Studio Bass Guitar - Recommendations?

[rhinostylee]

I have an old Hamer bass guitar . . . it’s low end, and I need a great sounding bass guitar for pro-quality studio bass lines. How it looks is of no importance. Do you have any recommendations? I love slap bass, by the way, so I need one that slaps well. I heard Ibanez basses are good for that.

Also, how do you record bass directly? I have a guitar pod xt live with the firmware bass patches downloaded . . . if I connect directly SPDIF, will that give me pro quality? Also, I have a good mic pre (Great River ME-1NV), which I know some people use as a direct input for recording bass. Would that sound better?

How do you record your bass lines?

Thank you!

[Naagzh]

Nothing beats a good amp, IMO, but a good player can make almost anything sound good.

Nothing will guarantee you "pro quality". What kind of sound are you going for? For example, a P-Bass punchy rock tone is quite different than, say a 311-ish Warwick, but they're both effective in context.

For the XT live, yes you could go into your rig via S/PDIF. This way, the POD doesn't have to convert its digital signal back to an analog one before it hits the recorder, which could mean a cleaner, higher-fidelity signal. Who knows, though, the S/PDIF output on the POD could be noisy. Try both outputs, and then decide which one sounds better to you.

A good box such as the Great River will probably have a very good DI. But the POD offers many different sounds and effects. Does your POD have a line-level input? If so, you can go from the Great River to the line input on the POD to a line input on your PT interface.

As far as the bass, maybe your Hamer just needs some better pickups. A good setup can go a long way, too. But if you want opinions, I love old Fender J-Basses, and the new Fender Jaguar bass (very cool!). I really don't like Ibanez's, but I also don't like much of the music that has that bass sound. For slap-pop stuff, I do like Warwicks and Laklands, or the Music Man. But it bears repeating that it depends on the player most. I've heard all of the basses I just mentioned sound like crap at some point or another.

[rhinostylee]

Awesome feedback, thank you!

I love playing bass (although I'm not a bassist) and have played enough to understand how much "finese" plays a role in sound quality. If you had to pick one as a "standard" that gives you the most bang for your buck, what would you choose?

As much as I love slapping, I'm also learning that I need to let the songs dictate whether or not I slap, and most times they do not (I start "muddying" up my sound). So I'd say my sound will be a punchy simple bass line played along with a hip-hop beat.

[Naagzh]

P-Bass, I guess. Rockin' enough for Mike Dirnt, funky enough for Bootsy Collins back in the day.

Some basses have both P-Bass and J-Bass style pickups built into them, like the Jaguar I mentioned. I think there was also a "PJ" bass made by Fender at one point. Good tonal flexibility.

[badboymusic]

I own 6 bass guitars and the one I use 99% of the time is the line 6 Variax Bass. (It also happens to be by far the cheapest one I own) The versatility and tone is amazing. I have converted many of my studio bassist friends. Soloed the sounds are not exactly like the real thing. There are extra harmonics that some people hear and others don't. I like the added harmonics and it really helps in a mix. Pick one up for $499 take it down to a great guitar shop and have them dress the frets (I also put on a Buzz Feiten nut) and you will own a great bass for very little. Then run it through the Line 6 Bass PODXT. I also run a second line direct through a Manley Pre into a Distressor, but I seldom need to use it.

[rhinostylee]

Thank you for the feedback, this is awesome.

The 3 that were recommended . . . Jaguar, P-Bass, and Variax all look like contenders. I’ll zero in on the Jaguar and the Variax, they both look like good options at basically the same price. I think I’ll head out to GC this weekend and try them both out

[badboymusic]

Here is a link where you can get an idea of the different bass sounds you can get from the Variax.

Variax Bass Sound Samples

[rhinostylee]

Thanks for the link. I recognize those tones in my Pod XT Live that I downloaded . . . would it be weird to use a modified sound effect through another chain of effects? It seems to me that the Variax is a bass guitar to use in lieu of the POD.

[badboymusic]

. . . would it be weird to use a modified sound effect through another chain of effects? It seems to me that the Variax is a bass guitar to use in lieu of the POD.

Sorry, I am not sure I understand the first part of your question.

The Variax bass is modeled to sound like many bass guitars. You select the Fender Precision setting on the bass, plug in to your recorder direct and it will sound like a Fender Precision running direct. You can select settings for Music Man, Gibson Thunderbird, hollow body, etc... The bass just sounds like a Precision, Music Man, Thunderbird, whatever. You then select the amp sound by what you plug into; POD, amp, direct.... Your POD is the amp, the Variax just changes the bass to sound like many different bass guitars. So you won't use the Variax bass in lieu of the POD. Just think of the Variax as 22 different bass guitars (plus 2 synths), you select which one you are playing by turning the switch.

[nonsqtr]

I think we have insufficient information on this one. What kind of music do you like? Are you interested in "classic" bass sounds or do you like spacy effects and synth basses and all that?

I'm a bass player too. Mostly, I like a "natural" sounds. But, what "I" like, and what the engineers and producers like, is often quite different. If you're doing it all yourself, you're very lucky, 'cause then you get complete artistic control over the result.

Well, let's see, for "natural" sounds (and most of the time, whenever I can, I prefer to record straight through the board, and the engineers seem to like it that way too), I like some of the higher end basses, like Alembic, and F-bass. Either of those are complete slap monsters, and they both sound great either straight in or through a DI, or even from the line out of, say, a Walter Woods. I mean, I like Jazz baases too, but that's a one-trick pony, and that sound's been used a million times and it's just kinda "old" - however, sometimes it's the right way to go when you need something solid and "not flashy" and maybe something that sits "nicely" in the mix without too much effort. I have a Pedulla ET that sounds fabulous live, but doesn't do as well "direct" in the studio, that particular bass seems to like some pre-processing, or maybe it's just designed to work with "speakers", who knows - but the only way I seem to be able to get something useful out of that bass in a session, is to put some effects on it.

For effects though, all bets are off. You can do "whatever you want" with "whatever you have", given the right effects setup. So far, I've been focusing heavily on the "input" side of my chain, and I really only use this chain for live work, but the other day I had a chance to dummy it up with ProTools, by using plug-ins on an audio track and an aux track, and it sounded really good. So, what I do is, I put an EQ up front, followed immediately by a gate. Then a compressor, then another EQ, and an expander, and a final EQ. The first EQ scoops our the mud right around 200 Hz, and adds a little brightness in the 4-6 kHz range. The second EQ shapes the compressor output, so it basically restores a lot of the bass that's being removed during compression, and then the expander fattens that up into a really nice-sounding "thump" (in other words, the second EQ provides the "meat" for the sound - it basically does the same thing that the graphic EQ does on an Acoustic 370). And the third EQ is just used for the room, to adjust for a bright or dark room, or a boomy stage or something - in fact, this EQ could probably be replaced by a "Sonic Maximizer" or something like that. So, that's my "input side", and then after that I run into whatever choruses and delays and reverbs I want, and so on. If you play with the time constants on the compressor and expander, you can get some really juicy sounds - maybe start around 200 ms or so on each control, and play with them from there. Your bass will definitely feel "different" when you play it - my guess it, it might be a little easier to play this way.

Anyway, so, one of my favorite studio toys is an Avalon VT-737sp. If you can't get a decent sounding bass track with that thing, no matter what bass you're using, then you might as well hang it up and find some other job. I've even used a cheapie korean Curbow with that, and gotten a monster track out of it. But sometimes the engineers don't like you using effects "up front", 'cause they'd rather add it themselves on the back end - and here's where the POD will really help you, 'cause it has a "direct out" that'll give you the raw bass signal, so you can be recording that at the same time you're recording (and listening to) your processed signal, and then the engineer can hear both and he can do whatever he wants with them. It's the same idea as a DI-splitter, but you get all those nice amp sounds so you can get your feel the way you want it.

But yeah, when it comes to basses, there's kinda three "ranges" of basses that I find to be useful (sound-wise) in the studio - one is the "vintage" stuff like J-basses and P-basses (the sounds that everyone knows and loves, probably played through Acoustics and Ampegs respectively), another is the "boutique" stuff like Alembic's "hippie sandwiches" and Fodera's and the more expensive Ken Smith's (perhaps played through a slightly scoopier amp like a Gallien-Kruger or an SWR), and the third is that I have a particular penchant for basses with heavy necks - like, either neck-through laminates (which usually provide a really strong fundamental), or metal necks (sustain up the ying-yang), that kind of thing - and some of those basses are so darn heavy that you can't use 'em anywhere but the studio, 'cause you'd end up stoop-shouldered after wearing one all night.

If I could only pick ONE bass, I know which one I'd pick - my seven string American Curbow. I can get almost any sound I want out of that thing. Turn the knob one way, and it gets a P-bass sound, and a J-bass is about at "2", and it just gets better from there. It sounds good live AND in the studio, it's nice and light, it's made of "rockwood" which has a superb slap sound, and... I can't say enough good things about it. It DID take me an entire lifetime to find that bass though - it's like, I get "a little closer" with each one, and once in a great while (maybe two or three times in my 47-year existence, so far), I get one I really like - a "keeper" that my fingers feel completely comfortable with. It's just SOOOO hard to get a good bass these days....

Good luck brother. I'll be rooting for you!