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P bass sounds terrible
- Thread starter alex1fly
- Start date
Sorry if I missed this: are you recording and mixing yourself? If not, it may be that the person mixing your tracks just doesn't have a good grasp of how to mix low end.
After all, a lot of these problems should be solved in post. It sounds like the engineer should be cutting some low mids with EQ, boosting some high mids, and compressing somewhat aggressively. Another trick is to add slight distortion/saturation. The harmonics and high end content that will produce help it cut through the mix better without having to be as loud.
It's also important to have a separate space for the bass and kick drum. Most mixers I know will boost the kick drum at around 60 hz but cut it around 100 hz. Then they will do the opposite for the bass. This will vary a bit from song to song, but the point is that carving away space for each helps create separation. If you have them occupying the exact same frequency range, you're going to have a buildup. I'll also often cut some mids, since that's the frequency range most of your other instruments will occupy.
Also, make sure you're not recording too hot. -18db is generally recommended, though up to -12 or so is fine.
After all, a lot of these problems should be solved in post. It sounds like the engineer should be cutting some low mids with EQ, boosting some high mids, and compressing somewhat aggressively. Another trick is to add slight distortion/saturation. The harmonics and high end content that will produce help it cut through the mix better without having to be as loud.
It's also important to have a separate space for the bass and kick drum. Most mixers I know will boost the kick drum at around 60 hz but cut it around 100 hz. Then they will do the opposite for the bass. This will vary a bit from song to song, but the point is that carving away space for each helps create separation. If you have them occupying the exact same frequency range, you're going to have a buildup. I'll also often cut some mids, since that's the frequency range most of your other instruments will occupy.
Also, make sure you're not recording too hot. -18db is generally recommended, though up to -12 or so is fine.
Interesting predicament. This will likely not help you but I did an experiment recently with two basses recording the same part into two tracks. Same input on the interface, both basses at full volume, tone 1/3 rolled off. The first is a Sting Precision split single coil with rounds and the second is a ‘74 P bass with TI flats. Aside from whatever fatness was imparted due to the flat wound strings, the difference in the thickness of the wavelength was remarkable, and to your point, the 70s P bass took up much more sonic space. That’s usually something I like but since the summer I’ve been obsessed with the sound of this ‘51 style P bass with rounds. The screenshot below shows the difference in the ‘fatness’ of the wavelength. I’m not an audio engineer and I could be mistaken, but I believe the difference in wavelength shapes and sound is due to the different pickups, with the standard P bass pup delivering its notorious fatness.
Many things go into recorded sound. If you end up rolling the bass volume down, it's likely that its output is too hot, much hotter than your JBass, and you need to turn down input gain in order to track it with your regular touch. Also distorted/saturated input will probably account for that unpleasant Fat and Bloated thing. Too much sonic space is a job for mixing EQ. Inconsistent dynamics can be addressed with proper compression. And so on.
Also note: Bass tone that sounds well in the mix usually sounds like garbage by itself. When you're under guitars/cymbals/vocals, lots of detail is lost.
For example, listen to these clips:
Full song:
Isolated bass:
Notice how the solo bass sounds distorted, farty and clangy. That's actually what allows it to be heard in the band context, if you took that away when mixed the bass would sound shy/muted instead of driving.
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It's impossible to tell what the issue might be without hearing these mixes ourselves... It could be so many things, perhaps not even related to the bass track itself.
The pickup heigh Is important. If that doesn't work, change the pickup. You Should check:
1.- Aero pickups
2.- Moollon pickups
3.- Arcane pickups
4.- Seymour Duncan Antiquity II pickups
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Yeah, i'm not a huge precision fan, but i've never had trouble getting them to sit nice on records. In fact, recording is the only reason i own one. Keep your controls on the bass dimed and play pretty lightly. Stick with the flats, i'd say. Don't cut highs unless they are harsh and only do so after you lay the track. Remember at the desk its always easy to cut highs and boost lows, but going in the other direction is a little trickier to get good results from. Plug in direct, with a reasonably short (<15 foot) low-capacitance cable, use a touch of compression and in your EQ hipass to about 30-50hz or higher depending on how much boom you've got. Maybe give a little bump in the 500 range, and maybe a touch around 2k if you wish, but yeah. I prefer no speaker or amp sims but instead using a touch of reverb mixed with the right amount of compression to get a little bit of a "room" feel. Doing that should give a pretty "dry"/"papery" top with a tight, controlled bottom and just enough midrangey "ugly sounds" to poke through. That's just what i do. And if that doesn't help, then maybe just call the jazz the recording bass.
Try throwing a set of roundwounds on the P, keep the flats on the J.
Great post. That messed-up tone, I will add, is also what allowed it to be heard on my phone speaker just now. That’s a masterful recording.
Lots of helpful suggestions. FWIW, I love La Bellas on my P, but the tone is dark and I always always record with the tone fully upon. Better to have that definition on the track and tone it down in the mix if needed.
I know, for an absolute fact, that I think maybe about 40-50% of all bass guitars recording now are probably precisions or something.
There's a lot of psychological difference between playing live thru your rig of doom and playing direct into a comparatively tiny studio reference pair. Also, a hundred other things contribute heh, but the difference there is a key one.
What I've done to track what I find to be good-quality studio bass recordings is spend time just practicing thru whatever will be my DI rig, and get familiar with it. It's like another amp, just a weird one that forces you to play a little differently...aka add a new tool to your toolbox.
As far as pedals, probably the most useful pedal (or software plugin already on hand!!) for getting a clean, tight P bass recording you can get is a high-pass filter. Having it in a hardware pedal form lets you really optimize the headroom of your signal going in, which is good for managing noise and the mix in general, so if you're down to spend a little on one, then a HPF is a strong choice. In big mixes where bass is already gonna be down to -12dB or something, then a software EQ rolling off lows under about 60Hz will do the trick. Bass ain't about lows, it's about mids. Mostly low mids for a P, but still... you can roll off the mud and still get a fat-ass bass track with a tiny bit of EQ.
What I've done to track what I find to be good-quality studio bass recordings is spend time just practicing thru whatever will be my DI rig, and get familiar with it. It's like another amp, just a weird one that forces you to play a little differently...aka add a new tool to your toolbox.
As far as pedals, probably the most useful pedal (or software plugin already on hand!!) for getting a clean, tight P bass recording you can get is a high-pass filter. Having it in a hardware pedal form lets you really optimize the headroom of your signal going in, which is good for managing noise and the mix in general, so if you're down to spend a little on one, then a HPF is a strong choice. In big mixes where bass is already gonna be down to -12dB or something, then a software EQ rolling off lows under about 60Hz will do the trick. Bass ain't about lows, it's about mids. Mostly low mids for a P, but still... you can roll off the mud and still get a fat-ass bass track with a tiny bit of EQ.
