Suggestions about micing my bass amp

S

SSgtP

New member
I have a small bass amp, a Peavey Micro bass or something like that. It's cheap and small, but IMHO sounds decent for what it was made for(practice mostly). Has anyone had any experience micing a small amp like this? How does it sound recorded? Would you mic it the same way you would a guitar amp? I'd be using an SM57. Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks
P
 
You could mic it up like a guitar amp, but I would suggest close micing it from behind as well. This method when used on a guitar amp picks up a lot of the bass frequencies! That was you've got two tracks of bass amp which you can alter to get the sound that most closely resembles the amps original sound. An SM57 is a good all round instrument mic but I don't know if I'd use it to get a good bass amp mic up due to it's frequency response. If you can get your hands on a Peavey PVM520i I would use that, they're an inexpensive mic that sounds sweet on everything from kick drums to vocals.
 
RE Miking Bass Amps,

While I have not tried to mike my bass amp for recording purposes (I prefer direct) I question using the "guitar method" of miking from in front AND behind. Unlike guitar cabinets almost all bass cabinets have a closed back and should be completely sealed or ported. This improves the efficiency of lower (bass) frequencies.

I doubt you would get any usable volume from behind the cabinet unless you are going for an ambiance kind of thing and even then you would be better off miking from the front at a distance but then phase cancelation can be a problem or a subjectively desired effect.

I am currently experimenting with miking a Drum Machine through a bass amp for an ambient/ overhead sound to add to the direct sound and I am having difficulty not picking up the constant soft buzz from my cheap practice amp (Peavey Basic 40) even with a noise gate.

Thats another thing to consider. If you want the punk sound where a little background buzz can be a good thing you might not mind it. But if you want to mic a good clean bass tone then it has to be pretty darn good sounding out of the amp and you will still need some type of pre-amp to boost the mic signal to the board. DI seems to be so much easier and more reliable but it will be very flat with out some type of active pre-amp (onboard or outboard).

As a bass player primarily, I have spent years trying to get a sound I was semi happy with - with my 4 track cassette. I finally found something using a Sans Amp Bass Driver (thin by itself) into an ART TUBEPAC then into the board.
 
As far as bass micing tips I have none other than the fact that countless pro engineers/produces prefer to record bass direct.....a setup like the one ScooterB described will blow away your little amp.....
 
Very true!

My suggestion was only there because you specifically wanted to try and mic up your bass amp. It's also true that "most" bass amp combo's are closed back but I thought something that small might not be.....hey I've been wrong many times before and I've never actually tried micing a bass amp that small before.

I don't know if direct is "best" though, it's true that it gives you the best, cleanest and most accurate sound of the actual "bass" and therefore sounds different than a mic up but calling it the all out best is like saying that green apples are better than red i.e. it's a very subjective matter.

I also have been primarily a bass player for the last 10 years and I personally prefer a mic up of the bass rig that is fundamental to my particular bass sound. Call me an anal dork if you want (and I'm sure many of you will) but I like to try and replicate my live sound as much as possible in my own studio.

SCOOTER B - I'd really love to hear what kind of sound you pull from those pre-amps. Do you have any links to MP3's you've recorded?
 
OPUS, Gidge and SSgtP;

No MP3 capability yet. My time and budget are extremely limited at the moment. After getting married to my lovely wife (with one child of her own) and our 16 month old my previously roomy three bedroom house is not recording friendly. I rarely get more than two or three hours a month available for undisturbed recording time and the imaginary red light (recording do not enter) at the bedroom door seems to mean "come on in I am not doing anything important" to my non-musical wife and kids. MP3 is on my list among many other needed things. Hopefully next year I will be able to say "veni, vidi, MP3i.

I have heard many good albums with the bass amped miked and I have always liked my live sound 10 times better than anything I got in pro or semi-pro studio's locally by going direct. So I am not anti-miking for bass but I believe you need a really good amp/cabinet AND a good mic and pre-amp to pull that off. Going direct just gets you the potential for decent sound at much lower cost.

RE: Direct in the local pro and semi-pro studio. I will have to say I have been very dissapointed in the bass tone results in the local studio's. My knowledge base at that time was less than zero but I got the impression that bass tone was the last priority for the local engineers. IF they used a pre-amp other than the one on the board it was the their least favorite one as the good ones were reserved for the drums and vocals. I tried to get them to mike it everytime but got the noise excuse. They would get a bassic level set and said they could...you know whats coming...fix it (the tone) in the mix. Then when it was time to mix I would inquire about the fixing the bass and they would shrug their shoulders and say ther wasn't much they could do. This is what probably led me to start recording at home and learning everything I could. I am still ignorant about alot of things but I am getting less ignorant. :D
 
Scooter B:

I have always thought the "there's nothing we can do" thing is one of the weakest exscuses in the so called "professional" sound industry worldwide. As far as I'm concerned the engineers that have told you this should have both the equipment and capability to do what you want, after all they are working for you not the other way round. Depending on the size of the gig you may not even need to mic up or DI but when you do need that extra bit of ooomf in the mix your engineer should be able to mic you up. It is NOT a difficult thing to do and the noise thing (I'm assuming they mean feedback) should not be an issue if they can tune a system properly. Even if they mean noise as in hiss it still shouldn't be an issue, how many times have you noticed "hiss" when you've got 5,000 watts of rock music blaring at you? But all that said, at the end of the day in a live situation a DI is the quickest and easiest but not necessarily the best for the individual.

Mic wise, the rule of thumb is that if you can use it on a kick drum you can use it on a bass amp! AKG D112's or as I mentioned earlier the Peavey PVM520i are both good mics that I use regularly live and in the studio.
 
Opus,

I couldn't agree more. To put a balanced prespective on it; the four or so times I did run into the less than sympathetic engineer we were trying to record anywhere from three to eight songs in one evening and there was a lot to do in a short period of time. Also a singer, guitar player and drummer to set up besides me but.... hey isn't that the norm for you local studio/local band demo recording business.

It is just now I know so many things that could have been done to get the bass tone MUCH better and it just was not important to the engineer. They could of at least run a line out of the dry recorded track into a miked amp at the mix down or run it through a good pre at the mixdown if they didn't want to take the time etc to do it for the original bass track. Four different studios with three different bands and I always came to the same conclusion that those particular engineers didn't know how and/or didn't care about getting good bass guitar tone.

Therefore I will not pay hard earned money again for studio services unless I know alot more about the engineer and or producer and know about their experience, knowledge and flexibility.
 
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