Bass tone help

Keefy

stickyfiddle said:

Final-ish update on this for now. I gave up on the HX for the gig and bought an Origin Bassrig 64 Black Panel. Super easy setup, sounds great on basically every combination of settings and nails the classic P thing.

What's really amazing is I was chatting with the bassist from the best other band on the night and he was in awe of my tone, to the point that he was like "look at this video - you made it sound like this!" and it was the very same video I posted up top, so I'll take that as "Mission Accomplished"!!

I have one of these, it’s brilliant. I bought it for recording bass, but also in case the day comes when I have to gig without a bass amp.

ICBM

stickyfiddle said:

I agree no-one cares directly about the nth degree of awesome bass tone. But my god do they notice when a band sounds great vs a band that doesn't. 

Our gig last week was a perfect example of it - most bands were way too loud, heavy bass and either muffled or squealy guitars. We had a much more subtle mix and it's obvious from the videos of both (and comments from the crowd on the night) that we had the extra "something".

Non-musos don't understand it, but they sure as hell know when it's not there

Quoted onto the second page for accuracy.

This, enormously. It's easy for musicians to be snobbish about how little the average audience knows about 'tone' and say that nothing matters as long as they can hear the vocals etc etc so it doesn't matter what you sound like, but they're wrong. It's true that the average person out there can't even tell the difference between a Fender and a Gibson, but they know instantly if the guitar is too loud and bright, or inaudible when someone is clearly playing something complicated. And they know perfectly well about overpowering muddy bass, or if it isn't there when it should be.

stickyfiddle

Why thank you! I still agree with myself

flying_pie

I don't play bass but I use a low pass filter on all my guitar gain patches - mixture of real amp/multi FX in 4cm. An EQ cut around 100Hz in the FX loop gives lots of room for the bass to stand out more. I also tend to add a high pass somewhere around 6-7KHz if there are a lot of digital effects to leave room for the overheads 

It makes perfect sense that if we EQ that way in our DAWs then it would help the mix in a live setting too.

ICBM

flying_pie said:

I don't play bass but I use a low pass filter on all my guitar gain patches - mixture of real amp/multi FX in 4cm. An EQ cut around 100Hz in the FX loop gives lots of room for the bass to stand out more. I also tend to add a high pass somewhere around 6-7KHz if there are a lot of digital effects to leave room for the overheads 

It makes perfect sense that if we EQ that way in our DAWs then it would help the mix in a live setting too.

The single best thing you can do for the band mix as a guitarist is to get your amp up off the floor - that naturally rolls off the low fundamentals, so they don't conflict with the bass (the bass amp should be tight down on the floor for the equal/opposite reason, to reinforce them) and produces a better natural acoustic mix which allows both to be heard better and avoids volume wars, without needing to radically EQ anything.

It's a constant source of bafflement to me why more don't seem to know this and still put their amps down on the floor, where they sound muddy and the player can't hear them properly, so they dial them in way too loud and bright or end up disappearing when the bass starts up, which then causes a volume war.

fretmeister

ICBM said:

flying_pie said:

I don't play bass but I use a low pass filter on all my guitar gain patches - mixture of real amp/multi FX in 4cm. An EQ cut around 100Hz in the FX loop gives lots of room for the bass to stand out more. I also tend to add a high pass somewhere around 6-7KHz if there are a lot of digital effects to leave room for the overheads 

It makes perfect sense that if we EQ that way in our DAWs then it would help the mix in a live setting too.

The single best thing you can do for the band mix as a guitarist is to get your amp up off the floor - that naturally rolls off the low fundamentals, so they don't conflict with the bass (the bass amp should be tight down on the floor for the equal/opposite reason, to reinforce them) and produces a better natural acoustic mix which allows both to be heard better and avoids volume wars, without needing to radically EQ anything.

It's a constant source of bafflement to me why more don't seem to know this and still put their amps down on the floor, where they sound muddy and the player can't hear them properly, so they dial them in way too loud and bright or end up disappearing when the bass starts up, which then causes a volume war.

Not to mention bass amps getting lifted need to be much higher due to the longer waveform. So leave them on the ground. But be ready to kill everything under 30hz if the room is boomy.

I love my Micro Thumpinator for that. Genius product.

ICBM

fretmeister said:

Not to mention bass amps getting lifted need to be much higher due to the longer waveform.

It's also surprising how little height makes a difference with a guitar cab - just a few inches can be enough. I once had a Marshall 4x12" which someone had fitted giant oversized trolley wheels to - it lifted the cab about 6" up off the floor, and that cab always sounded fantastic. (And somewhat easier to move than a normal one... but still a pig!)

stickyfiddle

I had my TMDR at head height for our recent gig - on top of a JCM 800 half stack. Absolutely perfect!