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I've been playing bass for years. Get lots of compliments on my bass tone, when we play live.

Recording is a whole new ballgame to me.

I like to dial in a nice fat tone and record, but it always winds up coming out too muddy when put into place with the rest of the recording. So I started dialing in a more higher mid-range tone. Now the tone is sounding pretty good when mixed in, but there's way too much string/fret noise. The one thing I was thinking of doing is switching to some flatwound strings. Our style is pretty much hard rock, a la Led Zep.

How do the pros do it? Keep it not muddy, but not get too much string/fret noise. Do they record with flatwound? I tend to think not, and I can do something about this without switching. Should I just work more on EQ'ng my amp and/or guitar?

Thanks in advance.

P.S. It REALLY becomes noticeable when adding compression

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Comments

anonymous Sat, 04/08/2006 - 11:04

Direct and Amp

I don't know how you are recording this, but if you are not doing the following, you should try it. You may get the result you are looking for.

Run your unbalanced TS cable(guitar cable) into a direct box (either passive or active, just make sure it has a TS out as well as an XLR). Then run a cable from the TS to your amp and mic the amp. Run the Mic cable and the XLR out into the input on your mixer. This should allow you to keep the tone you like coming out of your amp, but also have a clean track that you can mix in to get the bass sound cleaner and more distinguishable.

As for fret noise, hows the action? If you're comfortable using new strings, go for it.

That may have been way off topic, but I hope it helped.

anonymous Sat, 04/08/2006 - 11:12

Direct and Amp

I don't know how you are recording this, but if you are not doing the following, you should try it. You may get the result you are looking for.

Run your unbalanced TS cable(guitar cable) into a direct box (either passive or active, just make sure it has a TS out as well as an XLR). Then run a cable from the TS to your amp and mic the amp. Run the Mic cable and the XLR out into the input on your mixer. This should allow you to keep the tone you like coming out of your amp, but also have a clean track that you can mix in to get the bass sound cleaner and more distinguishable.

As for fret noise, hows the action? If you're comfortable using new strings, go for it.

That may have been way off topic, but I hope it helped.