Bass Guitar Simulator.

[banjaxed]

I have been trying to get a bass guitar sound using the bass simulator on my BR900 but they all seem to have quite a lot of different effects, and even after turning most of them off I still can't get a normal bass guitar sound. does anyone know if this can be achieved or not ?
Best regards,
Maurice.

[Geir]

I don't have a 900 but on my  br80 and on the 800 I find that turning the treble down and also have as little punch as possible in the guitar helps a lot. The simulators seem to have trouble with too spikey sounds

[banjaxed]

Hi,
Thanks for the reply. I have tried taking the treble right down as you suggested and it does help, but the problem is the effects don't seem to want to go away and leave a dry sound.

[64Guitars]

When you don't have a bass, the BR's bass simulator is better than nothing. If you play cleanly and turn down the treble, you can get a bass sound that's reasonably okay. But it's not ideal. It can only handle one note at a time. So you have to make sure that the last note you played is completely muted before you play another note. If there's the slightest bit of overlap, the pitch shifter gets confused and produces an annoying squawk. So you have to play very cleanly with no overlap between notes.

I've found that I get better results using Audacity's "Change Pitch without Changing Tempo" effect. I just play the bass lines on my guitar, then export that track to a WAV file and import it into Audacity where I drop the pitch by one octave. It produces a pretty convincing bass sound. See the following posts:

https://songcrafters.org/community/index.php?topic=5898.msg73863#msg73863

https://songcrafters.org/community/index.php?topic=14864.msg185870#msg185870

Also, most modern keyboards have pretty good bass patches. So if you have access to a keyboard, you might find that you get a better bass track by playing the notes on the keyboard rather than on your guitar.

[banjaxed]

Thanks for the reply. The tip you gave is a great idea, but quite by chance I had a phone call from a friend 10 minutes ago and when I mentioned my problem he said That I could borrow his bass guitar, so that should solve my problem.
Thanks again

[64Guitars]

I have tried taking the treble right down as you suggested and it does help, but the problem is the effects don't seem to want to go away and leave a dry sound.

Which effects? A lot of beginning BR users don't realize the difference between insert effects and loop effects. The latter are applied to the all of the tracks simultaneously, according to the Send Level of each track. If a track's send level is at zero, no effect is produced for that track. By default, the BR-900's Reverb send level is at 10 on each track. If you'd rather not have any reverb on the bass, you need to reduce that track's send level to 0. The reverb send level on the Input is also at 10. Although this doesn't get recorded, it does affect what you hear when you're playing back the track, and the track reverb send level will automatically be set to the same as the input send level. So, to get rid of reverb completely, you should set the Input reverb send level to 0 before recording the bass track. If you've already recorded the track and forgot to set the Input reverb send, just set the reverb send level of the bass track to 0 before bouncing or mastering.

[Speed Demon]

If you want a good bass guitar sound, you need to acquire a bass guitar. Emulators are what they are. Close but no cookie.

I cannot imagine being forced to play without using sustained and blended notes, double stops, etc.
To me that is the same as buying a race horse and then training it to limp.

[Greeny]

Sadly, as Gene points out, there just isn't any substitute for a real bass - even a really cheap one. Bass needs the human touch / feeling / and 'happy accidents' that machines  can't provide.

[banjaxed]

Just been trying my friends bass guitar and you are all so right there is no comparison.
Many thanks to all who posted their suggestions.

[na_th_an]

I used to do studio trickery to get my basses for my solo recordings, but I found that even the cheapest bass guitar does a much better job. That's why I bought this one:

http://www.thomann.de/es/harley_benton_hbp90bk_shortscale_ebass.htm

You need to fine tune it quite a bit (I spent a whole afternoon moving the bridge and adjusting the truss rod to get it right and in proper pitch), but after you are done it's well worth the money. It's small and light but gets the job done.