Floppy sound with Stingray 5?

It could be a bad DI, bad soundman EQing your signal, or bad recording due to the recorder. Some recording devices don't capture the low end well.

Why not try using a mic on your cab instead of DI? It's an easy next step that doesn't involve questioning your sound guy, or acquiring a new recording device or DI.

 

Well, speakers removes a lot of high frequencys, if you cut treble on your amp, add that and it removes a lot of clank and fretbuzz. On the other hand when you use a Di all those nasty highs are there.

So there are two things you can do:

Buy a high quality Di.

or if you want your true sound

Buy a good mic and a stand and just mic your rig. I mean guitar players never go Di because of those unwanted high frequencys, bass too sounds way better when miked.

 

its the soundman ! get the noose, lol. johnny a

 

It's true some soundmen, really don't care about the bass tone and don't even seem to listen to it. Don't let them intimidate you, if your bass sounds like crap up front, just tell them.

Also, ask someone with a good ear to tell you how you sound in the room, it might just be that the soundguy Eq's it too sound good through the Pa, and that since it's not a recording session, they just don't care how it's going to sound on record.

 

maybe your amp is so loud from the stage that the soundman can only put a little bit into the mix and eqs it to add some definition.

 

This actually sounds like a phase or impedance problem - are the recordings sourced right from the mixing board? If they are, I'd look into making sure that the signal path for the bass is at unity gain, in-phase, and equalized properly.

 

Not the difference you are speaking of. You are speaking of serious tone issues where it's drastically different than on stage, not transparency or noise issues.

 

...And there's the red flag for me! The second the sound guy says: "I've been doing this forever, and were going to do it this way!" I automatically think: crappy sound guy.

If the sound guy says "Do what you need to do and I'll work with it, and I'll fix it if I have to." - that's a quality sound man.

 

Since you described the bass tone you heard as "thin", I have a feeling that the soundguy gave you the smiley face tone through the PA. Which would irritate the living crap out of me....

The other thing here is: what are they using to record the band? Frequency response of this device? Unless you get the sound recorded with some damn good gear and place it correctly (miced in strategic locations or taking a good mixer board fed signal), a large amount of low end will be missing.

You should definitely try to get someone out in the audience to tell you what they hear or get someone to play your gear while you wander around listening to the PA signal.

 

Quite often the sound of the bass rig in the room is very boomy (often way to loud in one narrow frequency range, and not loud enough everywhere else). The mixperson has to use a weird EQ on the bass channel so that when the bass from the PA is blended with the bass rig, the bass sounds good in the house. The bad thing is that the bass will likely sound like crap on a board recording. If the mixperson tries to get some low bass from the PA - frequencies that are under the boom and under what the cabinet can do - the recording does not suffer quite as badly. Many mixpersons don't do this. (Of course quite often if they did, bass would be all anyone in the room could hear, unless the mix was run up way too loud.)

In short, the secret is to EQ the bass rig so it sounds good in the house, not on stage. Then the mixperson won't have to FU the bass EQ in the PA. I've yet to hear this done.