Hello. I play in a band with a friend of mine, who's a solid upright bass player: creative, solid time, great theory background, not a technical wizard, but a good groove factory. Unfortunately, his bass sucks, and he knows it... he's never had the money to buy a really good one. He plays a cheap laminate 1/2. He likes 1/2s because they're punchy, and he does a lot of slappy bluegrass with it.
Problem is, we're always having trouble getting good mixes live. I'm a novice bass player myself, but only electric, and I'm MOSTLY a keyboardist, so I'm not the expert on miking uprights. He's always throwing an SM58 in a little holster under his bridge. I've never seen anyone else do that, but he really likes it for some reason, thinks it gets more of the body out of the sound than a clip-on. One of my most trusted live sound engineers has thrown him an AKG C1000 on occasion, which my friend says he likes a lot better, but I'm not a huge fan of the C1000 myself. At one point he offered my friend a beta58, which is just really strange (he hates the beta58, as do I) and I'm not convinced that a kick drum mic has the best frequency response for miking an upright. But then again, it's not a great upright, and might need some help in the frequency response curve. A huge smiley face might be just what it needs.
So, it's a crappy, plywood bass that doesn't resonate very well, and the sound dies quickly. A new bass isn't in the cards, but maybe I can get some ideas as to some clever miking suggestions that will do better than what we're getting now. I know, you can't polish a turd, but sometimes you can at least make the smell go away.
I should mention, we're playing sort of a hybrid of folk and fusion jazz/rock. So he slaps quite a bit for the folksy material, but plays finger style on the modern stuff.
Problem is, we're always having trouble getting good mixes live. I'm a novice bass player myself, but only electric, and I'm MOSTLY a keyboardist, so I'm not the expert on miking uprights. He's always throwing an SM58 in a little holster under his bridge. I've never seen anyone else do that, but he really likes it for some reason, thinks it gets more of the body out of the sound than a clip-on. One of my most trusted live sound engineers has thrown him an AKG C1000 on occasion, which my friend says he likes a lot better, but I'm not a huge fan of the C1000 myself. At one point he offered my friend a beta58, which is just really strange (he hates the beta58, as do I) and I'm not convinced that a kick drum mic has the best frequency response for miking an upright. But then again, it's not a great upright, and might need some help in the frequency response curve. A huge smiley face might be just what it needs.
So, it's a crappy, plywood bass that doesn't resonate very well, and the sound dies quickly. A new bass isn't in the cards, but maybe I can get some ideas as to some clever miking suggestions that will do better than what we're getting now. I know, you can't polish a turd, but sometimes you can at least make the smell go away.
I should mention, we're playing sort of a hybrid of folk and fusion jazz/rock. So he slaps quite a bit for the folksy material, but plays finger style on the modern stuff.
The kick mic is the B52 which is a huge POS ;-/
