 
This rule don't apply if you're Daniel Lanois and/or Peter Gabriel. On at least one of the tracks on So (don't remember which one) the bass keeps flipping between the channels. Of course you'll only notice it using headphones.
 
Yea, I kinda meant that I would only do it in rare cases. I use to hate it when my bass player would sit behind the board and say "now lets add some effects to the bass, like delay and chorus". Kinda getting into this solo artist thing...hehe.
"...just sit down, shut up, play your part, and get out"...
...or better yet...
"...to hell with it, I'll just play it myself"

Gotta love modern home recording
 
Bass players should make a vowel "to play the root, the whole root and nothing but the root".


Herootwig :p
 
I record stereo synth bass all the time. I also have been ripped by rickenbacher with my "stereo" 4001.
 
i work at a music store and we were talking about this the other day. theres really no point to getting a stero bass cab. unless you have a wall of 30 amps positioned across the stage you wont be able to tell the stereo mix. with just one amp all the sound is comming from the same spotand the likelihood of you hearing the difference is slim
 
Isn't it a neat studio trick to record bass in mono, then double it, and pan it hard right and hard left to make room for the kick drum?
 
Chrisjob said:
Isn't it a neat studio trick to record bass in mono, then double it, and pan it hard right and hard left to make room for the kick drum?
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It is a neat trick to pan it hard left and send a short delay hard right. This opens the center for the kick.
 
The only problem with that is your brain thinks the bass IS panned left even if the delay in the right channel is the same level.
 
Several of you are right on the money, especially TR and the "Ric" owners. You can have stereo bass and you can have it in several different flavors.

If you have a true stereo bass it has two independent sends coming from 2 independent pickups that can be processed individually. The signal can also be combined into one mono send before it leaves the bass.

Upon leaving the bass as a mono send the sound can processed with an electronic crossover thus providing 2 independent sends. One send is composed of frequencies below the crossover point and the other is composed of frequencies above the crossover point. This will allow for more finite eq tweaking and allow for panning on 2 planes instead of one.

Also, the other option is to split a mono send, resulting in two or more identical sends that may be processed separately. These can be recombined providing a different voice for the bass. This effect can be used to provide a richer voice for the bass by stacking the tones as well as allowing dual plane panning options.

I prefer the simplest method, just run a mono send and eq for the best representation and pan to the middle. However I have had the other options used on my bass by other engineers.

As far as panning goes, I`m confident in what I`ve learned from this site, that bass is best sittin in the middle of the bed with the basic drum kit, unless in an acoustic combo situation where there is a need to recreate a virtual positioning of the acoustic players in the sound field.

Thanks guys. I just was curious as to how other bass players thought on this.
 
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