Anyone actually record bass amps?

What do you do for bass tracks?

  • DI only and process with plugins as needed

    Votes: 20 35.1%
  • DI and mic a bass (or guitar) amp - blend the two tracks

    Votes: 18 31.6%
  • DI and MXR/Sansamp bass driver - blend the two tracks

    Votes: 9 15.8%
  • Other

    Votes: 10 17.5%

  • Total voters
    57
Third option. I'm sansamping one track and the other track is the clean DI or processed with ampeg svx (most of the time). I'd love to mic the bass but my room sounds bad.
 
I always do all of the band's gear when they have good equipment, so DI + Amp. Sometimes they run a distortion pedal, sometimes they don't.
 
Really depends. I can get on fine with just a DI, sometimes I like to run bass through a guitar amp/sansamp for some grit too, but if there's tuning issues with the bass I'll normally ditch it and just work from the DI.
 
I love recording a single DI, editing the hell out of it, and then reamping through guitar amps for crunch/grit and bass amp to add twitter zzzing and maybe woofer fat low mids. Sometimes, however, it's just a single DI duplicated two or three times and different plugin chains. Really depends.
 
Do you ever put the SansAmp in front of the actual amp, since it's technically supposed to be an amp sim?

Our bassist does at practice. Genz Benz of some sort with the Sans in front. Huge sounding tone! I think he also uses some sort of exciter though too.....

I love recording a single DI, editing the hell out of it

How do you get on with bass editing? I always find bass to be hard to edit since the transients are sorta blobs and smears.
 
How do you get on with bass editing? I always find bass to be hard to edit since the transients are sorta blobs and smears.

it's pretty easy if you choose the right graph representation and horisontal scale.
if it is fingered bass, you will have slight pauses between notes.
if it is picked or agressively fingered, you'll see the attacks.
if it is played really crappy, I prefer to re-record it in secrecy :heh:

well, if you really have to edit bass that it just too undefined, you might wanna try the next (a random idea):
-copy a DI track
-highpass it at around 150-200hz, to change the graph representation of the waveform. you will see the attacks much better.
-now group it with the original unprocessed track and slice them both.
-then delete the highpassed track (or add some distortion on it and blend:) )

I'm not even talking about melodyne. Trying to keep away from bass tracks being out of tune.
 
it's pretty easy if you choose the right graph representation and horisontal scale.
if it is fingered bass, you will have slight pauses between notes.
if it is picked or agressively fingered, you'll see the attacks.
if it is played really crappy, I prefer to re-record it in secrecy :heh:

well, if you really have to edit bass that it just too undefined, you might wanna try the next (a random idea):
-copy a DI track
-highpass it at around 150-200hz, to change the graph representation of the waveform. you will see the attacks much better.
-now group it with the original unprocessed track and slice them both.
-then delete the highpassed track (or add some distortion on it and blend:) )

I'm not even talking about melodyne. Trying to keep away from bass tracks being out of tune.

A little off topic here. Have you ever fixed tuning on programmed bass? I have trilian but after recording the guitars in tune, the midi bass sounds out of tune but when I check it with a tuner the sustained note is correct but the attack notes are not in tune, actually worse than the guitars. I'm a little confused on what should I do ( I just can't use real bass atm, don' task ;) ). And the guitars are correctly in tune so...what should I do to fix attack notes of the bass?
 
I record DI for low end and sometimes mic a cab for distorted track. But i do that only when the room, cab and amp are good, otherwise its not worth the effort. I like 10" speakers on the bass, gives nice attack and quite clear low-mids; i found that 15" speakers are too muddy. Maybe they have the "oomph", but I won't use that in the mix anyway. My room also doesn't like 15's.
 
A little off topic here. Have you ever fixed tuning on programmed bass? I have trilian but after recording the guitars in tune, the midi bass sounds out of tune but when I check it with a tuner the sustained note is correct but the attack notes are not in tune, actually worse than the guitars. I'm a little confused on what should I do ( I just can't use real bass atm, don' task ;) ). And the guitars are correctly in tune so...what should I do to fix attack notes of the bass?

There's possibly a fine tune knob in the vsti you're using. Just tune it down some 10-15 cents, it may help.
 
I hardly ever use DI bass; here's my usual chain; fits everything from rock to black metal:

One track line for reamping and/or extra "clean bottom" if needed -> whatever distorsionpedal fits the sound I'm going for (mostly I use just a clean boost as the amp sounds so awesome by itself) Mesa 400+ head and a Peavey 8*10 along with a Mesa Roadready 1516 cab; one mic for "grit" (usually SM57; SM7 or MD421) and one mic for sub (usually a kickdrum mic like a sennheiser E602 or a AKG D112).

We've also got a Peavey Mark IV head that can be used if we want to run one clean bass and one distorted one at the same time.

For mixdown I usually bus everything to one track on the console and then run it through an opto and one of my hairball 1176.
 
I don't find any reason to record amps or DI pedals. It goes straight into the di to my interface and processing there. I don't have a fixed chain for everything. For bass it always changes to fit the song/genre/playing. Bass mixing is one of the most interesting aspects of mixing for me.