I thought there was already a thread for recording Bass Guitar.

Alright, resurrect the old thread!!! (Yeah, I didn't want to waste space with a new one).

I was listening to DT's Fiction again and I was really impressed with the tone on the entire album. So I started messing around with my BDDI and I think I found a good idea. I pulled the treble down, the bass up, the drive up, and got some good grind. I also pulled the treble down out of the bass, mids about flat, and boosted the bass. The grind sound is great and I really like it. The low end is nice and warm, too. My problem is in clarity. I can't get great note distinction. I tried to use the DI track from the bass to reinforce, but it sounds too hollow to my ears. Anybody else ever try to get good mid grind and a nice firm low-end? If you need samples, I can post some tonight, but I was hoping for general approaches/strategies.
 
doc_backmask said:
Alright, resurrect the old thread!!! (Yeah, I didn't want to waste space with a new one).

I was listening to DT's Fiction again and I was really impressed with the tone on the entire album. So I started messing around with my BDDI and I think I found a good idea. I pulled the treble down, the bass up, the drive up, and got some good grind. I also pulled the treble down out of the bass, mids about flat, and boosted the bass. The grind sound is great and I really like it. The low end is nice and warm, too. My problem is in clarity. I can't get great note distinction. I tried to use the DI track from the bass to reinforce, but it sounds too hollow to my ears. Anybody else ever try to get good mid grind and a nice firm low-end? If you need samples, I can post some tonight, but I was hoping for general approaches/strategies.
Click to expand...

Maybe compress high mids around 1k or so and boost them a little? I guess another idea would be to sweep a narrow bell around and see what region seems to help the most with distinction and, along with boosting it, cutting the octave below it a little... not sure. I usually leave the treble and mids high on whatever I have distorting the tone and then roll off highs with a shelf so that it 'sits'... I seem to think 'mids' when I hear the Fiction growl.

Jeff
 
Yeah, I'm spending a little more time with it tonight. Damn its just killing me. The way "Nothing to no one" starts is just great. I will find it (or at least one I like just as much).

BTW, heard anything about moving out to Ca yet, Jeff?
 
I thought the same thing when I heard it, I've been going for that same growl.

The move isn't happening anytime soon, it's a possibility for the Ph. D. (year and a half, two years down from here) but not for right now.

Jeff
 
Do any of you guys have tips on reducing noise when heavily compressing bass?
I always get a lot of skanky noise or artifacts or whatever.

It's not too noticable when everything is playing, but when it's just bass, it's pretty bothersome.
 
BattleTits said:
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.
Click to expand...

I seems you really have a clue about what you're talking about here, could you possibly post some screenshots or even save the banks and upload them to the ftp?

Sickan
 
Forum members Think great basses !!!!

Would anyone like to recommend a great Bass amp????

For the direct signal you would probably want to consider a Valve Preamp, which models do member use????
 
Baron of Norsworthy said:
Forum members Think great basses !!!!

Would anyone like to recommend a great Bass amp????

For the direct signal you would probably want to consider a Valve Preamp, which models do member use????
Click to expand...

The valve/solid state thing doesn't apply for bass amps the same way it does for guitar. And by that I mean valve does not mean better. A lot of bass amps are just solid state or only have a valve pre anyway.

I personally have always preferred solid state amps. I own a SS Galien Krueger 400RB. Not really that high powered for a bass amp (240w) but pretty killer.

I think the valve sound suits pick players better though, or for heavily distorted bass.
 
The best three suggestions I've gotten from this forum are the SansAmp BDDI, one of the MXR pedals (I believe it's the M80, not sure though), and the ProCo RAT.

Fuck TOOBZ. Don't turn down a good Ampeg, but solid-state bass amps are amazing and even the lightbulb nutjobs around here will go for solid-state over tube pretty often - or just go right into the console and not worry about amps.

Jeff
 
MARSHALL VBA 400 ,
ampeg svt classic ,
or sansamp.
the ampeg solid states are pretty lame
 
Ampeg SVT3Pro - tube pre, mosfet power. Great amp, tons of tones, I've been able to dial whatever I want on it, and I have even been able to dial the worst tone I've ever heard (yes, I always try this with amps, the worse you can make it, the more dynamic it may be).
 
G-Wrath said:
The valve/solid state thing doesn't apply for bass amps the same way it does for guitar. And by that I mean valve does not mean better. A lot of bass amps are just solid state or only have a valve pre anyway.

I personally have always preferred solid state amps. I own a SS Galien Krueger 400RB. Not really that high powered for a bass amp (240w) but pretty killer.

I think the valve sound suits pick players better though, or for heavily distorted bass.
Click to expand...

I did n't mention Tube V solid state.
My previouse post stated direct signal to a valve line preamp not guitar head!!
 
Baron of Norsworthy said:
For the direct signal you would probably want to consider a Valve Preamp, which models do member use????
Click to expand...

It's either tube or not tube, and for direct you have precisely two options - valve and solid state. You got an amp recommendation and a correction about 'probably want to consider a Valve Preamp', which could be taken to mean either something that is transparent and boosts the signal or something that also has an EQ and possibly compression and gain.

And it would help A LOT if your posts didn't read like a Russian bot had written them and then Babel-fished them into English. Especially the odd capitalization.

Jeff
 
I recently started using CurveEQ to get me in the ballpark of where to look; captured some bass clips from Behindert's bass tone (which I think is pretty killer) and loaded those curves on my own bass tracks.. works pretty well!
 
I asked from the Karnivool bassist about his basstone on their debut album and got a reply, thought some of you might be interested. For the recordings of Themata, they used guitars tuned in the very awkward tuning of B-F#-B-G-B-E, which is basically a hybrid tuning of Dropped-B (low strings) and Standard E (high strings). Apparently something else for bass, as he said that he uptuned (instead of downtuning it) the D-string to E.

> > ----------------- Original Message -----------------
> > From: AHJ
> > Date: Dec 2 2006 12:59 AM
> >
> >
> > Hi again!
> >
> > Hey, I was wondering could you tell me how the bassguitar-sound,
> > especially the distorted sound on Cote 1:30 forward... I mean this
> > part: http://www.ahjteam.com/upload/Karnivool_Cote_bassosoundi.mp3
> > Drew asked to ask me to ask directly from you, so here it is the
> > copypaste from myspace:
> >
> Hey man, I don't think jon checks this very often and he's definitely
> the one to answer this.. you should email him at ....@....
>
> cheers bro, rock on
> Drew


Hey,

Sorry for the late reply, had a lot of trouble getting my email working
since we changed servers. In answer to your question, there is not
distortion on that part, but I'm playing an open E string (the D string
tuned up a tone) and hammering onto the 10th and 12th frets, the grit of
the sound comes from using my Warwick which is an Afzelia bodies, Ovangkol
necked and Ebony fingerboarded custom Corvette 6. I can't remember what
amp i used for that song, but I was either running a Sunn 1200 Watt head
or an Ampeg SVT-CL. Hope that helps!
Cheers for the email.

Jon
Karnivool
Click to expand...
 
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