Rudimentary Electric Bass Recording - Puttin' the Big into Booty!

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Here at the Coolest Recording Studio in London Town - we do like a big fat bootifull low end - as much as we like melodic mids & tingling highs - & while there are a gazillion mixing / production tricks to make the bass sit nice, pop out or groove summore - you always gotta start out with the basics - & get the badass tracked.

First thing's first - get your bass player settled - doesn't matter if they're sitting or standing - they're gonna want to see the drummer - or at least the control room.
Plug the bass into a DI (Direct Injection) box before any pedals or fx units they may be using - you want a good clean signal going to your recorder - you can use this as is to mix in with the mic'd up amp - you may want to process it with effects or software amp emulations - or indeed you may want to run it into a different amplifier and re record a different tone later down the line.
Here's a pretty good quality di:

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You just plug into the input - send a jack from the link output to the pedals or amplifier - & send the (in this case 600 ohms) output to your recorder. You may need to eq the signal slightly to taste - & it's generally a good idea to compress it a bit too.
FET compressors are generally the best for bass - we're lucky enough to have a vintage unit that sounds superb - even better when you use two channels - looks mean too!

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Always a good idea to mic up a bass amp to use with the di signal - it can be a huge 500 watt live rig - or a small 30 watt practice combo - depends what sound you're after - mainly you just want a bit of air around the recording - & a bit of grit or punch from the speaker. Use a suitable bass mic - we have a bunch - but mainly use the Peavey 520i as it has character and is clear as a bell - or the AKG d25 - classic all round mic.
And we got a classic Acoustic bass combo.

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Put the mic dead centre of the speaker cone for a brighter sound, or out to the side of the cone for sweeter less aggressive tones.
We generally run this into one of our many different mic preamps that have transformers at the input to add weight to the signal.
We do Good Bass !
You can see the studio HERE:
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