Bass Cab Port Mic

[analogcabin]

Hi all!
I stumbled on a less than brilliant idea that actually gave me some great results. Generally I'll track electric bass with a JDI DI box with a RE-20 in front of the bass cab & blend to taste. But the other day I had a Bag End 1 x 15 with the coax horn and micing it in front (in almost any spot) was a tad bright. So for a lark I threw the RE-20 'round back at the rear port (out of the way of the air blast. Pulled up the faders and flipped the phase........wOw! A nice sub bas tone back there! Blended with a DI....very very nice. Makes for a great dub tone if needed as well.

[darjama]

sounds interesting. How do you mean out of the way of the air blast? was it at an angle?

[joel hamilton]

That can work on the back of almost any cabinet. Try a big condenser in front of the port with a couple of pop screens: oomph.

Speaker blowing madness. High pass a touch, compress like crazy, blend with DI.

Like a giant waffle.

[analogcabin]

sounds interesting. How do you mean out of the way of the air blast? was it at an angle?

Ya....a little off to the side, at a 45 degree angle too. It was about a foot away from a wall. The low end gravy was real nice. Gotta use caution with the nearfields.....woooweee.

[drumsound]

I did a record last year where I made the mistake of micing the port and not taking a DI on 3-4 songs (with an acoustic bass no less). Mixing was quite an adventure...

[Fletcher]

A Littlelabs "IBP" [In Between Phase] box can come in exceptionally handy for getting a mic'ed and DI signal to work together... one on the DI input and one on the Mic input while you use the kik drum as your reference tone can be absolutely shattering!! The end result is a very defined, very large, very cohesive bass sound that works with the kik [and kit] without getting washy. It takes a fair amount of "tweezing" and if I have the tracks I like to print the output of the IBP's separately from the uneffected bass tracks just in case the whole picture requires a bit more tweezing at mix time.

Peace.