I've been struggling with this for a long time and I think the difficulty is partly getting the tone and dynamics right on the bass itself and partly how it sits in the mix. I've never been really happy just going from the bass directly into a DI or a preamp, but I've only tried a handful of preamps. The FMR is a great bang per buck pre and I should probably pick one up and check it out.
I think you'd probably like the sound of an upscale compressor more than the Berringer and I'm not one of those people that is down on Berringer, but I like the sound of high quality tube compressors on bass. That's not a pro-tube bias of mine, per se. I also like some solid state compressors, for example the Focusrite Compounder is one that has a huge range of tweakability for bass and kick because it has a built in low frequency side chain. You can use that to tailor the tone and attack for the bass itself or the dynamics of the performance. I bought my compounder used and got a steal at ~200 bucks. I don't think Focusrite makes them anymore but they had a street price of about $600. It's a stereo compressor so I've run DI into one channel and a mic on the cabinet into the other, then did a phase adjustment in Cubase during mixdown.
I've got a buss compressor made by A Designs that also has a built in side chain and it's more tweakable than the Compounder and has a tube. It's pretty awesome on bass and is fairly transparent up to about 12 dB of compression. but it cost over $2K and it's not the kind of thing I'm going to lug around to gigs that I'm recording live.
So I tend to take a DI out off of the amp head if it's available plus run a mic or two and then try to get them to play nice together while mixing. I just bought a plug-in sold by Universal Audio that's called the Little Labs IBP:
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It's for phase alignment and I've only piddled with it a little. My plan is to double or triple my tracks and put the IBP on each track and mess around with EQ on each and maybe try some automation on the EQ and the IBP delay. It's a black hole for time and probably a wild goose chase, but that's the way life goes.
I keep trying different mics for bass cabs and currently I'm using an AKG P2 and it's a mixed bag. It just doesn't capture the weight of the bass. I've also used an AKG D112 quite a bit, an Audix D6, and I think they mess with the EQ too much. I've also tried a bunch of different condensors and some ribbons (sitting behind a pop filter).
I like having the mic'ed signal down a few dB in the mix relative to the DI. I recently picked up a Universal Audio LA-610 M2, which is a tube channel strip. I'm happy with it on guitar but have not tried it on bass. Still looking for magic bullets. One thing that has worked pretty good is to put the cab out in our garage and mic it up with a reflexion filter right behind the mic, then a few gobos about 6' in back of the mic. That way, you get alot of low frequency punch and the reflexion filter kills alot of the room vibration and rattles caused by the cab kicking out 110+ dB of thunder.
ditto the fet47, probably my favourite mic along with a coles 4038!
