Bass recording sounding baaad... Help!

[Wood and Wire]

I'd record DI and room mic. I found on average that close miking a bass cab in a home recording situation almost never leads to great results - there is not enough control over the acoustics, there is damping required and a exact knowledge where to place the mike opposite the cab/speaker, and last but not least, typically one lacks (at least, I do) the kind of high quality mike that would make that sound good.Last but not least-the closer you mike with your average condenser/dynamic mic, the less low end you get, especially with cardoid patterns

The opposite is true.

Distance mic'ing is where you are concerned with the acoustic environment (which will only become more noticeable with compression).

Conversely, close mic'ing almost renders environmental acoustics irrelevant.

Furthermore, close mic'ing with a cardiod pickup pattern increases the bass response, known as bass tip up, due to the proximity effect.

The way that the microphone attenuates sound coming from the sides, and rear, is by having an acoustic labyrinth that causes them to arrive ~180 degrees out of phase with the sound hitting the front of the diaphragm.

This is frequency dependent : low frequencies have too long a wavelength to enter the labyrinth, and are unaffected by the phase cancellation - hence why the bass increases the closer you put the mic to the source.


It's good practice to get the mix working in mono. Only then is it time to start creatively using panning.

It's also a good idea to not use hard panning for more than one or two mix elements - and that's best left to mid / high frequency elements.

Low frequencies are much less directional, so if you have a crossover, you could send the low component of the bass guitar up the middle, and creatively pan the upper components around - but generally leave the widest stereo image for something like reverb / delay, and maybe a guitar. Narrow the image for drums, bass, keyboards etc.