the japanese jazzes are highly underrated imo.
but new pickups would improve for a little extra $$

fletcher recommended a particular di box for bass, something like a v65, i tried in vain to locate but in the US you may get on better.

the ernie ball olp stingrays and all yamaha basses offer bang for the buck IMHO,

jamie

personally, i have a pretty crappy bass. one of those $100 pawnshop numbers. however, i run it through an ampeg head straight into my soundcard, and i get a pretty damn good sound out of it. i would definatley recomend, if you have access to a bass head, use that and don't worry all that much about the bass its self

Just to confirm - you go straight through the Ampeg head and DI to the soundcard, no cabinet? Is it a tranny head? Have been discussing this in another post so v interested.

Best,

Jamie

Jeemy wrote: Just to confirm - you go straight through the Ampeg head and DI to the soundcard, no cabinet? Is it a tranny head? Have been discussing this in another post so v interested.

Best,

Jamie

yep. though i don't quite know what you mean by tranny head. sounds wonderful though

transistor. i am labouring under the impression that valve heads cannot be DI'd without a load such as a cabinet or a dummy load, but think that transistor ones can

thanks guys

Hey guys thanks for the input. With my limited recording experience, I realized getting the bass sounding right is a problem.
I'm gonna try and get that fender MMI jazz bass for 250 with the hard case (tweed). If nothing else it's a cool candy apple red color.
Any more advice, is sure welcome.

Jeemy wrote: transistor. i am labouring under the impression that valve heads cannot be DI'd without a load such as a cabinet or a dummy load, but think that transistor ones can

nope, its a tube. or, at least, i know its got tubes in it as well. im running it from the line out in the back (set to post, so i get the nice sound of the head, of course) into the xlr, pre-amped inputs of my soundcard. i was running it through my mackie board, but i got a much better sound (the low end is clearer) just running it straight

mental. it must have something the same as my rivera, where if there is no jack in speaker one, the power tubes are disconnected from the outputs.

so its just running as a tube pre for you.

quality. kills 2 birds with one stone. definitely a consideration.

Jeemy wrote:
quality. kills 2 birds with one stone. definitely a consideration.

on certain days it sound like angels crying ;)

MrSpecial wrote: [quote=Jeemy]transistor. i am labouring under the impression that valve heads cannot be DI'd without a load such as a cabinet or a dummy load, but think that transistor ones can

nope, its a tube. or, at least, i know its got tubes in it as well. im running it from the line out in the back (set to post, so i get the nice sound of the head, of course) into the xlr, pre-amped inputs of my soundcard. i was running it through my mackie board, but i got a much better sound (the low end is clearer) just running it straight

Running a tube powered amp through no load is a fun way to... oh, DESTROY the amp. SWR, I'm somewhat sure, doesn't make tube heads. They do make ones with tubes in the pre. My bass player has the one that runs 1600w @ 2 ohms, which can easilly run at 2 ohms mind you. It has a DI for recording with no cab.

thats what i thought. the world makes sense again!

CaptainNeatoman wrote:
Running a tube powered amp through no load is a fun way to... oh, DESTROY the amp.

ehh? this will destroy my soundcard? i wish i had known that. are you sure? i mean, why would they bother with an xlr line out then? the bass head is a 450 watt tube driven Mos-Fet SVT-3PRO, according to ampeg website its 'the industry's highest powered bass amp'

please let me know, will i be damaging something? can i solve the problemm by, say, running it through a DI box (the line out has a 1/4" out too), will running it back through the board help, or actually plugging it into the cab, or anything like that? it sounds great, but i don't want to damage any of my equipment.

no, it will destroy your amp, if it had a tube power amp stage.

mos-fet is not tube, its tranny but nicer.

you're cool.

johnyyguitar wrote: How good of a bass do I need to record with? I'm doing digital multitrack home studio recording. I'll plan on recording the base direct (no amp or mic). I'm aware a decent pre-amp and compressor with help.
Needless to say, I want the recording to sound focused and even, so I'm wondering about the bass itself. I'm hip that my playing technique will be one variant, but that aside for now.
I have a chance to get a Fender (Mexican) Jazz bass at a good price. Do you think I can get it do a decent job?

To answer your question... if you know how to set it up, it will probably do the job very nicely. The bass in our studio that gets used on most things in our joint is a very nicely set up 2003 Mexican Fender P-bass with flat wound strings... we put it through a TAB-funkenwerks V-71 DI followed by a Purple Audio MC-77 and move onto the next instrument... sometimes if the player is in the same room with the drums we'll use an amp [especially if the musicans are monitoring without headphones... then we always use an amp] in which case we mic the amp [with any of a wide variety of mics/pres/compressors/etc.] add a some of the Littlelabs IBP to the "DI" signal and away we go.

Best of luck with it.