Bass overtones are killing me

[~BURNY~]

Bass is a wonderful instrument. But it is also my worst nightmare. Some says it's 80% of the mixing job.
Here's the problem:
I'm trying to mix a rockish tune (standard E). In fact, The bass was DI recorded.
Nothing special except there's a lot of upper octave playing all along the song.
The lowest E is full of lows (way too much). The octave is totally thin sounding. Not much body, poor sustain. It's like I have two complete different instruments. See the picture? What I tried so far:
Multiband compression. Problem: you can't boost what doesn't exist as you all know.
Subharmonic generator: octave problem quite solved but lower end become awful.uke:
Both: problem almost solved but sounds nothing like a natural bass. Sounds flat and boring.
Any suggestion?

 

[Lopes]

Try splitting it into two tracks and treating them like two different instruments.

 

[~BURNY~]

Will try it thanks...

 

[prowlergrig]

let us know how that worked

 

[Kazrog]

I've salvaged bad bass tracks by outright replacing them with Kontakt samples. In fact, I don't use real bass anymore. If you've got a nice bass sample library, don't be afraid to use it. If it sounds artificial, double the track and run it through a Sans Amp (plug-in or physical box) or some other subtle distortion and blend it with the straight sampled sound. I've found that an LA2A compressor can bring out a lot of rich bass tone on just about any kind of bass track also.

Watch out for subsonic lows, they will muddy up your mix, be sure to filter out any booty-shaking retardedness, especially if you're using commercial samples, you can't get away with as much subsonic bass in metal as you can in pop and R&B.

 

[~BURNY~]

Thanks Karzog, but it's not really metal, and it's not my music. I can't replace any part of the musical performance. I've some decent samples, but it would be too much work for me.
On the "sub harmonic" generator (not sure this is the proper word), I use it to restore (replace) the intial lows only, not to generate "lower lows"... It works well i when compressed. But it lacks of life.
I'm trying on splitted signal right now. It still need some more work but that's much better.