Hi All
I recently thanks to the fantastic help on this forum bought my first Bass guitar. I play lead and acoustic normally so its all new to me learning Bass. I mainly just do home recording for fun and needed a proper bass sound rather than use an effect on my guitar pedal with a Les Paul type guitar.
However I am struggling to get the right sound. Its fine through a bass amp but I record via the PC through either my M Audio interface or my Zoom G3 Guitar pedal. Now clearly the latter is designed for a six string guitar not a bass. I did a recording last night and just added a bit of reverb but it sounds a bit thin. Someone described it as sounding like it was being played through six inch speakers.
Has anyone put a bass through a guitar pedal? What sort of effects and stuff should I be looking to use to get that really meaty low end sound?
Its just a cheap peavy Millennium Bass nothing fancy
Comments
At the cheap end of the scale, I have the Hotone B:Station and it's flipping good for the cash - lots of stuff to tweak and a good EQ to get it right.
I dont have a clue what Im doing you know. Its just trial and error.
Any road up. Ive had a couple of hours fart about. I dont think it helps that my PC monitors are a not that beefy. Good sound but it all sounds much better through my other PC which has a 2:1 with a Sub under the desk. However I did several tests and the results were interesting.
Just through the M Audio with no effects its a bit dull, a bit quiet and not very bassey. Through the G3 with effects but no amp it sounds better but not very deep. Well it is a lead guitar pedal.
However when I bought my bass second hand it came with a 15w Fender Rumble Bass Amp (well it was pretty much thrown in) so I plugged into that, put the phones outlet into the G3 and added reverb, maybe chorus and a bit of equaliser and there was that sound I Was after. However there is a lot of hiss that way which of course I can remove in Audacity and it sounded ok but worra fart about.
One of these pedals presumably will do what the bass amp is doing then?
Try connecting the headphone out to the audio interface directly, not via the G3. That should produce much less hiss. If you then want reverb etc, add that at the computer.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
TBH it would actually sound much better than the amp and will be more adjustable.
In plain English, computer-oriented 2:1 'speakers are not suitable for critical monitoring of music content. Why?
Reverb rarely enhances bass guitar very much. More often than not, it makes the lower frequencies indistinct.
One solution is to divide the bass guitar signal and only apply reverb processing to the high frequencies. Another is to apply a short delay with modulation. (Instant Jaco Pastorius.)
On the Zoom G3, try to find a clean DI preset as a starting point. Compression or limiting will help with recorded level control. Equalisation at the correct frequencies will improve the definition of your bass sound.
All of my comments assume that the basic sound of the Peavey bass guitar is to your liking. It is possible that your computer is making extremely faithful recordings of a duff instrument.
Indeed. In your position, I would begin with fresh strings and a decent set-up for the bass.
What else do I need? Oh yeah, to be able to play the ferkin thing
I use a preamp/DI live and for recording and I think they are indispensable for a flexible bass tone
compared to the OPs bass...!