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Bass recording pre-amp

#2
I personally tend to use either my Eclair Engineering Evil Twin DI or a Millennia TD-1. I've seen everything from the old Demeter bass pre to that single channel SWR to Neve 1073's brought in by bass players, though the most common (that is, the one I see most, both in other studios and in mine) is an Avalon U5. I do NOT like the sound of a sansamp bass di - I've got one in my studio box, and have found it to be the best thing only once in about 8 years.
Having said that, far more of the 'sound' is in the hands and the instrument than in any other gear.
 
#3
If you have a bass with a high impedence out

get a REDDI if you have the $, and absolutely get a JDI passive DI, this will get you into the console ie XLR input. The Sans Amp DI is very pedestrian.

As for Mic pres - Chandlers, (Helios as used at Olympic) Brent Averill Neve Clones, Wunder, all can get you there with a twist in flavor. So if this is for your home studio you need to get good converters , & good pres. How many channels do you need?

Give an idea of your set up and what you want to do with it and what you can spend to upgrade.
 
#6
lambro said:
If you have a bass with a high impedence out

get a REDDI if you have the $, and absolutely get a JDI passive DI, this will get you into the console ie XLR input. The Sans Amp DI is very pedestrian.

As for Mic pres - Chandlers, (Helios as used at Olympic) Brent Averill Neve Clones, Wunder, all can get you there with a twist in flavor. So if this is for your home studio you need to get good converters , & good pres. How many channels do you need?

Give an idea of your set up and what you want to do with it and what you can spend to upgrade.
Click to expand...
Meaning no disrespect, but the OP appeared to be asking what session bassists use to get 'their' sound in the studio. Your response seemed to be to an answer to a completely different question - that being 'What do I need to buy to equip a studio?' or even, 'What have you read about in magazines and on forums that might be good to use in a studio?'

I own a REDDI and prefer it on the Wurly (while the Evil Twin or the Millennia are more often used on a bass) because it doesn't have enough gain in the output stage to go direct to the DAW without the need for a preamp in addition to the REDDI. The Avalon, the Millennia, the Evil Twin (and even some other DI's that haven't been mentioned, like the Groove Tubes Brick) all have enough output that you can plug the DI straight in - or even straight into a compressor and then into the recorded. And unless a newer model has come out, the REDDI doesn't have a parallel output that would allow you to use an amp as well as the DI. I remember sitting around a table with Viktor Krauss and Peter Montessi, and both of us were complaining about those items. Perhaps Peter has fixed them.

A detailed discussion of mic preamps is better served by another thread, but I would like to know what you hear in these particular ones - and what bassists you know who use them in the studio...

I have both active and passive Radial DI's, and I've used them on basses (mine and others); I didn't hear any compelling sonic reason to use the passive on bass rather than the active one - what did I miss?
 
#8
I have recently been using a UA Solo 610. I love the slight bit of pizazz I get out of it. I use a Vintech 1073 as well when need be. It really depends on the song and what it is calling for though. I always bring my J48 with me to sessions no matter what.

Proper technique is really the best preamp you can have though.:smug:
 
#9
Dave Martin said:
...the REDDI doesn't have a parallel output that would allow you to use an amp as well as the DI. ... Perhaps Peter has fixed <that>.
Click to expand...
No, I exchanged a few posts with him over on Gearslutz recently where he met every single suggestion I had with a stone wall of not being at all open to suggestions. I would say something like "I wish the REDDI had a separate parallel line-level output the way my Summit TD100 does" and he would reply "The REDDI has 16 dB of gain". :rolleyes:

Dave Martin said:
I have both active and passive Radial DI's, and I've used them on basses (mine and others); I didn't hear any compelling sonic reason to use the passive on bass rather than the active one - what did I miss?
Click to expand...

In theory the passive one has higher headroom, best for use with high-output active basses. But I doubt the active one is enough prone to distortion for it to be an issue. IMO the main reason bassists love the passive one for gigging is because it needs no power, but of course that is irrelevant in the studio.
 
#10
An amp? I really don't get the use of a sansamp in a professional environment, if you want it to sound like an amp thow a mic in front of a speaker, if you want it to sound like a DI the engineer should be able to set you up with a DI box and select an appropriate mic pre. I like an RE20 on my cab, no DI at all.
 
#11
From a non-pro perspective...
Due to space and noise constraints in my very small home recording setup, I'm unable to mic an amp. I've recently been running a dual DI setup with decent results:

Channel 1: Bass->JDI->ART MPA Gold pre->DAW
Channel 2: JDI thru->SansAmp RBI->DAW
 
#12
as for what a "Session" player would use well it would not be up to a session player to decide really, they are union paid scale dudes - they show up and play

the Studio Engineer would run him through the house console, maybe a specific out board pre for whatever reason and play back a run, sound good? great lets bang out this budwiser commercial, or more creative approaches maybe a gear oriented player might say to a non-ego inflated SE, hey man do you have a trident 80 I love my sound through them or an engineer just cant keep away from a Chandler Germanium for bass so thats the way they do it, perhaps a mic would be used on a cabinet, if so , what mic....again engineers call on contract work.

so it gets down to what studio..what era.. and what continent

Telefunken Tube stuff in Europe & UA Tube stuff in the US 50's to late 60's
Helios & Trident in the UK EUR late 60's to mid 70's
Neve API in America 70's etc on up to SSL today

now there are so many pres that engineers are combining their flavors much more often than was ever done in the past. Every flavor is available at once.
 
#13
lambro said:
as for what a "Session" player would use well it would not be up to a session player to decide really, they are union paid scale dudes - they show up and play
Click to expand...

Not in my world. Nor, apparently, is it that way in New York or LA. Most every session bassist I know - either socially or professionally - carries either a rack (as Mike Chapman did here last month, with a Neve preamp and EQ), a di like the Avalon U5 (John Howard from the group Sixwire was one of the first session guys I knew to bring the Avalon to sessions), an SWR Grand Prix (which Glenn Worf used the last time I talked to him about it), or even junk like the Pod or Sansamp (Bob Babbitt carries one). The practice of bassists carrying a rack into sessions was fairly prevalent here in Nashville by the early 1990's; I wrote an article for Bass Player magazine about studio racks sometime around 93 or 94. If it helps, in the late 1980's, I was hired to photograph a session that Lee Sklar played on - he used whatever DI was around (probably a countryman DI) and asked for an amp to sit on in the studio. 5 years later, all of the double and triple scale guys in Nashville had their own racks - and some would carry an amp in addition to the racks, since cartage fees were paid by the labels (and were fairly liberal at the time).

I must also wonder what being paid scale has to do with carrying a rack...

the Studio Engineer would run him through the house console, maybe a specific out board pre for whatever reason and play back a run, sound good? great lets bang out this budwiser commercial, or more creative approaches maybe a gear oriented player might say to a non-ego inflated SE, hey man do you have a trident 80 I love my sound through them or an engineer just cant keep away from a Chandler Germanium for bass so thats the way they do it, perhaps a mic would be used on a cabinet, if so , what mic....again engineers call on contract work.
Click to expand...

Well, the concept of outboard preamps didn't really happen until the mid 1980's, and purpose built rack mounted preamps may not have shown up until the early 1990's (though 1073's stripped out of Neve consoles and API lunchboxes were what DID show up). An ever growing number of studios no longer HAVE consoles. The discussion you envision may have happened to you - though if the studio doesn't have an 80 series Trident console, there's no way that you're going to be run through one of Trident's pre's. Unless you're talking about one of the new ones, which are certainly NOT high end preamps. Nice try, though.

The bass player rack became popular for two reasons; the first is that if the bassist can give the engineer an XLR output that can go straight to tape, it's a faster, cleaner setup. Second, by carrying one, the bassist is not at the mercy of an engineer who doesn't have a real handle on what the bass should sound like. As an example, I carried a Tube-Tech CL-1B in my bass rack for years, even though I use minimal compression (less than a dB at maximum). But when the engineer saw it in the rack, he would say, "OK, I don't need to use a compressor for you since you have your own". So I saved myself having the crap squashed out of my signal by the simple expedient of having a compressor in the rack.
so it gets down to what studio..what era.. and what continent

Telefunken Tube stuff in Europe & UA Tube stuff in the US 50's to late 60's
Helios & Trident in the UK EUR late 60's to mid 70's
Neve API in America 70's etc on up to SSL today
Click to expand...

Actually, it doesn't get down to that. Even ignoring that I've seen far more trident consoles (70 and 80 series) than API's, and certainly a greater number of Neve consoles in the UK than Helios... Why did you leave out Quad 8, Sphere, Flickinger, Electrodyne, and especially MCI consoles?
The practice of recording bass direct came fairly late in the day - the mid 1960's was the first that I've really heard about it. Some of the laster Who records and Led Zeppelin records had direct basses - not recorded with Telefunken and UA Tube stuff, but typically with a passive transformer cobbled into a DI with that run into the console (EMI built their own, as did Trident - remember that it was a recording studio before it was a console manufacturer). The motown era stuff was recorded with a UTC transformer stuck into a bud box. That went into the console - which were not (in England or the US) Telefunken, and not UA in many parts of the country; Stax started with an Ampex mixer, and later went to an Audiotronics. Muscle Shoals' Fame studio had a custom mixer with UA modules for some time, but replaced that with a Flickinger and then an MCI (and eventually a Neve).

At least into the 1970's in New York, the standard was a miked Ampeg B15; little research should explain the practice of New York bassists buying a B15 to leave in a studio...
now there are so many pres that engineers are combining their flavors much more often than was ever done in the past. Every flavor is available at once.
Click to expand...

Again, I'm not sure where you're getting your information, or where you're working that engineers will screw with what the bass player brings in because they 'love Chandler germaniums'; I've discussed changes with bassists when I can't get something useable from their signal chain (only happened twice in the last 5 years - one was having equipment problems and the other brought in something that sounded bad when it worked properly; the producer made the call then, not me). Can you offer a bit more information about the types of studios you've been working in, and who the engineers might be?
 
#14
bongomania said:
No, I exchanged a few posts with him over on Gearslutz recently where he met every single suggestion I had with a stone wall of not being at all open to suggestions. I would say something like "I wish the REDDI had a separate parallel line-level output the way my Summit TD100 does" and he would reply "The REDDI has 16 dB of gain". :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Actually, the REDDI does have a "thru" output now. The original versions didn't & that was definitely a big oversight by A Designs!

Also: Hey Dave Martin, lighten up, man! I agree with pretty much all of what you're saying, but it kinda reads like a smackdown! Wow.;) Let's just help the op out by suggesting some good gear to help him out in the studio.
 
#15
scotch said:
Also: Hey Dave Martin, lighten up, man! I agree with pretty much all of what you're saying, but it kinda reads like a smackdown! Wow.;) Let's just help the op out by suggesting some good gear to help him out in the studio.
Click to expand...

NO, it's not a smackdown - honest. It's my apparently lame attempt to keep things accurate on the few forums I frequent these days. The question wasn't about good gear to help out in the studio, it was asking what professional studio bassists use - a subject that I'm quite familiar with, both as a session bass player and a recording engineer. That's a VERY different question. But what the hell - you guys have fun.
 
#16
scotch said:
Also: Hey Dave Martin, lighten up, man! I agree with pretty much all of what you're saying, but it kinda reads like a smackdown! Wow.;) Let's just help the op out by suggesting some good gear to help him out in the studio.
Click to expand...

I actually found his comments to be quite informative and I did not detect the things that you noticed. He mentioned several preamps that are currently being used by some well known players. Isn't that enough?
 
#17
ebozzz said:
I actually found his comments to be quite informative and I did not detect the things that you noticed. He mentioned several preamps that are currently being used by some well known players. Isn't that enough?
Click to expand...

Yeah, I guess I read something into his syntax that wasn't there. My bad.
 
#19
Dave, thanks for the informative reply. I had that issue of BP magazine with the breakdown of a few of Nashville's top session guys, and that was excactly what I was trying to remember when I asked this question. I lost the magazine years ago, but I feel really good knowing that you care enough to inform people like me with great, accurate information. I will probably bug you guys around here more in the future for things that would help me out with getting started finding my way into getting studio work, but I definately don't want to be a nuessance. The caliber of the people I have already seen on this forum makes me feel good to know that true professionals in the industry are generous with their time and information they have learned through their experience! You guys ROCK!!!
 
#20
Dave Martin said:
even junk like the Pod or Sansamp
Click to expand...
:spit:

OK, the sansamp i admit isn't that great unless you're using it in an emergency - but please leave the pod out of it...it's not amazing, but its pretty good for clean sounds if you spend enough time setting up 3 or 4 nice ones (60's, 70's, slap, modern etc...) and you can always twiddle in a few effected sounds in a couple minutes till the producer reckons it sounds all right...he's always got the clean DI signal too - and probably a miked-up amp...
 

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