[Rotten Deadite]

I've been playing Guitar for a long time, but I've only just gotten into recording in the past five years or so, and even then mostly just to get ideas down and to build song structures.

However, I've tried toying around with my bass, mostly just to get better at playing it. I've hit a serious snag when recording it:

I cannot, for the life of me, get a decent distorted tone out of it.

The only thing I can manage is either a fuzzy, but "muddy" tone, which sounds fine behind guitars but turns into crap if the bass line is all that much different from the guitar line. I can get an acceptable solo sound out of it, but it sticks out like a sore thumb when it gets behind the guitars again.

Is this just a fact of life? Should I be working with two similar, but different tones and adjusting the mix depending on what the bass is doing?

So far I'm recording through my GSP2101 for compression, then using Revalver Mk1 for cab simulation and distortion. Is cabinet simulation really as required for decent tone as it is with guitars?

[mgood]

Why are you looking to get a distorted tone from your bass?

Most bassists run clean. When the lows are distorted, it really gets muddy in the mix. There's no note-to-note definition.

Distortion, as well as effects, are a delicate balance if you want to run them on bass. Too much and it's muddy. Too little and it may as well not be there because no one can hear it. And there's very little in between. And the amount that is just right will be different from one room to another.

I played with all that on and off for years beginning in the late eighties. I'd turn it off and decide my clean tone sounded better anyway. And then I'd get a new toy and spend months fiddling with that. And then I'd turn it off and decide my clean tone sounded better. I've been clean since the late nineties.

[newamerikangospel]

I being a guitar player as well, had a tought time finding a tone that fit. I would say, find your favorite bass tones from an album, and try to get those. As a point of reference, even if you dont like the music, alex webster has always had a phenominal tone for metal/hard rock. Present, with enought bass to feel, and a slight overdrive that rides the mids/highs on the instrument.

[greg]

You should run your overdrive as a stem instead of just distorting the entire bass track. You can use a send from the bass track to another track with your distortion or just record one clean and one distorted and blend them. I wouldn't worry about cab emulation unless your bass sounds shitty direct but a real cab mic is good if you can. I always split bass to an instrument input on my mic pre and to a cab mic'ed with an AKG D112 and it sounds pretty sweet.

[JBroll]

Highpass your distorted part and blend with clean lows. Split the signal around 200Hz; send the low to a DI (if anything, use very mild clipping on this one; it's better just to compress it until it feels natural when you blend it with the distorted part) and try a guitar distortion pedal (like a RAT or a well-treated Big Muff, possibly even a DS-1 that's been tinkered with) on the high.

Jeff