Double Bass Recording acoustic bass

[rick waldron]

Recording acoustic upright bass on my little system at home - Any tips for a beginner? Cubase (yeah, I know..)

1) use my nice pickup, or mic it?
2) need to boost signal, right? amp? my electric bass amp (SWR) sounds horrid with the acoustic, unless I can change my settings somehow.
3) websites with info about this? amp, mic, software settings, etc. choices that sort of thing.

thanks
Rick

 

[Wasnex]

Recording acoustic upright bass on my little system at home - Any tips for a beginner? Cubase (yeah, I know..)

1) use my nice pickup, or mic it?
2) need to boost signal, right? amp? my electric bass amp (SWR) sounds horrid with the acoustic, unless I can change my settings somehow.
3) websites with info about this? amp, mic, software settings, etc. choices that sort of thing.

thanks
Rick

If you are playing solo and have a decent mic, the mic will most likely be the best choice. The sweet spot on each bass is different, but try aiming the mic between the bridge and F hole.

If you are playing with an ensemble, it can be very challenging to use a mic. Upright bass is not very loud, so the mic must be very close to the bass to minimize bleed from surrounding instruments, which may not sound very good. Also the bleed may still be excessive even with the mic a fraction of an inch from the bass.

If you have and intend to use a piezo pickup, be advised that piezos need to be buffered by a fairly high impedance to sound decent. The optimum impedance varies with design, but generally 1 Meg ohm is about the lowest acceptable. Without some sort of a buffer, the mids can be overly squawky and the lows will be somewhat limited.

The quality of sound varies significantly between different brands and models of pickups

With a lot of EQ a piezo can be made to sound fairly nice. I believe that is essentially what the Audio Sprockets Tonedexter does.

Here's a video you might like:

FYI he used the Balsereit pickup with the Tonedexter

Another video just on the Tonedexter

 

[AGCurry]

Recording acoustic upright bass on my little system at home - Any tips for a beginner? Cubase (yeah, I know..)

1) use my nice pickup, or mic it?
2) need to boost signal, right? amp? my electric bass amp (SWR) sounds horrid with the acoustic, unless I can change my settings somehow.
3) websites with info about this? amp, mic, software settings, etc. choices that sort of thing.

thanks
Rick

1) Assuming you want the recording to sound like your bass, use a microphone.

2) Why do you need to boost the signal?

3) There are several online sources with enough information to drive you nuts, one of which is in the double-bass section of Talkbass.

 

[rick waldron]

wonderful! thanks all

 

[seamonkey]

Good past discussion here:
Mic'ing techniques for tracking double bass in studio

 

[Tosh]

Ribbon Mic! got one a few months back - great choice for any acoustic bass, low brass, low woodwind, etc...

Also makes my voice phatter

 

[And I]

What are your options as far as microphones go?

 

[JeezyMcNuggles]

Recording acoustic upright bass on my little system at home - Any tips for a beginner? Cubase (yeah, I know..)

1) use my nice pickup, or mic it?
2) need to boost signal, right? amp? my electric bass amp (SWR) sounds horrid with the acoustic, unless I can change my settings somehow.
3) websites with info about this? amp, mic, software settings, etc. choices that sort of thing.

thanks
Rick

Hpf is your friend. Even more so with an acoustic "guitar" (funny enough). My Q-Strip has a "rumble filter" (hpf) button for recording acoustic instruments. It keeps things so much cleaner.

 

[eliascalles]

really depends on..... your bass, your room, the rest of the track (assuming the bass will not be solo) and what you want it to sound like. The last upright I recorded was for a punk/mariachi band and in the end the sound we found that they loved was a mix of the crappy piezo installed on the bass blended with a cheapo SDC (audio technica pro37) with way too much compression and delay lol. I've done live jazz sessions that sounded fine with a 57 wrapped in a towel and stuck in the tail piece. if you're tracking your bass solo (not live with other instruments in the room) start with moving the bass around the room you'll be recording in. use your ears, see if one part of the room sounds better than another. take a mic (whatever you have) and start by pointing it at the bridge and record a bit, see how it sounds. TAKE NOTES! measure distances from mic to source. note where it was pointed. then start moving the mic (distance to bass, where it's pointing etc). once you have a pile of recorded clips with notes to match, start playing with eq, compression etc and see if anything jumps out. IF you're planning to use this bass track in a mix, drop some of your clips in and see what works. as mentioned you'll prob want to HPF (nothing useful really below 50-60hz on an upright track). If you find your upright track competing with kick drum track sidechain compression can be useful (less is more w that imo). If you're blending a DI track with mic'd track try starting with the DI all the way down, then bring it up to fill in the lower end within the context of the mix. cheers!

 

[BassiklyAC]

Lots of good advice here. I like to experiment with various blends of the mic & pickup, with the music at hand dictating the direction I’m going with that.

I recently did a track for a guitar player here in town who did a nice version of “Wichita Lineman”. In the studio we recorded it on electric (the artist’s choice) but I was strongly advocating for the upright, so I redid the track at home. In my mind, a strong presence of the pickup blended with the mic was the call for this type of track. If this was a jazz tune, I might have favored the mic a lot more. Anyway, here’s the results:

 

[Pat Harris]

What is the desired end result?

Organic sounding solo acoustic bass?
Recording a track to sit in a mix?

IMO, upright bass is one of the most difficult instruments to reproduce through a set of speakers, so it’s really good to keep an open mind to trying all sorts of options and methods.

 

[logdrum]

Tracks are cheap nowadays unless you are recording to tape. Record four tracks, raw piezo, processed piezo, near mic, far mic. if using amp, record speaker also.