Holy Multi-Mics Bassman!!!

Mikeyd74 · #1 04-02-2008, 09:40 AM

My band went up to Wisconsin this weekend to record our first demo ever. We recorded in an old empty chapel with bare wood walls and an arched wood ceiling. We only intended to record the drums there but I suggested trying to record the bass there too. We set up my amp and cabinet in the center of the room and faced it towards the loft area where there were large heavy duty curtains to trap some of the bass. Our engineer put four mics on my cabinet, a condenser mic about ten feet away to catch some of the ambience, and took the direct out of my amp. I havea total of six sound sources to choose from when we go to mix the demo, I'm am so psyched! I used my ESP/LTD Viper 404 and Ibanez ATK300 basses, hopefully I'll have some sound samples to share soon.
Here are a couple pics of my amp setup. I'm not sure what kind of mics they are but the one mic is made from an old speaker, how cool is that? Our engineer usually just uses it on bass drums.

lamarjones · #2 04-02-2008, 09:42 AM

what is the big round mic on the left?

santucci218 · #3 04-02-2008, 09:42 AM

pretty sick looking, let us know when you get some clips up.

santucci218 · #4 04-02-2008, 09:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lamarjones

what is the big round mic on the left?

he already stated it was a mic fashioned from an old speaker.

lamarjones · #5 04-02-2008, 09:49 AM

true, any info that you can find will help, I am sure a lot of questions are going to pop up about that.

El Kabong · #6 04-02-2008, 10:00 AM

basically the same thing as a Yamaha Subkick just homemade.

DocBop · #7 04-02-2008, 10:18 AM

No DI? Was he only using one of the mic's at a time, seems like phase cancellation would be a mess if all were up.

projectMalamute · #8 04-02-2008, 10:37 AM

What all you got there? Looks like maybe Shure KSM, Audix and an Earthworks condenser in addition to the subkick. Am I close?

Greyvagabond · #9 04-02-2008, 10:40 AM

I think phasing would be ok, all the mics seem to be about the same distance from the sound source. The "ambiance" condensor a few feet away will have some phasing issues, but if its an appropriate distance (3x as far as the other mics, or something like that), I think I'd be ok. Stop giving me idea! I go into the studio to track bass next weekend (This weekend is drums)!

lowendgenerator · #10 04-02-2008, 10:42 AM

Quote:

and took the direct out of my amp.

Quote:

the one mic is made from an old speaker, how cool is that?

This is making me re-think my 1 track straight from BDDI to the desk method. But we don't have all of those cool mics, so it might be better this way.

51m0n · #11 04-02-2008, 11:12 AM

My tried and tested technique for getting multiple mics in phase for recording bass:-

Ideal way to mic an Amp and Cab

and a bit more here:-

Ideal way to mic an Amp and Cab

Hope it helps you....

Mikeyd74 · #12 04-02-2008, 11:54 AM

To answer some of your questions....
I'm not sure of the names of the mics he used, I'll send him an e-mail and ask what they are.

In addition to the four mics in the pictures he also took the D.I. from my SWR head as well as setting up a condenser mic about 10ft from my cabinet to capture the sound of the room.

As I looked at the pics again I realized that this wasn't the final mic placements.
He ended up using the thin silver mic to capture my high frequency horn.
The mics were all placed about equal distance with exception of the ambient condenser that was located about 10ft in front of my amp and suspended about 8ft in the air.
He tracked all five mics and my D.I. at the same time.

Ed Fuqua · #13 04-02-2008, 01:03 PM

Man, this guy's got more mics than an Irish bar....

anomalybass · #14 04-02-2008, 02:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ed Fuqua

Man, this guy's got more mics than an Irish bar....

ha.

im in the process of building a kick/bass mic out of an old subwoofer. also that silver mic looks like a ksm32/ 44? i have used both of those on bass and love em. i used a tube condenser to record the room at my last band practice..wit out even trying i got a rediculous kick/ tom/ bass sound from just 1 mic. ill post a clip when i get the vox close to done. -joep

JonathanD · #15 04-15-2008, 08:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DocBop

No DI? Was he only using one of the mic's at a time, seems like phase cancellation would be a mess if all were up.

With Digital editing it is VERY easy to fix that by matching the waves.

Jonathan

Bassist4Life · #16 04-15-2008, 08:46 AM

Hey, if you have the tracks available, use 'em. You don't have to use them all, but one might sound better than another. Very cool. Thanks for sharing.

Mikeyd74 · #17 04-15-2008, 11:47 AM

I went to the studio with my guitar player so I could be his spare set of ears while he did his tracks and I was able to check out some of my bass at the same time.
A couple of the tunes sounded great! Better then I imagined actually. But the other two tunes had some weird distortion coming and going and we couldn't track it down.
We didn't spend a lot of time on the problem since we were focusing on the guitar that day. In the mean time I'm going to record some replacement tracks in my home studio just in case we can't salvage the original tracks.
I hope to have some samples sometime in the next month.