Bass DI Vs. Bass Micing

[Dino Ziogas]

dino.. Do you really work a lot on room placement with bass gtr?  With gtr and drums the room can be everything but I've always just close miced bass and blended the DI.. Do you use room mics?

I usually have my bass cab mic around 1 to 1 1/2 ft from the grille. If the room is untreated things can get a bit nasty. I always end up moving the bass cab around since I don't work on big rooms often. Even if the player is balanced and the instrument properly set-up, you can hear many room related inconsistencies as you play the first couple octaves. Bass response in smaller rooms is a bitch. You may have the mic in a hot or cold spot easily.

With guitars and drums rooms indeed make or brake the sound/tonality etc but whereas electric bass tone is not that much affected by the room, it's all important low freq response is. You may have some comb filtering on the 800Hz-3500Hz region of the bass and it doesn't falsify the sound [much of which is masked anyway, he he] whereas a lumpy freq response captured by the mic can result in heavy EQ'ing to tidy things up later.

I don't use room mics for the bass. I might do it if I want to blend just a bit of natural ambience to a sparse arangement but the room mic will be radically processed to avoid bass problems when blending with the close mic.

Use a big, treated room for bass if you can but don't get too worried on this - a balanced player on a well set-up instrument going through a decent valve amp is 90% there...

[Silent Bob]

You may have the mic in a hot or cold spot easily.

Remember though, a hot spot for one note can be a cold spot for another.  Or perfectly fine for most notes can still have abnormal effects on other notes.  Luckily my room is fairly large and I have the luxury of keeping my amps away from the walls.  Raising the amps of the ground also helps quite often.  I used to have cinder blocks for the purpose of supporting bass cabs.  Right now they're occupied supporting a couch in my iso booth so I can store things under it.

I sometimes use room mics when I'm recording a whole band together but never for just the bass cabinet.  I've heard them used and they can be a good effect but my clients usually don't have the time to experiment like that so I usually stick with a single mic 20-50CM from the grill cloth.

[Dino Ziogas]

You may have the mic in a hot or cold spot easily.

Remember though, a hot spot for one note can be a cold spot for another.  Or perfectly fine for most notes can still have abnormal effects on other notes.  Luckily my room is fairly large and I have the luxury of keeping my amps away from the walls.  Raising the amps of the ground also helps quite often.  I used to have cinder blocks for the purpose of supporting bass cabs.  Right now they're occupied supporting a couch in my iso booth so I can store things under it.

I sometimes use room mics when I'm recording a whole band together but never for just the bass cabinet.  I've heard them used and they can be a good effect but my clients usually don't have the time to experiment like that so I usually stick with a single mic 20-50CM from the grill cloth.

Good point SB.

[NMRecording]

I love to mic the bass amp using my akg D112 However.... 

I recently tried using my atlas pro juggernaut pre amp as a DI with the nickel transformer in and out

and HOLY $#!7     i think i need to sell my bass amp and get an ampeg to rival that DI sound.

A full bass sound that grabs your chest even in headphones.  The freq switch lets you dial in the right sweet spot depending whether you want that slap to sparkle or those lows to just grab your balls when the note plucks


i reccomend it, best 1400 spent in my studio