A question for Mr Wagener - Bass management

[jwnc]

Hal,

HI, well I can try to help you out alittle bit as I was at Michaels not to long ago. I heard 2 new songs from the new KX album.

Michael told me 90% of the cd had no additional eq or compression. The tracks I heard had 2 bass tracks and 2 guitar tracks from what I remember. The key Michael told me was to get the sound right at the beginning as much as possible. The master bus had alittle hardware compressor, manley eq into a Cranesong Hedd. I was blown away at the sound in the studio. Heck even the drums didnt have any compression/eq on it because they recorded it right the first time.

I believe they just use the eq, mic placement etc at the beginning to tailor the sound so it fits at the beginning.

Hope this helps alittle..
Jason

[Hal]

Hello,
thank you for the reply...then maybe it should be nice to know something about the recording process!!

[mwagener]

Originally Posted by Hal

Hello Mr Wagener,
I saw in King x thread that you use 3 bass tracks (hi, low and di bass).
I have a similar method. Usually I record 3 tracks:
one with D112 or something similar
one with 421
one DI

So in the mix I cut something to the 421 track with hpf, from 80/100 to avoid problem with bass and I apply some distortion to DI track usually with sans amp plug, filtering often bass and highs. Then I compress altogether with like something a 1176 or dbx 160 and hp at 30 hz (can be more) and sometimes lp at 8/10 khz.
Sometimes of course I do other things (like cutting a little bit from 200 to 700 on the final track) but depends on the situation (bass/player/amp).

I'm just curious about:
- how do you treat the 3 tracks?
- how (if!!) do you set the bass track when start a mix (level setting)?
- some good tips/tricks to try??

Thank you

Oops, must have missed your thread, sorry, Internet connection at the Hotel in Anaheim (NAMM) wasn't too good.

Anyway, on the last King's X album we tracked the bass as follows:
We used the MW-1 studiotool as a splitter to go
a) into Dug's Ashdown amp, which was connected to a Randall 4x12 cab. We used the direct out of the cab (no microphone) for tracking. The Ashdown handled the distorted midrange only.

b) the bottom end was recorded DI as well through a Behringer BASS V-AMP PRO. It was set to record only the low end up to about 200Hz.

c) we also tracked the bass through the MW-1 DI output, IMHO THE cleanest DI you can find.

Dug had two Behringer EQ pedals, one in front of the Ashdown, filtering out the low end and the other in front of the V-amp, filtering out the high end.

No microphones used for the bass. No compression used either, the amps where providing enough dynamic control. In the mix I tamed the Ashdown track a bit (low pass filter) and we used all 3 tracks, with the MW-1 DI track mixed in about 75%.

I think it's extremely important to get the tone you want while tracking, so you can build up on it with the overdubs, without having to guess what you will do in the mix. Of course there are little tweaks when mixing, but in general it all should be there when tracking. If you spend time to get it right from the beginning, good results will come much easier later on.

In the 80s we used to send the bass track out through a crossover, to split it into highs and lows, to be able to treat (compress/eq) them differently, then mix it back together through two channels in the console.

Listening is the best trick to use for recording

[Hal]

Wow, thanks!!!!
I haven't yet seen your reply!!

Sorry but some other questions:
- why didn't use any mic? Is it an usual system for you now?
- So you had 3 Basses: one till 200 and the other two which freq?
- When you mic how do you do for phase?

thanks again!!

[Killahurts]

Originally Posted by mwagener

Listening is the best trick to use for recording

This is good, really good.

I'm using it!

[Steffmo]

I wonder how many Behringer Bass V Amp were sold since that post......

Cool stuff.

[LewisWu]

does this mean that there are two pieces of equipment, sold under the behringer name, that are approved for use?

[mwagener]

Originally Posted by Hal

Wow, thanks!!!!
I haven't yet seen your reply!!

Sorry but some other questions:
- why didn't use any mic? Is it an usual system for you now?
- So you had 3 Basses: one till 200 and the other two which freq?
- When you mic how do you do for phase?

thanks again!!

- That is Dug's sound, we liked it that way.
- one was DI = full range, the other was up to 200 and the third above 200
- Little labs IBP for phase correction

[mwagener]

Originally Posted by Steffmo

I wonder how many Behringer Bass V Amp were sold since that post......

Cool stuff.

at least one