Thomas, Go for as much isolation as possible! I had a friend's quintet in here as guinae pigs months ago when I was dialing things in early on, upright was the ogre, as much because he was also the vocalist and wouldn't do overdubs, but the horns were leakage problems as well. We tried all kinds of mics. Ironically, the best sound (he wanted growl) was a $45 AT MB3000L, micing near the bridge, 3-4" off. Good luck.

Are you talking about a double bass?
And is it going to be played with fingers or bow?

I work closely with a label focusing on double bass music ( [[url=http://[/URL]="http://www.nbbrecor…"]NBB Records.com[/]="http://www.nbbrecor…"]NBB Records.com[/] ), and I did almost all of the catalogue, so if you need advices on how to mic a double bass I'd be happy to answer.

L.G.

Originally posted by riversedge:
Go for as much isolation as possible!

I take a different view.

I like the Bass played live right between the piano and the drums; usually:drums-goboe-bass-piano.

Bleed is good....that's a lot of the sound on all those great old records. The bass mic, the piano mic, the horn mics, etc. in effect all become one big muli-tap delay.

It's really amazing (or not) how much bass you get with only a well placed mic, and how much air you get from the bleed . If used to advantage it gets your sound
(at the start ) closer to what you probably want when it's mixed.

Of course it's always easier when you have decent: room-gear-instrument-musicians...etc.

Don't get me wrong, I love bleed, my room is big and live, and if it were just a piano trio, I'd agree......I had horns and electric guitar AND the bassist doing live vocals. What we got doesn't suck, it's just not all we hoped it would be. Thomas, what's the instrumentation of the whole ensemble?

I recently overdubbed an extremely young but extremely talented bassist. I wasn't sure which mic would sound best so I put up three- an EV RE-20, a Blue Baby Bottle, and a Soundelux ifet7 (can't remember if the ifet7 was in V mode or I mode). They were aprox 3 feet away (to give the bass room to breathe) and aimed aprox a foot below the neck/body junction. All diaphragms were as close to each other as possible to avoid phase problems. I set the mics at an angle, off to the bassist's left side so he wasn't playing directly into them.
After all was said and done, I ended up using all three tracks. They just sounded great together!

There is a picture of this young man and the mic configuration on my web site http://www.nrpstudio.com/rushing_wind_concert_information.htm if you want to see the set up.