Recording DI bass guitar

  • Thread starter Thread starter Armistice
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I mix the signals from a Behringer BDI21 (great thing - check reviews as it realy is very good and quite well accepted alomg with being MUCH cheaper than a Sansamp) & mic'd Etone box from my Marshall Superbass WHEN I can use the bass amp - 'cause it needs to be loud.
Other times it's just the DI.
Notes ringing on is a very common problem. Experiment with a bit of dense foam just in front of the bridge to damp the ring on. It's a very common thing to do but less so these day. I have an old bass that has a metal cover on a hinge at the bridge jsut for holding a damener in place & varying the begree of pressure.
LOTS of people use an outboard compressor, (I have an Alesis Micro Limiter but it colours the sound so I don;t use it much), on the way in to even out the problem - you just need to spend time getting the settings right.
LOTS of folk comp in the box (Reaper has so good presets for bass both EQ & Comp).
And again LOTS of folk do a little individual note automation after compressionto get things right.
I did the ITB compression & then automation yesterday for a bass track that had a few notes ring on loudly and a few where I wasn't consistent enough with my heavy guage bass plectrum.
It made a big difference to the final result.
I've been playing, primarily, bass since 1974 and I'm fairly consistent but getting carried away, having an itchy nose or being a little closer to the PU make some unwanted variations in level so I deal with them in the box.
I did determin, after dealing with the ring on bits yesterday, to put a dampener on my round wound bass today so taht I don't have that problem again.
 
Armistice said:
Miro, I tried learning to play properly (ie. fingers) but found that my picking hand nails get in the way and I need to keep them for acoustic guitar...
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Yeah, I have to always make sure to trim my nails on the picking hand same as I do on the fretting hand....mostly it's the forefinger and middle finger that need to be short, otherwise they'll get in the way.
 
miroslav said:
Yeah, I have to always make sure to trim my nails on the picking hand same as I do on the fretting hand....mostly it's the forefinger and middle finger that need to be short, otherwise they'll get in the way.
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Plus I need to keep one for the cocaine... I guess I could switch to my pinkie... :D
 
I have to keep the little finger nail longish on my left hand for cello playing. If I keep it short the corners invariably cut in as they grow out due to the odd angle when playing. I'm told it's reasonably common amongst cellists but it does look a little odd on me.
 
witzendoz said:
I always DI and mic a bass cab.
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That's my strategy too. I find I actually get pretty solid results using a cheap, tiny cab as well. DI seems to pick up the low frequencies the best, and my crappy mic'd setup only picks up highs, so they complement each other nicely.
 
So any point miking a non bass amp at low volume do you think?
 
there's no point in NOT trying it...
but my guess is, you wont really like the sound of it.

you really want to move air with bass amps, it's that reaction of the sound to the air to the mic, that captures the OOMPH of the amp.

i mean, if you can crank a sweet sounding bass rig UP, why not throw a mic on it?
 
That is indeed a good point. I find that placing a mic on a full blown live bass rig is not worthy for me. Not a 15 or 18" cab anyway. There is so much vibration of anything in the room, that even a dynamic in front of it picks that stuff up. Though, I have had good luck combining a 2 12" cab with a direct signal. Even a guitar amp used for bass can sound great mixed with the direct signal. The idea is more to see what works in any situation. More often, I will use a Eden preamp (pedal like the Sans Amp) as well as the direct signal, and get the tone I personally like from them alone. I can always mess with reamping, sims, or whatever later. Usually don't need it though.

What is the thing? YMMV? I think that means your mileage may vary. :D
 
jimmys69 said:
That is indeed a good point. I find that placing a mic on a full blown live bass rig is not worthy for me. Not a 15 or 18" cab anyway. There is so much vibration of anything in the room, that even a dynamic in front of it picks that stuff up. Though, I have had good luck combining a 2 12" cab with a direct signal. Even a guitar amp used for bass can sound great mixed with the direct signal. The idea is more to see what works in any situation. More often, I will use a Eden preamp (pedal like the Sans Amp) as well as the direct signal, and get the tone I personally like from them alone. I can always mess with reamping, sims, or whatever later. Usually don't need it though.

What is the thing? YMMV? I think that means your mileage may vary. :D
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What I see here is getting that "sound". Which really, after we get the basics down, is our quest.
 
DM60 said:
What I see here is getting that "sound". Which really, after we get the basics down, is our quest.
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Yep, and finding that "sound", is what we have to experiment with to find. It is different for every situation. Every genre. Every musician. Every......
 
Armistice said:
So any point miking a non bass amp at low volume do you think?
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Yes. I sometimes do this with a 15 watt Line 6 and I've managed to get sounds I like.
As for some notes jumping out more than others, when I got a fretless acoustic bass guitar, I found that three of the four strings are fine. However, anything played on the D string is alot quiter. I plug the bass in and use it as my version of an electric fretless {it has a little graphic EQ} with a tiny bit of chorus from the line 6. But I hit any notes on the D string just that bit harder and the other three strings not so hard. After a while, you get used to it and it becomes kind of normal and all the notes get played evenly. If you still have that CD I sent you, on the song "i Drive", when the acoustic guitar solo plays and on the last verse when it goes sort of quiet again, the bass is my acoustic bass guitar. I recorded that at the time when I was getting to grips with knowing how to play with that particular bass' limitations.
 
I've almost finished recording a new album with my band (I say almost, it's taking us forever to finish). Anyway, all the bass on the album has been recorded through a blues deluxe (12" valve guitar amp) miked up with a single condenser mic (oktava mk219) right up against the cone. The signal from the mic was run into an art vla compressor to even out the level before tape. Then I've been boosting the bass around 100hz slightly in the mix. It's sounding pretty good! Definitely better than any sound I've got by going direct. I don't feel that I've lost any useful bass, the extra stuff I get direct is pretty much just mud that I cut out anyway. The miked sound has more punch.
 
Personally, I like the miked bass sound, the direct bass sound, the combination of mic and DI, the combination of mic, line out and DI, the bass out of a bass amp, the bass out of a guitar amp, the bass through the Behringer BDI21, the combination of DI and Behringer BDI21, the compressor on, no compression at all, miked with a SM58, miked with a superlux bass drum mic............the point being that there are a number of good bass tones {maybe not as many as a guitar but not far off either} and they can be achieved in a number of different ways.
 
Armistice said:
:D

Didn't want to jack the other guy's thread...

So I do the real bass / DI thang like lots of us, but I'm having big issues with individual note volumes across strings and even on the same string with different notes... seems like some notes just resonate more...
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...just to ask, how are you monitoring?
Got that problem with headphones, too?
Room modes can severely kick your bass perception off kilter...
 
I think the Point simply is compression... I never happened to get bass tracks recorded that wouldn't be bouncing out and hiding in the mix at certain times unless I used heavy compression on the bass... I often use a medium Ratio with a very high (i.e. low - how ever you wanna call it) threshold or kindofa limiter setting with medium threshold. In both cases you probably have to fiddle a lot with attack and release as too short an attack will make the bass Sound 'dull', and too short a release will cause the bass to distort in an ugly way. I assume that a soft knee could help a lot, but I never happened to use it, as my VS doesn't have it...
 
wow, everyone is talking about compressing the bass and what to do with the bass and maybe the bass itself, but no one mentioned your monitoring environment. :eek: Maybe your speakers/room are resonating at certain freqs and you're hearing it more because the bass is a more pure tone without much harmonics. Be sure it is indeed a problem with your bas and not somewhere else.

But, I heavily compress my bass tracks. I'll use an 1176 plug. You can hear the boogers on my fingers after I picked my nose (so be sure to wash your hands before using heavy compression!!! :D)
 
I think I've read all the replies in this thread.. is it really possible that no-one yet mentioned Waves Bass Rider?
I am quite new here so I don't know.. is it not allowed to talk about plugins?
 
Chili said:
wow, everyone is talking about compressing the bass and what to do with the bass and maybe the bass itself, but no one mentioned your monitoring environment. :eek: Maybe your speakers/room are resonating at certain freqs and you're hearing it more because the bass is a more pure tone without much harmonics. Be sure it is indeed a problem with your bas and not somewhere else.
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I would bet this is the most common cause of issue. Even my cheap ass plywood Ibanez doesn't have those issues. My room is treated quite well.

Then again, I have had issues mixing with another guitar in the same room, that had resonant frequencies. Actually, more accurately it was a direct recorded bass from a guy in Austria. No clue as to what the pickups or the guitar was. One note would boom out so strong, that I had to use drastic measures to fix.

I can only assume that pickups or something with the electronics could also be a factor. I am not at any skill level to give an opinion there. No clue as to what caused the problem.
 
peghead said:
I think I've read all the replies in this thread.. is it really possible that no-one yet mentioned Waves Bass Rider?
I am quite new here so I don't know.. is it not allowed to talk about plugins?
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the thing is, what you really want, is to become a good enough bass player, that you don't need any other processing other than your bass, cable, interface/amp, and your performance.


waves bass rider is an excellent tool......... for fixing a poor performance, or a poorly engineered capture.

sometimes, in mass-production, it pays to have that handy, when you are hired to work miracles on less-than-stellar performances or recordings.
 
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