Muddy Bass Guitar Question

[53Crëw]

Do you guys normally have to scoop a lot of mud out of bass guitar tracks? I'm trying to make Ampeg SVX work in a mix and I'm finding a lot of crud in the 200-500 Hz range that I need to get rid of. Maybe I'll try some different bass cab impulses...

 

[egan.]

It depends entirely on the bass IME. Some guys here don't want any mids in their bass at all. If it sounds good then do it.

 

[Trevoire520]

Yeah I normally find myself cutting 500hz or so in the mix.

 

[Deuteronomy]

350-600HZ for a metal tone usually needs to be scooped.
Of course,it depends on the bass and the tone you want to achieve

 

[Alphanumeric]

The low mid mud of bass lives around 200-300 for me on my 'clean' bass track, I use the Ampeg on the Ultra for that, and its quite a flobby and honky sound to start with, love the low-lows on it though, do strategic cuts on the bass around where the body of the toms are, especially higher toms around 200-300, and the body of the snare around the same area.

Bass is one of the instruments I don't mix solo'd, you listen on another day or in another room and its all over the place.

 

[Sloan]

It's very dependent on the way the bass sounds and the way it is played, but I almost always take some 180-350 out somewhere.

 

[agentmetal]

Yeah, this is a very common situation. However you can improve the situation at the source if your bass sounds bright and "thin" enough.

Another kind of "muddiness" can also happen if something in your signal chain applies distortion to your whole bass sound, especially if the source material is dark or bass-heavy, in that case you should consider splitting it to two tracks and filtering them...

 

[drew_drummer]

Resonant peak; find the nastiest most ear kill frequencies... then attenuate those.

 

[Ermz]

Yeah, welcome to processing bass.

 

[Nuno Filipe]

Yeah a cut a lot from 120hz to 300hz. There are a lot of useless junk right there.

 

[Wishx]

Just sweep your eq if it sounds like crap, dige it out X as many times untill your last sweep evokes no crappyness factor

 

[53Crëw]

Thanks, guys. At least it's not just me...

If I don't do some cuts in this range the bass guitar just adds mud and boxyness to the mix.

Cheers.

 

[Daybreak]

I usually have two bass tracks - One lowpassed at around 200 HZ and one highpassed at around 600 Hz, so between there there's pretty much nothing, but sometimes there are some peaks in the 100 HZ+ region I need to take care of. But if your bass sounds muddy, I would suggest just going crazy with those mid-scoops.