Mic'ing a bass cab live

[Steve Browning]

What do BC'ers use if/when mic'ing a bass cab live? I'm not after anything overly expensive. It's for occasional use (alongside the wonderful valve DI in the TT800).

 

I've watched a good few videos and am drawn to the Behringer C112 - alongside the DI signal. Any other ideas/thoughts?

[BigRedX]

Really whatever you want, but you absolutely should not be using a kick drum mic as the frequency response is wrong and you'll be competing with the kick drum sound.

 

The reality is that unless you are playing huge stages with your own sound engineer, any mic on your bass rig will be mostly for show and the main proportion of your FoH sound will come from the DI.

 

Remember also that a single close mic on one driver in your rig is not picking up the same sound you hear from the whole rig when stood a few feet away from it. Save the mics for the recording studio and if you like the sound you are getting FoH from your DI signal path stick with that.

[Dan Dare]

Good advice above. A quality DI will do the job in small to medium sized venues. In a smaller venue, some sound from the backline will reach the audience anyway. Most decent amps have an XLR/DI out, which you can set to use the eq setting on the amp, or flat.

 

Quite often, the sound that works on stage doesn't translate that well to the room, so you may want to eq the bass differently in the PA.

[Suburban Man]

Use any mic you want to - bigger dynamic mics look great - but please don’t plug it in. The chances of improving your sound by mixing it with a DI are slim and the likelihood of making it sound worse are considerable 🙀

[Steve Browning]

This was more to do with recording a live performance, but the retrospective amp sim is just fine so maybe I'll just stick with that. 

[BigRedX]

8 hours ago, Steve Browning said:

This was more to do with recording a live performance, but the retrospective amp sim is just fine so maybe I'll just stick with that. 

 

If it's just for recording a gig and the mic feed isn't going to be sent to FoH then knock yourself out.

 

Your best choice will be whatever would be used on your rig in the studio, and trust me it's not a kick drum mic.

 

Record both the mic and the DI, and if you have enough tracks/processing power a safety DI direct from the bass too. Whoever is mixing the recording will be able to use the source(s) that sound best for the overall recorded sound