recording agressive bass guitar?

[AnalogElectric]

Hmmm, chunky bass....

I push the middle to high-mids quite a bit... not by EQ but by mic choice especially if they have a rig and the talent to play.

Over this last weekend I was using an Audio Technica C-87-mkII for the close mic and an RCA 44BX about 4 feet away then mixed to taste.

They had an old Ampeg head going thru the 8x10 cabinet (what a beast). The bass was a Rick knock-off but the tones were great, right off the bat. I didn't do a DI track like I normally do just as a buffer.

Most of the time tho I use a DI (SansAmp or BSS) and two mics on the cab, mixed to taste. It's kinda like recording guitars, one mic close up for presence and a distant mic for bottom-end goosh.

-- Adam Lazlo

[Brett Siler]

Alright here are my ideas with the equiptment I have.

We are gonna use his bass head, it's some weird off brand but it sounds good. I have an Ampeg 4X10 cab that I would like to use, but he also has some weird no name cab that we may use. It has 4X12 so it might be too boomy. I have a Boss bass overdrive that we might use aswell.

DI
Shure 55h close to the grill (it has a big upper midrange peak).
then a distance mic of either, MXL 2001 (it has worked well for me in the past)
or a Avenson STO (because of it's flat response and it sounds good on anything.)

I don't have a SansAmp, those sound like there are a worthy investment when it comes to bass guitar.

[Theron D]

I got a ripping cool bass sound using a Fender American Jazz into an Ibanez Tube King Distortion pedal. The song can be heard on myspace at

http://www.myspace.com/theronday

song is called "It's Thumbs" which was on MTV (as an instrumental) for one of those ridiculous reality shows (Inferno 2).

Theron D

[rydberg]

I've been having a lot of luck with this technique: Countryman DI, then a signal splitter out to 2 different amps. These days it's usually been a GK head to a 4x10 Ampeg cab and a 1x18 Ampeg combo amp. 57 or 421 on the 4x10, RCA 77DX on the 1x18. I EQ each amp to get a particualr character out of each rig. The DI gives you the clarity and punch, the 4x10 gives you all the aggro sound with lots of mids and the 1x18 is where the brown sound comes from. I record these to 3 separate tracks (to tape, of course!). Phase is an obvious crucial issue here, but can also be used to aler the overall tone of 3 sources.

YMMV.



P.

[geetar]

I use an Avalon U-5 DI. The thing that no one really mentions about the U-5 is that it has a 400watt speaker input on the back for use with the speaker out of an amp head. It's not a load, so run a cab off the head so you don't cook it. Most balls from bass head come from the power section. You don't get that when using a pre-amp DI out. Get's too wimpy. Also, I've seen alot of requests for the sansamp Bass driver, but try out the sansamp GT2 guitar pedal on bass. Use the fender clean channel for just a bit of grit. It seems to sit well against gritty guitars and makes 'em all real thick like....