Any good bass recording tips or guides?

[MetalWorks]

Im finding recording bass to be quite a chore.

My observations thus far:

Recorded an excellent skilled bassist with a nice Spector and EMG's direct into my Grace 101 Preamp.

Was pretty pleased with the sound but lacked some low end punch that I could have probably got from micing a bass cab.

But every time I record a cheap bass with an average player I never get a good bass sound.

I tryed looking up other threads on recording bass but didnt find any great guides like there are for drums and guitars.

I have a Tobias Toby Pro 5 string. Its a nice bass but I think the pickups suck. I think I should throw some EMGs in it.

I have a Sansamp RBI Preamp that I tryed the SVT settings with but not on a good bass. So I am still not too impressed with the final recording.

I also have a Line 6 Bass Pod Pro which is hit and miss.

I have Direct options through my Grace Design 101 and ADL 600 Preamps.

So I am just wondering what it takes to get a good bass sound.

Alot of the threads I read said its all in the bass and the player.

So far it seems true to me.

But aside from that, any other tips for getting a good bass recording.

A nice guide would be cool to add up with the stickies by Oz and the Faderwear stuff.

 

[Notuern]

http://www.simulanalog.org/guitarsuite.htm
Ive used that JCM 900 emulation to get some really awesome bass tones.

 

[JBroll]

I like the ProCo RAT because it distorts highs and mids more and the low end remains untouched on lower gain settings, so I don't need to cut bass or have a separate clean signal.

Jeff

 

[AStacy2]

New strings, a good bass and a good player obivously help. For bass though I think you can really get away with a lot of EQ and compression to help it fit in your mix the best. You can safely roll off everything above 4k in general. Most likely you're going to want to boost around 1k and 2k to get the string/note/pluck sound going on. And you can usually boost around 50hz or so to get the deep low end. You can compress pretty hard to get it to sound even as well and not stick out too badly in your mix. I usually use a slower attack and a medium release with compression. Also, Andy mentioned using the DI track and adding some distortion in on a filter track with a hi-pass around 700hz and a low-pass around 2k if I remember right to get the bass to translate better on smaller speakers. You might want to search for that though, I could be remembering wrong because I've never needed to do it myself. Also I think Slate mentioned using a slight chorus to make the bass seem fatter. Again, you might want to search for that too because I've never needed to use that technique either. You might want to try to Ampeg SVX plugin too, the clean preset on the SVT Classic amp is a decent starting point.