OK.........here goes. From the article with Dave Jerden:
What about bass?
I also record bass with multiple amps and multiple DI's. I ususally start off with an SVT cabinet with a 57 on one of the cones. We go through the speakers to find the best speaker on the cabinet.
Do you find it varies a lot?
Sometimes there's a big difference, but sometimes there's no difference. I always listen to every speaker to make sure we're on the right one, and at the right part of the speaker too. I use an SVT, a Mesa Boogie, and an old Vox Westminster bass amp. It's a solid-state amp, and it has an 18-inch speaker with a sperate head and a thing called "Tone X", which is supposed to be an EQ, but it's got this punchy kind of squak.
If you listen to an oldies station on AM radio you can always hear the bass, and it sounds great. I listen to records today and i cannot hear what the bass player is playing. I spend great time mixing at low levels to make sure that the bass note are heard. Using this Vox amp with the 18-inch speaker has really helped that. Of course, I want the lows and highs, but what I am fighting for is the mids because when you record aggressive stuff like the Offspring or Biohazard with that 3 amp guitar set-up, you have a lot of sound there. The bass has to compete with that. So I use that Vox amp, an SVT, and then I'll use a SansAmp Bass DI and an Ibanez TS-8 Tube Screamer.
Do you record these elements onto separate tracks?
It always ends up on 2 tracks. All amps go onto one track and all the direct signals go onto the other. Usually they are used equally.
Do you tend to keep the recording path for bass similar with the Summit pres?
Yes. Everything is pretty much the same. As much tube as possible. If you're going for a Marshall sound, you are not going to get it with transistors. But, on the other hand, if you're looking for a real crazy sound....I have a Hamer 12 string bass that is really difficult to record because there is so many overtones from the different string gauges. I first ran into the Hamer 12 string basss when I worked with tom Peterson from Cheap Trick. He was using Marshalls and Hiwatts and said "My hero is John Entwistle and the sound I'm looking for is like the sound of a piano string being struck." Later on I bought a Hamer 12 string bass for myself and I always remember what he said about a piano being struck. So what I came up with was to use 2 Vox Super Beatle amps that were made in the 60's. They have four 12 inch speakers, 2 PA style horns in each cabinet and are louder than hell. They are really brittle sounding on guitar. But for Hamer 12 string bass, it's the sound- like a piano being struck. I use two of those so I have eight 12's and four horns. To split the signal between them I've been using an old Roland Chorus modified by Rivera. It kinda shifts back and forth slowly between the two amps and sounds like the end of the world. It's amazing. I used that on "Rooster" from Alice In Chains -Dirt. All of the choruses on "Rooster" are doubled- just the basic notes of the chord changes in the choruses.. It's not that the whole bass part is doubled. If his part was playing a run in between the changes, he didn't double that- only the root notes of the chord changes. It gives a great sound.
Whereas his original part was played on a 4 string.
Yes, and that's still there. up front. The Hamer is mixed in with the guitars to add power. On top of that I have a Dan Electro 6 string piccolo bass. I use that through a Zoom processor set to a Marshall sound. The reason I use a Zoom as opposed to a plugging the bass into a Marshall is that the sound is so huge that it will wash everything else out and kill the guitars. But the Zoom has a really limited bandwidth and it has the distortion.
