What do you use for a recording rig?

[beezerjoe]

I'm sure this question has been asked abunch of times here but I'm to lazy to look. I don't get to record much but when I do it's an up hill battle for tone when I go direct into the board. I use a jazz bass with duncan 1/4 pounders in it and an Ampeg svt2p preamp and some compression. All this stuff is out of my live rig. I either get a low muddy tone or one that's to treblely and on the weak side. Either way I'm never 100% happy with it. Most of the recording situations I've been in require me to go direct( I would prefer to use my whole amp and cabs) due to local studios being in nieghborhoods. So what do you studio players use for a DI recording rig? I would really like to get that live amp sound and feel but I'm just not sure how to obtain it.

Thank you for any insight you can provide. Joe

 

[bgressman82]

a few years back, i did a demo for a friend and used a line 6 bass pod xt. i bought my own a few days later and haven't played without it since. live or studio. great features, plenty of tones, all the effects you'll never need. it takes some time to get used to, but it has led me to the tone that i've always wanted on both my recordings and my live rig.

 

[Nick Kay]

I always DI the scratch tracks to keep bleed out of the drum mics. Proper takes, though, are almost always a miked amp in addition to a DI (and possible re-amping later). It helps to put the bass and player in the same room as the amp, too. A lot of that "live" feel comes from the player getting kicked in the chest with the response from the cab, along with the instrument responding to the sound coming out of the cab.

As for the actual DI path, it goes something like this...

Bass > DI > Transparent Mic Preamp > Recorder

If your engineer has trouble dealing with this, find a new one. A J with no alterations to the tone usually has zero trouble sitting in the mix after some light compression.

As for incorporating an instrument preamp into the mix, you HAVE to have a cabinet sim of some sort after the preamp stage. This will fix 90% of the "cold and sterile" problems on DI bass tracks. Just pick up a few free impulse responses of bass cabinets, use them with a convolution reverb set near or at 100% wet, and you'll be laughing.

 

[beezerjoe]

I've been down the engineer path and so far found one that got me a good tone. Most of the others let me wallow around until something passable showed up.

You know Nick you may have just bumped my head to something I hadn't thought about. I always try to incorporate my preamp out of my live rig. The setup for one not be so good for the other. So a cabinet simulator might help out considerably.

Thanks so for for the suggestions. Joe

 

[thunderstation]

The best recording sound I gotten without the too trebely/too muddy problen- was to use a small practice amp (10" speaker & 10 - 25 watts) I mike the speaker, angling the mike about 20o off the center 5" - 10" away depending on volume (you don't need "11" ) then I use a direct box to the board - I pan the miked channel and the DI channel to opposite degrees and then bounce the two recordings to a third channel. eq'ing is essential - but you can usaually get a strong clean signal & from there you can use the bass tone & volume controls and the board eq's to adjust the sound to your liking. -

 

[Nedmundo]

If your engineer has trouble dealing with this, find a new one. A J with no alterations to the tone usually has zero trouble sitting in the mix after some light compression.

Interesting you say this, because despite all the futzing I've done with various approaches, the most consistently good tone I get is running my Jazz into my Aphex Punch Factory on light compression, and sending the compressed signal from the PF's DI straight to the board. It doesn't blow my mind or anything, but it's an easy way to get solid, useful tracks that sit well in the mix.

Thanks for the rest of your post. Very informative.

 

[the_ruckus]

The best bass tone I've achieved through the studio was through an old Korg AX30B bass processor ran A/B through an SVT3 pro head and a Sansamp RBI.

I played a Fender Jazz with the S1 switching system engaged.

My cab was the old svt 410115 all in one cab.. i believe the 10 and 15 were mic'd as well.

I know it's a wild amount of bass tracks, but it had everything we needed for the whole session. no touch ups, just a little mixing and compressing.

 

[beezerjoe]

Great suggestions so far. Lots of good ideas. From what I've read around here the Sansamp seems to be a good tool for the studio as well. I've been thinking about getting one and running it with my SVT 2p preamp to see what I get fir a DI sound.