Recommended Bass For Recording good DI Tracks

kenfobert

kenfobert

Member
Jul 1, 2009
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Ontario, Canada
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Hey guys

Need some advice here. After recording the bass DI tracks for our new album, we have realized that our bass is not giving us a punchy sound with clarity. The DI is more warm and muffled and is farting when you play to hard. Here is what the Bass DI sounds like:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1711516/Bass DI.wav

The bass we used is a Warwick Corvette $$™ NT Ash with passive MEC pickups. We used a Radial J48 for recording the DI's and it is for Active pickups so that could be a major factor right there.

http://www.warwickbass.com/modules/produkte/produkt.php?katID=22018&cl=EN

So I'm looking for some suggestions on what type of bass/pickups we would need to get a less warm and muffled sound and have a more punchy high end with some clarity. I'm assuming something with active pickups would work best?
 
+1 on the tone controlls thing, the $$ should give you many different sounds.
But it's very difficult to adjust it right, I recorded one for my old band.

I think you should try both pickups, splitted, with the tone controls full.
That was my prefered sound, but I the bridge pickup, not splitted was cool for me, too, sounded a bit like my stingray.

edit:
Seems like I was to slow, if you already tried every control setting I would try another DI (I have no
experience with the Radial so no advice on this).

I think the bass is able to get you a very punchy but still clear sound.
 
That bass is capable of sounding just right, I think it's just that the playing is not punchy, not the sound.

Also, with a bass like a Warwick, that is a naturally very clean sounding bass, you could try using some kind of saturation, a ts or a tube-preamp, I heavily rely on my ts for bass, It does wonders
 
Thanks for the tips. Like I said I tried many different configurations on the bass. As far as adding a TS or Sansamp that's all up to the person that will be doing the reamping.

Since Ermz is mixing our album he suggested redoing the DI's with a DI signal that has more clarity, high end and punch to get the best results for reamping. So right now my main concern is to get the DI sounding good by itself so that when it gets reamped it will sound great.

I'm thinking the preamps in our board aren't helping much.
 
Hey Ken,

As we discussed, I think it's a mixture of factors, starting at the bass and it creating an inability for you to play forcefully (very important for bass tone is the approach and aggressiveness you play with), moving through onto the loss in fidelity at the preamp and converter stages.

As mentioned, the Musicman basses can be good, provided you can find a nice active one. Lots of fidelity. I've had mixed results with all different kinds. Even had great results with cheapies. All depends on playing style and what raw tone it brings. Many bassists like that farty mid kind of sound, it's very important to avoid this like the plague if you want the end mix to have any chance of having a solid, unobtrusive low-end with a clear, crunching mid. Fidelity really is the key word with bass. Lots of mids are very rarely desirable.

PS: I just looked at the Specs on that Warwick and honestly it seems like that thing should be giving us monstrous tone. You mentioned it has passive pickups, however it has active electronics. Are you keeping the active electronics on, or are you running the bass in passive? Make sure there is a new battery in there and run the preamp active, then put all the tone/pickup knobs at noon, and start there.
 
Hey man

Ya the pickups on that bass are passive but it has those active electronics which lets you configure the pickups in various ways. Serial/Parallel/Single Coil.

The volume pot on the bass is a push/pull knob and it says when it's pulled out it bypasses the preamp. That is how I recorded the DI's originally so I'm assuming the active electronics were off.

When I went back and started messing around with the different pickup and tone configurations I left the volume pot pushed in so to not bypass the preamp and keep the active electronics on but still, it didn't get much better. Still farting a lot when I played too hard and pretty muddy...maybe the speakers are blown..hm

Anyway I'm going back over to our "studio" today so I'll put a new battery in and try fiddling some more. If all else fails we'll go rent a bass, a musicman if we can find one, with active pickups and see what happens.
 
I doubt there's anything wrong with the bass. Those strings don't sound brand new, perhaps you should try a few brands of strings. You should also try checking pickup height. But most of all it's in the playing technique.
 
New strings (stainless steel will be more bright and less warm than nickel)
New battery
Play hard

Done. Unless there's something seriously wrong with the bass, which is probably unlikely.
 
Admittedly I did deal with a high-end Warwick DI in the past and it was very wooly and low-mid heavy, in many ways like this one. Perhaps that's just their sound, and doesn't lend itself too well to metal. I agree with going for a hi-fi sounding Musicman. I hear good things all round. The Decapitated bass sounds were done with one, and that's totally win.
 
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