Small Rig Shootout

How much do I love you guys? I spent most of my weekend recording a bunch of these small rigs in my living room



I wish I could say I was thrilled with the results... but I'm not. I did all this through headphones, and it's just so hard to guage what the bass tone really sounds like through headphones. I think they all came out sounding just a bit boxy.

Oh, well, I did it, so I might as well post it, right? I just hope this actually helps someone without harming any of the product's reputations. Because honestly, they all sounded really good in the room. I'm just still learning about mic'ing cabinets in a recording situation, I can only get better at this.

I used my personal Roscoe bass, and it has a fair amount of bark to it due to the ash body, maple board & barden pups. I think these small rigs accentuate that part of my bass's tone (and not in a good way...).

So, hey! Have I set your expectations low enough?!? On to the clips after a brief explanation of what you're about to hear.

I used three heads:
- TC Classic/RH-450
- Genz-Benz Shuttle MAX 12.0
- Genz-Benz Shuttle 6.0

I also used three cabinets:
- TC Electronic RS-112
- Bergantino HT112ER
- EBS Proline 210

I laid a drum loop and a chord loop that I repeated 9 times. Each loop is 12 bars long (Suprise! It's a blues shuffle, Willie Dixon's "I'm Ready"), and each pass through the loop used a different head and cab combination for the bass line and the lead line.

For each head/cab combination, I recorded the direct signal out of the head as well as the mic's signal off the cab. I mixed these equally in the full band clips, but I'll share the direct and mic'd bass lines separately so you can hear exactly what went to tape down low.

That's enough jibber jabber! Onto the clips:

"I'm Ready" (full band - drums, bass, chords, leads)
"I'm Ready" (full band, no leads)
"I'm Ready" (mic'd bass line)
"I'm Ready" (direct bass line)

And here's a temporal breakdown of what you're hearing:
RH-450 & RS112: 00:00 - 00:24
MAX12 & RS112: 00:25 - 00:49
SHUT6 & RS112: 00:50 - 01:12

RH-450 & HT112ER: 01:13 - 01:37
MAX12 & HT112ER: 01:38 -02:00
SHUT6 & HT112ER: 02:01 - 02:25

RH-450 & EBS-210: 02:26 - 02:48
MAX12 & EBS-210: 02:49 - 03:13
SHUT6 & EBS-210: 03:14 - 03:37

Oh, man, it was a ton of fun. It's hard to call that work

I got to practice my blues solo'ing chops in a safe, non-judgmental environment. My lead chops ain't the greatest, but they're coming along nicely. I'm almost to the point where I'd feel comfortable asking the 'Shed to let me take a pass or two during a shuffle. If I ask for it, I gotta bring it!

Ah, the engineering! That's turning out to be more important than I initially thought. I've been sitting here trying to make everything sound better, and I muted the mic'd bass track just to see what happens. Kaboom, the bass tones improved dramatically. I think that boxy tone might have been due to some phase sorta stuff going on. I'm spatially separating the the mic'd and direct signals now, and everything is sounding much better. My plan is to push out some new mixes before I leave tonight... yep, I'm still at the store, and I just got the "goodnight, lunatic" call from the wife

The mic I used is an Audio-Technica AT2020 cardioid condenser mic. It's fairly middle of the road, not cheap but also not super nice. We're looking into some super-nice mics as I speak

The mic went straight into a USB interface, so there was no nice tube preamp sitting there to warm it all up with tubey goodness. We're also looking into that

As for making all those takes sound like I did them one after the other, well that's just the magic of a digital audio workstation. In reality, I'd record one pass, set down my bass, tear down the current rig, setup the new rig, do a few test takes to get a good mic location, and then I'd sit down and get serious about doing a good take. I'd set my punch points and my loop points around the 12 bars that I was on, and I'd just record take after take after take until I hit upon a keeper. Most of the bass lines were first takes, but the lead stuff usually took 4-6 passes to make me smile.

When you do that looping stuff, you just need to be conscious of leaving space for the splices. Like the on bass line turnaround in bar 12, I just always left a hole so that the next bass line could drop in on the down beat in bar 1 and not interfere with the previous take. Sounds complicated, but it's really not.

Fresh mixes will be available soon, it's sounding much better!

Let's see if these are any better. I got rid of some of the boxiness that was coming from the multi band compressor I was using, and I also killed the mic'd signal in the chords and the lead parts. The bass line still features both the mic'd and direct signals at equal power.

"I'm Ready" (full band - drums, bass, chords, leads)
"I'm Ready" (full band, no leads)
"I'm Ready" (mic'd bass line)
"I'm Ready" (direct bass line)

The RH-450 and my bass didn't seem to like each other very much... I tried dialing in some upper mids, but I got a bad ringing going on in the background of the tone...

I don't put this as a knock against the RH-450, I think with a different bass it would sound fine. My old Warwick Thumb NT 5 never got along with EBS amps, but it sounded great through Genz, Alembic, Trace-Elliot, etc...

I think the strong upper mid prescense of my bass and the strong lower mid prescence of the RH450 just don't work together very well...

For what it's worth, I had the Tubetone at 0. That can add a little grind...

And while I may call this head the RH-450, it was really the Classic 450. The RH-450 would have allowed me to change the center frequencies of the mid bands... I probably would have done that if I hadn't been recording with headphones (and if I'd brought the RH-450 home with me Invalid Link Removed).