WinterMute

Some DI pedals can be powered over 48v, but not your's by the look of the spec.

I'd always advise turning 48v off before plugging or unplugging anything, as plugging a mic into a live 48v feed can cause some nasty bumps and bangs.

It's not certain that it will affect the Fender box, but why risk it?

it's a Kramer neck for sure, very difficult to fake an ally neck, but the body looks a bit odd to me.

Kramer hybrid of some sort?

Just now, NancyJohnson said:

 

The BOD plugin is free and works great.  

 

The only thing I would point out is that we trouble ourselves so much with 'getting the tone', but by and large once everything is mixed, the nuances we strive to achieve in isolation, just get lost in the final mix (that is, of course unless you have passages where the bass is just playing on it's own).

Any mix engineer worth their salt will be able to extract and present that tone in the mix I think, but it often depends on the producer (or lack of) as a lot of production doesn't leave enough room sonically for the bass tone and it often gets relegated to simply filling the LF in.

If Rush can get Geddy's tone to cut through their massive mixes, there's no excuse...!

Just now, BigRedX said:

Personally I wouldn't bother with ProTools unless you are collaborating with an existing ProTools user and expecting to make serious money out of your recordings.

 

The iLok copy protection system is beyond flakey, and ProTools' parent company Avid appear to stumble from one poor CEO and financial crisis to another. 

 

The only thing keeping it going is the inertia of the established user base built up from the days when it was the only serious proposition when it came to recording and manipulating digital audio. Plus these days when new users have never used a traditional multitrack tape recorder and mixer, the familiarity of the user interface that mimics this system is far less important.

I'm so old I started with 1" 8 track...! Protools makes sense to me. I'm not seeing any flakiness in the iLok system, it's been rock solid for me over the years, and it protects revenues and quality from the developers, alternatively I've always found Waves licensing to be an absolute pig, and the number of systems I've had to flush pirated Waves plug-ins out of to solve issues is high.

Yeah, protools is pricey, yeah you need the expectation of revenue, and certainly the company can be problematic, but the phase accuracy of the aux's and the plug-in delay compensation is essential, even mixing in Logic doesn't yield that level of accuracy, and their hardware integration and S series surface capability is second to none, thanks to EUCON. Sure, it works great with Logic and Abelton too, that's the point of it.

I'd really like ARA support for Melodyn, and if Luna ever picks up EUCON support (it won't) I'll seriously consider switching, I really like the console emulation UA have got going.

Horses for courses, Logic/Abelton/Reaper etc. are all capable and are often brilliant, but for me none of them offer what Protools does. Obviously YMMV.

Second the K&M with counterweight, works a charm.

I think it depends on what kind of production work you intend to do, if it's going t be a lot of EDM stuff, Logic and Ableton are very good straight off the bat as they had a wealth of synths and samplers built in that are very good indeed, Logic is a fine audio recording and editing DAW too.

If you need to record a lot of audio and edit/manipulate it then mix it, Logic and Protools would be my choices, with Reaper as an interested third.

Honourable mention to Universal Audios Luna, which is proving to be excellent but lacks support for the Avid surfaces currently, you also need UA's hardware to join that party.

You'll find Logic and Abelton have a very good set of built in effects and play well with a wide range of hardware and plug-in suites.

Protools is still my go to system as it works exactly like a recording studio would, and I really like the elastic audio editing system and the fact it's still the only DAW with sample accurate delay compensation for plug-in latency. It's very expensive if you're not making money out of audio though.

Comparing the Sterlings with standard Rays doesn't reveal a lot of difference in my experience, a good spec Sterling is a match for a standard Stingray both in 4 and 5 string versions I think, but the specials, the BFRs and the Anniversary Rays are something else, I have a 20th anni SR5 that is spectacularly good, I've played the 4 string version too, it's excellent, probably the best version of the Stingray.

Might be worth tracking one down for a trial.

The only thing to watch for when tracking with plug-in based tech is the latency, that delay induced by the amount of processing the plug-in has to do to make the sound, the more powerful the plug-in, generally the longer the latency for real-time work.

Universal Audio get round it by adding DSP to their hardware and running the plug-ins there rather than in the computer. 

Most systems have a work around in their monitoring, but you'll have to figure it out.

I approach source for bass in the same way I would anything else, what does the player need to hear to perform well, and what do I need to capture to have the materials for the mix later?

If your sound needs distortion and compression to get you the vibe and drive you need to play well, then that's the sound you record, but I ALWAYS take a DI directly from the bass onto a separate track so that I have a sound to work with in the mix if the players original tone doesn't work out (which it doesn't occasionally)

I run my bass direct into a RND Shelford channel, EQ and compress lightly to taste, you don't need something of that expense, a decent DI box with a link output is fine, but I really like the sound of my basses through that unit. Then I use the link output to run the unaltered bass sound into an HX Stomp where a set of models and FX turns it into an ungodly noise, this gets tracked onto a second DAW track.

The mixed bass sound is very often a combination of both tracks, with processing added to the DI sound.

The advantage of this is that I get the nasty distorted and compressed sound I need to actually play with the aggression and vibe I need for the song, AND I get the clean sound that can save/make a mix.

YMMV but the sound we make is very often the vibe and performance maker, track with that sound.

The lovely wife and I had a very agreeable first date slating Coldplay and their miserable excuse for music, it's been something of a standing joke ever since.

Nothing against the individual members, never met them, but I find their stuff insipid and not worthy of the praise it receives and as for them being a great live act, I've seen much better in local pubs.

Why stretch it out to 2025? 

15 hours ago, DrewTNBD said:

Well the thing that is critical is being able to use your ears. I asked the OP what problems he's been having, and he hasn't answered. So difficult to offer advice.

 

I've recorded in high end studios, and I've recorded in furniture warehouses. The approach is always the same - use your ears to find sounds you like, and make sure the timing and the performance is spot on.

Yup, you won't go far wrong with good ears, except for the understanding of how to get from a "bad" sound to a "good" sound, that takes skill, experience and occasionally vast amounts of money... 

I think this conversation is in two parts now.

Firstly, there's no doubt that someone with the requisite talent and experience can get professional/commercial results from some very modest gear these days, which is a testament to how powerful technology has become and how easy it is to get hold of, but the learning curve is hellishly steep and you do require talent as well as knowledge. Which is not to say that home studios can't produce some very good results, because they can.

Secondly, paying a professional to record your work will almost always end up with a better result.

My "home" studio is not really a "home" studio at all, it's a studio that happens to be in my home, it's isolated, treated and contains some very advance hardware and software, more to the point, I've been a professional audio engineer for 35 years.

I also play bass and write and produce songs, lucky me I can do it all and the advances in tech mean I get to do it to my professional satisfaction without having to spend £100,000s.

A little knowledge goes a long way here, and improving your home recordings is easy to do with a little effort and direction, it will not make you Bob Rock.

Modest year:

In:

HX Stomp

QSC K12.2

Amphion Flexbass 25

UAD2 plug-ins: Capitol Chambers and Manley Massive Passive.

out:

Phil Jones Super Flighcase

GED2112 rack pre-amp

Ordered, pending:

ACG Uber Krell 5 fretless

It's perfectly possible to get "professional" results from the kind of kit OP has, but with all tools you have to know how to use them, there are no short cuts to "professional" 10,000 hours of practice to be able to play bass competently? Same thing with audio kit.

Understanding how systems work, learning to use them and then practice will yield results, there is no magic bullet and "all the gear, no idea" applies just a s well to us as it does cyclists or golfists.

Ask, listen and practice, if you want to learn, you will.

7 minutes ago, Velarian said:

Would monitoring on headphones be a more reasonable way to achieve a consistent sound as this would remove any issues with speaker placement or room acoustics? Or does that present some other challenges?

Same issues, most modern headphones are shaped to provide the kind of sound the manufacturers imagine people want, which seems to be bass heavy muffled b*ll*cks, you're always at the mercy of your playback system, if it's lying to you, what chance do you stand? I bought 3 or 4 sets of ever more expensive headphones/in-ears before I found a set that actually managed to reproduce the audio I was putting through it properly, they turned out to be the B&W Pi7 

A quick nod to Sonarworks SoundID Reference system, which will help iron out problems with room induced frequency changes, but isn't particularly cheap as you do need the reference mic they sell to make it work properly, but it does work very well once you've measured the room. I've not had very good results with their headphone playback system however.

https://www.sonarworks.com/soundid-reference

Cables, cables, cables... long ones, short ones, curly ones, that odd little one your mate made up for your pedal board that means everything works, the cheap USB cable that will always fail... 

Then connectors, why wouldn't you use locking connectors for a live show whenever you can? Just don't understand it.

Also, the Furman power distro/conditioner range, or something similar, the single most useful and effective unit in any small studio.

One of the biggest problems you face is not being able to hear the content of the audio accurately, this is especially true of bass, monitors and rooms have a terrible time reproducing bass frequencies accurately and most issues around bass come from simply not being able to hear the frequencies involved.

Learn a bit about speaker placement in rooms, learn about your speaker/monitor specs, if you can then make changes to how your room is laid out to make the best use of the system you have.

Once you can hear properly, you stand a chance, there's tons of good guides on speaker placement, some of the Hifi manufacturers do some great stuff. No need to go mad and treat your room unless you live in a shipping container, but rudimentary understanding of placements and some acoustics will help.

After that source is everything, get your bass sounding the way you want it to sound and you have everything you need to record well, don't push the level up too far, tracking at around -14bd in the DAW is fine you'll gain absolutely nothing by pushing the levels up. This is not the case for any analogue gain stages in your bass tone chain, beat the sh*t out of them to get the sound you want, then track it at -14db.

I have a Bart pup and pre-amp in my "SR5" fretless (MM neck OLP body) and it sounds really good, the pre is very effective.

Mechanical decoupling is a very real effect, stops the physical vibrations of the cab from exciting the structure of the floor, thus reducing bass "boom" on hollow floors.

It'll do nothing for air-borne vibration shaking loose and hollow floors about, but it'll help.

I have a Gramma under my QSC, very similar to Jacks rig above, I used to use it under the sub in my old flat to stop annoying the people downstairs.

Most of it is just library music from one or other of the standing collections, you can license it fairly cheaply.

I've always liked KMR's hold music which is the little Jazzy piece from the Vision On Gallery sequences.

Saw Jonas Helborg playing his 4 string version a few times, that looked like you'd need a back brace to deal with it, god knows what your chiropractic bills will be like...

Cracking bass, officially jealous.

I had a MIM Geddy for a while, loved it, sounded great, played really well, didn't have enough strings in the end. 

I've played master built Warwicks, BFR Musicman and custom shop Fenders over the years and they've all been a cut above the quality of the mass produced instruments, but that would need to be something very special to justify the price tag, Alan at ACG is building spectacular basses for half the money, many others too.

In the end you pays your money and takes your choice.

I have always failed to see why anyone should take the opinion of a musician about anything seriously simply because they are famous, rich or successful. 

Ars*hol*s and opinions, we've all got them and they all stink at various times. 

I do agree with Stephen Fry, offence is taken, not given, if you don't like what Clayton had to say, so what?

I loved the body shape on the Krell design the moment I saw it but it's that forearm carve that really sets of the design for me, lovely bass.

Bass now ready to have the neck and body carving done, really please with how this is turning out.