Right on!
And not just on that CD, every album where Sharlee appeared had a stellar bass sound, so full, present and rich, yet not sharp and clicky...
Any clues to his sound guys? I know he plays a Rickenbacker bass, I think I read somewhere he uses Ampeg SVT with 8x10...
Ok..here is a tip that I think will assist you a lot..sharp and clicky sucks, and we all struggle with this. What you want to do to solve this is use a mult.
This is how I did a bass track last night, try it if you want:
Take your DI bass part and roll off the highs a little...this will vary..my last recording, the DI rolled off to like 10k.
Now, the fun stuff..take the mult and high pass it. A lot of people do it to 800hz, but for me that does not work. I high pass it to around 300hz. I low pass to around 3k. So now we have a tone focused in the mids. I also boosted the hell out of 800hz for my situation.
Next step...compress this bastard hard..I use 2 compressors in series. I highly reccomend Blockfish for this..it's free..so just use it. Start with blockfish and put the saturation on max..the speed of the compressor should be as fast as possible. Compress it hard..turn that dial all the way right. After Blockfish, I added the URS 1970 with a fast attack..I compressed this hard also.
The key here is the fast attack of the compressor..this is what will give you "that sound" without the sharp and clicky transients.
Ok, now you put in your distortion plug of choice. Mine is Quadrafuzz in Cubase. I scroll through the bass presets until I get ballpark of what I want. Then I take out some high mids and take out all the highs. I boost the crap out of the low mids.
You can follow quadrafuzz with a speaker emulator if you want..this is optional, because you really won't need it...or maybe you will, each mix is different.
Now...you drop this distorted track with the main DI so it is around 60% DI...use your ears.
Buss both tracks to Bass submix.
On that submix, I put colortone pro first in the chain and used the SSL preset. Why? It just sounded good..you dont have to do this. Next I pull out the Waves SSL channel (or your EQ compressor of choice). I boost 60hz around 6db, cut 200hz around 6db with a decent Q, then boost 700hz a little. I finish off with a big fast boost of 3k (Waves SSL is great for this). At this point, since you lowered the highs on your distorted track, they will still sound very controlled and won't be clicky.
Finally, I slap on Rbass set at 80hz. I keep the output controlled so it is not clipping.
Result : satanic bass that cuts through huge guitars but does not sound rattley or clicky.
uke:
