Congratulations on yer new axe - I concur about it improving the playing of the owner instantly. As Marcus once said, welcome to the big ****-eatin' grin club.
As far as recording, you'll just have to experiment. My studio setup and clips can be found
Here, and the at home setup is basically just a cheaper version of the same idea. It works for me, but I notice that each person that plays the bass gets a completely different sound out of it, and what works for me sometimes sounds less than great for another person with a different attack. If you play really forcefully (I do) and with high tension strings, you'll likely need all of that space between your bass and mic like you have now. If you play more lightly, you can often bring the mic in closer.
Two things come immediately to mind:
1) Every time I record with a mic and a direct, I always ditch the direct, so I've just stopped doing it. It always seems to add a glassy/rubbery compressed sound that I don't care for, and almost always adds string noise. Have you tried mic only?
2) When I'm in the studio, the guy who recorded the stuff I linked to crawled around on the floor while I played trying to find the sweet spot for the mic. You can't do that, but if you have a decent monitoring chain, you can play and listen through your phones while instructing someone else about how to place the mic. I've found that when the diaphragm is tilted up towards the FB, it pickes up more string noise, and when it's tilted down, it tends to get more body. Keep experimenting, and good luck.
