Bass Harmonics and Missing Fundamentals and Clarity AND ...

[jellotree]

Thanks for your insights! I'm heading in the right direction from your tips already.

I tried distorting with and without HPF and agree that you can get a lot of high end noise that's not necesary - at least in my limited experiments so far. The experiments continue...

Re: Ampeg B-15N, and a very good sounding Fender P-Bass:
Last month I was in a music consignment store and some guy was playing a Fender-P in an Ampeg. It was by far THE BEST ##%$^%$ SOUNDING TONE I have heard for a bass guitar!!! (He was pretty good too).I found out it was an Ampeg SVT from 1991-1992 and a 15 cab and 4x10 cab. A bit shocked to realize it was a tube amp - which I associate more with distorted guitars, but now its starting to make sense - tubes-overdrive-harmonics...

Tape Compression/Saturation...
Nick mentioned Sansamp which I will look into.
Can any one recommend any other devices/plugins for what I'm trying to accomplish?
EDIT: I'm not talking about amp sims like IK's AmpegSVX, but good allround harmonic saturators.

TapeSpaceEcho" i often find that just shelving the low end (from say 150 or so) down a few db and turning the bass track up works wonders." +1 for that. Clears up a lot of low mud too.

Funnily enough I heard Limelight from Moving Pictures after you posted and for sure the bass wass pretty clear. Being a three piece band Geddy would need to slip into mid range to fill out the band. It did seem more pronounced on the radio somewhat. I'm wondering if the radio compression still augments the mids? - maybe just the way they would EQ it?-- A friend mentioned that a teacher of his could determine which radio station was playing just by listening to the compression/EQ curve...

[Brett Siler]

Tape Compression/Saturation...
Nick mentioned Sansamp which I will look into.
Can any one recommend any other devices/plugins for what I'm trying to accomplish?
EDIT: I'm not talking about amp sims like IK's AmpegSVX, but good allround harmonic saturators.

Massey TapeHead is a really great plug in for distorting and adding harmonics.

I too have been really into having a bright condensor and a dark dynamic (or ribbon more on guitar amps than bass) and blending the two to taste. HPF on the bright one two has worked pretty great also. Cutting the bass on the bright mic brings more attention to the highend harmonics as opposed to boosting more highend frequency with EQ or harmonic exciter, which can be ear fatiguing if you add to much. If you want more bass, just turn up the dark mic.

You could also us a guitar amp paired with a DI or Sansamp. Guitar will give plenty of midrange and highend. Use a Low Pass Filter and roll off all the highend (and maybe even midrange) and just use the DI to add lowend the track. Last time I did this I rolled off the DI all the way down to 250hz or so and blended it with the guitar amp bass track. Listen to the track first two tracks here for examples of that. http://www.myspace.com/gratis

[doctari]

precision into radial bassbone into portico,sytek, or even bassbone directly into presonus is fine with me. the tone switch on the bassbone is powerful.

[jellotree]

When I first posted, I had no idea to the extent that FM radio was toying with the broadcast signal.
If anyone is interested, there is an article from a few years back:
http://www.omniaaudio.com/downloads/whi ... e-2001.pdf

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I was basically wondering how stuff translates well onto small speakers. I have tried most methods now. (and will spend the next 50 years refining...)
(my last post, I hadn't had a chance to record anything - just experiment with existing projects, so I didn't get a chance to try out the micing techniques mentioned and thank you guys for that. so thanks)
Every tip has helped out a lot.

With the splitting of the bass guitar into lower freqs and brighter harmonics channels,
does anyone pan the overtone/harmonics at all? Or keep the different channels centered?

[Matt C.]

With the splitting of the bass guitar into lower freqs and brighter harmonics channels,
does anyone pan the overtone/harmonics at all? Or keep the different channels centered?

i've played around with this recently. i had a DI bass signal low-passed at around 250hz, which was panned center, and a distorted mic'd amp signal, with the low frequencies removed, panned to one side, and the single guitar track panned opposite. i thought it sounded great. It was a cool way to create an interesting stereo image out just a single bass and a single guitar.

i got the idea because i wanted to get away with panning the bass on a vinyl release, but having panned low frequency content makes cutting the lacquer a lot harder. this seemed like a reasonable compromise.