Many of us have a love hate relationship with the L-series G&Ls. Monstrous, snarling, a sound unto themselves, but also unwieldy, spiky, tons of transient information, sometimes poor articulation in the low end.
The reason for this is, the MFD pickups are a novel design in that they are both high inductance(big ass magnet) and low impedence(low DC resistance/relatively low wind). Consequently, you get a very hot signal with very little high end attenuation and very little compression. Controlling the tone comes down to the fingers and the EQ.
One thing us L-series users have discovered is, the EQ was designed to be subtractive, so the bass was never really designed to be played wide open. It is happiest with some bass and treble rolled off. That said, the unwieldy transients are still there.
I tried recording with this bass and could just never get that nice pillowy humbucker tone I hear on records. I tried all kinds of amp sims, compression settings, eq settings, you name it. I mean, mixing bass is hard as it is, but for some reason getting a nice recording tone out of an L-series has always alluded me.
Then, the simplest solution got me an incredible result. Don't do an amp sim. Just take the raw DI signal. Throw on the neck pickup, in passive mode, in series, wide open, then just throw an 1176 style compressor. Make the attack slightly faster than noon, release about 2 o'clock, and shoot for 7-10 db of gain reduction.
Holy moly, all of a sudden, the tone starts to sound like a really satisfying, musical record tone. There are a few other things you need to do from here, but stay with me.
The reason I think this happens is, the "uncompressed-ness" of the L-series is part of the pickup design, for reasons I mentioned above. Too much bass, too much treble, too much wild transients. Too much everything. The 76 does the work of smashing that all down into a more even tone. I mean all compressors do this duh, but I think this kind of pickup needs it more than usual.
The raw DI tone with the 76 sounds so good, it needs very little else in terms of being record-ready.
I run a second track and low pass below 250, and then compress the absolute crap out of it, then low shelf 80 or so. this gets you that kind of ultra low end super even, almost like a sine wave, to take care of the part of the bass you "feel" rather than "hear." I then just blend this track in to taste.
You can take the original tone and very gently high pass up to 40, 50, even 60, and get a delicate blend of the two. Most of the time, you only need to feed in just a little of the filtered low end track.
Then on a third track run a kind of transistor style distortion, cutting out above 4k and below 350 or so, and so you get some emphasis at 1k. blend this in so you can BARELY hear it.
All three of those make for a mix-ready setup for the L-series basses. From there you need to get it cooperating with the kick, and there are many approaches to this. That's beyond the scope of this topic.
But steps 2 and 3 aside, just the raw DI with the 76 smashing 7-10 db on the series neck pup. try it. It took it from one of the fussiest pickups I've ever used to some of the most rewarding.
The reason for this is, the MFD pickups are a novel design in that they are both high inductance(big ass magnet) and low impedence(low DC resistance/relatively low wind). Consequently, you get a very hot signal with very little high end attenuation and very little compression. Controlling the tone comes down to the fingers and the EQ.
One thing us L-series users have discovered is, the EQ was designed to be subtractive, so the bass was never really designed to be played wide open. It is happiest with some bass and treble rolled off. That said, the unwieldy transients are still there.
I tried recording with this bass and could just never get that nice pillowy humbucker tone I hear on records. I tried all kinds of amp sims, compression settings, eq settings, you name it. I mean, mixing bass is hard as it is, but for some reason getting a nice recording tone out of an L-series has always alluded me.
Then, the simplest solution got me an incredible result. Don't do an amp sim. Just take the raw DI signal. Throw on the neck pickup, in passive mode, in series, wide open, then just throw an 1176 style compressor. Make the attack slightly faster than noon, release about 2 o'clock, and shoot for 7-10 db of gain reduction.
Holy moly, all of a sudden, the tone starts to sound like a really satisfying, musical record tone. There are a few other things you need to do from here, but stay with me.
The reason I think this happens is, the "uncompressed-ness" of the L-series is part of the pickup design, for reasons I mentioned above. Too much bass, too much treble, too much wild transients. Too much everything. The 76 does the work of smashing that all down into a more even tone. I mean all compressors do this duh, but I think this kind of pickup needs it more than usual.
The raw DI tone with the 76 sounds so good, it needs very little else in terms of being record-ready.
I run a second track and low pass below 250, and then compress the absolute crap out of it, then low shelf 80 or so. this gets you that kind of ultra low end super even, almost like a sine wave, to take care of the part of the bass you "feel" rather than "hear." I then just blend this track in to taste.
You can take the original tone and very gently high pass up to 40, 50, even 60, and get a delicate blend of the two. Most of the time, you only need to feed in just a little of the filtered low end track.
Then on a third track run a kind of transistor style distortion, cutting out above 4k and below 350 or so, and so you get some emphasis at 1k. blend this in so you can BARELY hear it.
All three of those make for a mix-ready setup for the L-series basses. From there you need to get it cooperating with the kick, and there are many approaches to this. That's beyond the scope of this topic.
But steps 2 and 3 aside, just the raw DI with the 76 smashing 7-10 db on the series neck pup. try it. It took it from one of the fussiest pickups I've ever used to some of the most rewarding.
