Bass Guitar Recording Techniques Tutorial: DI, Amp/cabinet and Microphones

This tutorial presents and evaluates two popular ways of recording bass guitar in your computer: direct injection method (DI) and the bass guitar amplifier method. In direct injection; it is very simple, you will simply plug the bass guitar ¼ jacks directly into the audio interface pre-amp input and start tracking. The bass guitar amplifier method uses a bass amplifier cabinet and a microphone. The microphone is pointed into the amplifier cabinet while the microphone is plugged to the audio interface pre-amp input.

For the DI method, you have no other options than to directly plug the bass guitar cords into the audio interface preamp inputs. It won’t capture ambiance of the room and the full character of the bass. But for bass guitar amplifier cabinet, a lot of options can still be done to enhance the tone of the bass which are as follows:

1.) Adjust EQ of the bass amplifier cabinet for best bass guitar recording tone.
2.) Adjust the distance of the microphone to the bass amplifier cabinet for bass tone and desired room reverberation.
3.) Trying different types of microphone to get the best response.

Using the direct injection (DI) method

Now plug the bass guitar cords directly into the audio interface input, and then do the following signal conditioning procedures:

1.) Adjust the preamp gain so that the recording level peaks between -15dBFS to -6dBFS.

2.) Once the recording level is good, open your recording software (this tutorial is using Reaper DAW). And then check if the recording level is consistent with your recording software.

3.) Finally hit the record button and start recording the bass. During the recording, make sure it does not clip but stay within the target zone: -15dBFS to -6dBFS.

This is a sample recording of a bass guitar using direct injection method:

Tips for recording quality: Some audio interface does not have preamp on its input. They only have “line inputs” that assumes that the signal is already in line level. If you plug the bass guitar to the line input then the recorded signal is weak and noisy because the recording signal does not pass the microphone pre-amp. Therefore; make sure that the bass guitar is plugged to an input that accepts instrument level signals and it will be processed through a pre-amp. If you are a beginner, read this post regarding the difference between line level, instrument level and microphone level signals.

Using bass amplifier cabinet and Rode NT1A Condenser Microphone

In this section, let’s try recording the bass guitar using a bass amplifier cabinet with Rode NT1A condenser microphone (any other condenser microphones with good bass response is OK). This example uses a Laney cabinet but this works with any bass guitar amplifiers.

1.) Plug the bass guitar cord into the bass guitar amplifier inputs.
2.) Listen to the current bass guitar tone, if you want some deep bass to be captured by the microphones. Then adjust the EQ of the bass cabinet accordingly. For example, you might decrease the mid and treble controls to a minimum while you will maximize the bass frequency for deep bass reproduction.

3.) Once you are happy with the bass guitar tone, position the condenser microphone around 9 to 12 inches from the bass guitar amplifier cabinet. See screenshot below:

Bass cabinets outputs strong sound pressure levels, so its recommended to shift the microphone somewhere upward but still near to the speaker cabinet. Since condenser microphones are very sensitive, it can still pickup the signal pretty well.

4.) Plug the XLR output of the microphone to the audio interface preamp input. Make sure to turn on the phantom power of your audio interface and adjust for optimal recording level (refer to the guide illustrated in the previous section).

5.) Hit the recording button of your digital audio workstation software to track the bass.

This is a sample recording of the bass done using the above procedure:

Using bass amplifier cabinet and SM 58 dynamic microphones

What happens to the bass guitar recording quality if you use a dynamic microphone instead of a condenser microphone? To set up; follow the steps in the previous section, except if you will be using dynamic microphone this time. You can use other great dynamic microphones such as SM57 which are very common in recording guitars using amplifier cabinets. You should setup your dynamic microphone closer to the guitar amplifier cone this time, because dynamic microphones can withstand high sound pressure levels. Take a look at the screenshot below:

Make sure the microphone is perfectly parallel to the floor so that maximum signal would be recorded. In this recording, same EQ and settings are used like in the previous section. This is a sample recording of bass using bass amplifier and SM 58 dynamic microphones:

Conclusions and Recommendations

Based on the above recording quality, I can say that recording the bass guitar with a condenser microphone and an amp yields with the best bottom end response. Probably because Rode NT1A has a good bass response so it can pickup bass frequencies very well.

On the other hand, SM58 dynamic microphone has much tighter bass because its position nearer to the cabinet. However the bass response is not as deep as those recorded with a condenser microphone. The primary reason is that SM58 (like SM57) rolls off the bass frequencies based on their frequency response chart below:

Direct injection (DI) quality is not as good as those recorded using a bass amplifier cabinet. But the tone of the bass DI is funky and with emphasis on mid-tones. This can have recording applications like in jazz bass solo or funky music. Other than Rode NT1A, you can shop for microphones with deep bass response for a much stronger bass recording.

Content last updated on June 19, 2012