What am I doing wrong here?

[aledeville]

I think this is the most common thing with bass guitar. Too much distortion buries you in the mix. IMO fuzz is the worst. When you play alone, you're loud as hell. As soon as you activate that pedal in the bandmix, you're lost immediately. The louder the band setting is and the more instruments there are, the worse is this effect. In my songwriting-trio it was really easy to use anything without losses of audibility. Now with my crossover/rock dudes, this is unthinkable. SansAmp BDDI is another pedal that is brutal in this way, especially when the blend is fully open (i.e. no dry signal).
This is the reason why there are blend options, this is the reason for the Darkglass success, this is the reason that imo makes the Brimstone XD-1/2 so awefully clever. Darkglass does not really try to emulate that tube distortion, but more a distortion that cuts through the mix and still let's the bass live in the mids. The Brimstone let's you split the signal frequency-wise and then you treat the lower and the higher frequencies in a different manner. This enables you to have a fat bottom end and punch you feel, in combination with distortion that cuts.

The experience you're describing led me to use one amp clean (410 cab) for the whole time and then just distort a second cab (112).
The more distortion you have, the less attack you have. It also leads to less punch, fatness, bottom... Additionally, the more treble your signal gets, the less bass it has (or just gets louder). I mean, a distortion boosts the highs (or reproduces new ones so to speak), but your signal then has much more treble content.

 

[EastCoastThump]

The two-amp solution is a great approach. But even if you can't go down that road, the two-amp approach offers a lesson about running bass distortion on one amp: the second (high-passed and distorted) amp doesn't reduce the volume of the amp that carries your basic tone. When playing solo to audition pedal settings, your intuition might be to set your distorted tone to sound about the same volume as clean tone. Don't.

As you've discovered, apparently equal clean and distorted bass tones aren't "equal" in a band context. The distorted tone leaves the bass masked in the context of the whole band's sound. Instead, try to set your pedal so that the underlying low end sounds about the same volume as the meat of your clean tone. The distorted tone is "extra on top."

You still may need to tweak your overall volume to fit in the band mix, but this approach will get your basic volume levels much closer.

 

[skulletwhip]

Try to bump the mids a bit.

 

[mr_flood]

I have the same problem using either the Big Muff or Sansamp built in distortion. My solution -> pump the output volume way up on the pedal. Solo, in my garage it's way to freaking loud. On stage, with the band, it fits right in. I've verified this with my regular sound guy, he tells me there's no difference in bass volume when I kick in the distortion with the output levels cranked.

 

[gregmon79]

You may need an EQ pedal. Bump your high mids a lot more and low mids a little. And dont be scared of some extra treble! Once you engage most dist pedals, you will lose some of your signal because it scoops it. Most of the time. Especially with fuzz. It takes a while and is a process most times, it was for me anyway, to get your bass to stick out in the mix when you play dirty. And I play dirty a lot. So I had to relearn how to EQ and well, I had to learn what EQ was, what the frequencies meant and what they did and where they affected the signal and how. This is huge. It takes time, but hang in there. It will come. You just have to keep trying different things.

I couldnt get my P bass to cut in the mix for the longest time. Well, its a P bass! Its meant to SIT in the mix, not cut into it. But that is what I wanted out of my P, to cut. So I changed the pups to active EMG's, replaced the rosewood fretboard for a maple fretboard, changed the bridge. I was still having issues. Then I learned about boost pedals and extra EQ that my amp didnt have. That was all I needed. My P can cut with the best of them. I also use a rather bottom robbing dirt pedal too, the Fulltone OCD. I love that pedal. But with it, it kills in the mix! Plus it just sounds so good to my ears with my rig. I can deal with a little bottom end robbage. Whateva. So there are a couple variables to start with, mids and EQ. THats what I think anyway.

 

[TerribleLiar23]

my bet would be it's an EQ thing. prolly need more mids - but not enough info to go on. scooped tones sound cool playing alone, but you need those mids to show up in a band mix.

I agree. Of course, I think that more mids is always a good idea, so I'm a bit biased. But I do think for your situation adding an EQ and boosting the mids, and/or getting a good mid boost pedal would help you out a bunch.

 

[HelpImaRock]

Rehearsal again tonight. I brought my Super Duper and had the levels balanced nicely, though the guitarist felt there was too much volume and I felt there was not enough gain with both sides engaged. Amp was an SVT-350 into a 1x15. But the real headway was made when I turned on my Double Red Llama. In order to get the right amount of gain at the lowest setting, I do have to roll off the instrument's volume knob. But the second side, which is basically set up for fuzz, handled the the sound i was going after beautifully. There is a bit of bass cut, but it's not mid-humpish like a TS. So I'll use the Llama with the next rig and see what happens.