Recording bass guitar

[StephenM]

great thread here.  It's really easy to record bass and it's really hard to record bass.  Same thing for eq and mixing it.  As much experience as I have gained the last year in recording and mixing the bass I still go from "I love that bass sound" to "I hate that bass sound" in a heartbeat....
Picking up the bass (so I could stay in a band) back in 1987 was the best thing I ever did musically beside buying a guitar in 1980.  I decided I needed to play with my fingers so that is what I made myself do.  Now I use the pick too sometimes if I want a more aggressive sound or a more high end sound.  However, I can do things speed wise finger picking I cannot do with a pick play.  The pick does create some problems recording though if turn the pickups up too much as the pick noise can get in the recording too much.
I generally DI sometimes direct to the board other times through the ME-25 boss effects or my Behringer bass distortion pedal.  They all have things I like and don't like. 
I think Zoltan nailed the most important aspect of bass to me...that is you can't sound like a great bass player if you can't play bass like one!  Practice bass alot more if you want to be a better player.  It's fun and you can build entire songs from bass. 
here is a good example 
https://songcrafters.org/forum/index.php?topic=32028.msg381802#msg381802
https://songcrafters.org/forum/index.php?topic=30749.msg364919#msg364919
Having said the above you can play very simple bass lines and sound great and that makes you a great bass player if you can do that (jmo). 
Playing bass makes me a better and more creative guitarist and vice versa.
That leads to better recordings. 
The answers are here... you have to get the kick drum and the bass guitar (and the electric pickups) off each other freq wise.  Humbuker pickups have a lot of low freq buzz.  So if you record guitar and don't cut the stuff off the guitar below 125 hz IT IS GOING TO MAKE THE BASS SOUND NEGLIBLE.  It is the most important thing I learned on here and else where in making bass come out of hiding.
Then what Flash Harry said about getting the bass and kick off each other or you won't hear the kick well...
I experiment alot and it doesn't always work very well but when it does 

[StephenM]

I recorded this just now as an example of differences.  This is my Shecter bass.  I think it is very aggressive and I love the growly sound of the active EQ with the pickups that the bass has.  I bought this on line without ever playing it and I love it.  It really works well for all music with variances in the pickup volumes etc.  Also the way you pick or strike the strings.  Bass really is very overlooked but so important.  I never paid attention growing up.  The biggest reason was that in almost every place I heard music the system was not capable of reproducing bass tones.  So it didn't matter how great Paul McCartney was I never got to hear it.  The old car radio's sucked for bass, the transistor radios are like listening on cell phone speakers, etc, etc.... it was almost scary when I first started hearing good systems with bass...and a whole new world that I am still a novice and exploring.  Bass can literally bring down a building in the right circumstances.  It can hurt you too...(seriously, bass drum and bass guitar can cause heart arrythmias when subjected to high SPL and off beats that are too far out of beat with your heart, I know because it happens to me sometimes when I am playing or at a concert if I sit too near the subs). 
This was picked played through the ME-25 boss with a bit of distortion on it (it's a guitar processor but I like it for bass too) and output direct to the Zoom L-20 (which sounds super clean and doesn't need alot of tweeking, in fact on here there is none for bass or drums).
I should add that I recorded the bass first without any click track and I find that my ability to hold a good tempo with the bass is much better than with guitar.  I also know if it's decent when I go to play drums over it or not if I sync well.  Bass I generally do but guitar I do not...cannot really explain that though...  But I like building songs off bass....

[Ted]

That's a cool bass tone. As I said in my first response, I love heavy midrange bass tones – Entwistle, Wetton, Burnel. I'm reminded of a band called Battered Suitcases, a punkish three-piece band in Arizona where the songs are built around really catch bass hooks (my Facebook Friend Sharon Lee on bass). The bass is always very dominant. You could pull off Rush covers with that tone.

But that tone might not fly in a mix where the songs aren't built to highlight the bass, or even songs where there are more midrange sounds in the mix.

One of the hard lessons guitarists have to learn (and probably bassists too) is that the fantastic tone you craft when you are playing all alone might sound like shit in the mix.

[bruno]

I use the Kemper as there are some bass amp profiles, and record to a stereo track.
I tend to use a pick as I can be more accurate about hitting the beat, where as using fingers I tend to miss the beat every now and then, and ever so slightly. The bass is quite physical and so you can get tired.

Bass is all about being in the zone/groove. They talk a lot about being in the pocket! In the pocket of whom or what, I'm not so sure about.

I watched a youtube on a great recorded bass sound, and the comment was to use ducking, to get the other instruments out of the way, but that would require a DAW. Never tried it myself.

B

[Blooby]

I watched a youtube on a great recorded bass sound, and the comment was to use ducking, to get the other instruments out of the way

I've never done anything with side compression or ducking. Could be a fun experiment...one that will certainly cause me to use profanity multiple times.

Blooby

[cuthbert]

I watched a youtube on a great recorded bass sound, and the comment was to use ducking, to get the other instruments out of the way

I've never done anything with side compression or ducking. Could be a fun experiment...one that will certainly cause me to use profanity multiple times.

Especially when it comes to "ducking". Oh, the naughty rhymes...

[Greeny]

One of the hard lessons guitarists have to learn (and probably bassists too) is that the fantastic tone you craft when you are playing all alone might sound like shit in the mix.

This is a very good point. Although I have a minimalist approach to bass in terms of fx, I do play with the tone and volume knobs (oo err) on my Ibanez to find the right spot for the mix. It's never what you expect, and very dependent on the other instruments being played and how they've been mixed / panned / eq'd. It's kind of alchemy really.

[Oldrottenhead]

only thing i ever do is make sure the bass is panned in the middle. lol.

[Mike_S]

I am going to use this thread as a tutorial/reference page at some point when I decide to not be so lazy and spend a bit more time getting a better bass sound. Only thing I would add would be maybe if you have a particularly cool bass line you want to feature or want to shine in a song, might be worth reigning in the drum part a little, changing where the bass drum falls, simplify it so the bass guitar really stands on its own, at least in places. Typical advice from a non techie I guess, but can lead to interesting results. Not suitable where you just want to play what you want to play of course.

Mike

[Zoltan]

I think something like this:
https://www.thomann.de/fi/behringer_vtone_bass_bdi21_analog_modeling_preamp.htm

Would be money well spent when searching for DI bass tones. I've yet to pull the trigger on this (or some slightly pricier) one. There are several similar cheap pedals and i'm sure one of those would be able to give instant happiness (tm).

Edit: This is supposedly also really good for the price: https://www.thomann.de/fi/harley_benton_custom_line_bass_di_expander.htm

Ampeg alternative:
https://www.thomann.de/fi/ampeg_classic_analog_bass_preamp.htm