Bass Guitar

I was really struggling with the punch and clarity of a bass part I recorded for a fairly conventional rock/pop track and after a lot of trying different things, and for want of anything else to try, I low-passed the track at 1khz with liteon's JS 3bandpeakfilter and it absolutely did the trick. Like a windscreen wiper with added screen-wash :) I don't think I can recall having low-passed a bass before so this was a great find for me. So, for the benefit of the congregation could you good people please put up your bass guitar set-ups, tricks, sims-u-use, fx chains, comp settings etc? I for one could really use the help here.

Depending on what you're going for, parallel processing the bass may be a benefit too. Basically you create a new track, route the bass to it, tack on a little distortion and bring it up just behind the main bass. Helps the bass stand out. I got this tip from here:

Thanks Ted and Lawrence - exactly what I'm after. I have a new ReaComp preset to work from. And thanks too Captain - that's a great little video. I could see that working also with blending in over-the-top compression. Of course in Reaper you might do all that on the one track with channel splitting :)

When doing metal, sometimes I have to use a de-esser on bass. It functions like a de-rattler in that way, and performs well. I also try communication before the actual recording, depending on the amount of beer & nerves involved.

Unox, its a crying shame about those locks on your avitar ;), i guess i'm lucky to have got a peak before the locks appeared :D Sorry for the OT, i'll be good now. Cheers

One of the first thing my 2 bass teachers told me was "always be aware of where the kick is". For a long time I thought that meant to play ON the kick. Took me a while to realize that to "be aware of where the kick is" and to "play on the kick" are two entirely different things.

Bullshark, you are right about the playing of the bass part. It is in the hands! Also if the tone Does'nt start at the bass GTR, No amount of FX or prossing is going to make up for it. I found from playing bass for years I've had every Piece of gear Behind, but if it's not at the start(ie. the bass)you won't get it back. Clean your strings, Boil then. I have two sets for every bass and change back and forth as needed. I learn'd this when I did the #'s and it had cost me over $500US in a year. OUCH, I needed to find something else to do. And I did. May good bass tone come to you all. E.

Just trying to generate more good stuff here - so any favoured plug-ins? That Oxford compressor in the youtube clip wolffman posted sounded great (even over youtube) and looked very easy to use. But anyone have any favourites specifically for bass? If you can say why you prefer it for bass then it might give the rest of us chance to try to understand why it might be good.

I frequently double-track the bass and pan the tracks 90%-100% left and right. I always thought this was on the Don't Ever list til I read an interview with some engineer who mentioned it and I tried it. It gives a nice room-filling sound.

So I tried quite a few different compressors on the same material tonight and my conclusion was that the ones I liked the most were the ones that I found easiest to use and where the controls were most intuitive. I suppose I could have guessed that from the start :o This was on headphones but I can't say that any of them impressed me hugely more than the others on bass except that four or five were quite easy to set up and the rest were a bit baffling. So in that regard the good ones were: Blockfish (although it really does shout "COMPRESSOR-ON" at you! - I think I would use it in parallel) Major Tom (& Master Tom for that matter) ReaComp Kjaerhaus Classic I can't really reliably hear what's going on with the others I tried. I suspect Rocket would be brilliant if I knew what I was doing but I always get to a point where I've gone too far and I have to scrap what I've done and start again - I find exactly the same with ReaXComp. I did get a reasonably decent sound with the Antress Modern and the Antress Modern VPME but I felt this was more by accident than design and so I didn't really trust them. The Antress 1176-alike gives a really obvious squashed sound that I guess could be used in parallel quite effectively, but again I don't trust it somehow. :D I don't own any paid-for comps except Rocket and Major Tom so I don't know from the higher end stuff. Sorry for droning on but please join in with bass guitar treatment ideas.