Best Amp To Record a Rickie Bass with

[daytripper1964]

Let's hear some opinions! The only amp I've recorded out of at the moment was an Acoustic 370 with a 2x15 cab. Sounded great! Working on getting an all VOX setup right now!

[antipodean]

A heretic speaking here: Line 6 bass pod (mark 1). Great amp models, cool compressor model and some really gnarly distortion effects - plus no lugging and no time wasted finding the right mic position, and they cost almost nothing on ebay. I'm sure Tech 21 and others have great ampless options too....

Lugging that SVT and 8x10 cab is soooo 20th century!

[walker]

Interesting opinion on the Line-6 & other amp sim stuff - I have an SWR head & 4x12 Hiwatt cab that I love to record with, but obviously it's not convenient to carry around. For small gigs and recording sometimes, I have a little Korg Pandora's Box that has a cool AC100 sim on it, which sounds GREAT, and very convincing. It also has a bevy of cool effect, too. I used it for the Mutron Fuzz patch on the 'Kashmir' recording I recently did.

'Chrismir'

The main bassline was recorded with the SWR + Hiwatt combo, which is my go-to setup for a good fundamental bass tone.

[sloop_john_b]

Always direct for me. I have a Pod, which I like quite a bit, but I find myself using the amp simulator in Logic more often lately (probably just being lazy though; if it was a serious project I'd bust out the Pod).

On my EP from 2008, I used a 4003 and a 4001v63 through a Pod on the "Pepperland" preset (except for the first track which was an upright with a 4003 an octave up and lots of echo through a guitar amp). The sound is punchy as hell through the right speakers. Check it out: thejazzfuneral.com

I also rather like bass through old clean Fender amps, though I haven't done it all that much.

My one time in a real-deal studio (Carriage House in Connecticut), our bass played used my 4003v68 through an old Ampeg SVT and an 8x10 cab with some serious mic's on it, going through some serious outboard gear. As you can imagine, this sounded quite unbelievable. It absolutely roared. We play punk/shoegaze, so occasionally he'd kick on his Big Muff and just blow us away. That was fun.

[walker]

Love the Jazz Funeral stuff, John. Do you have the punk/shoegazer stuff posted? Would love to hear that bass setup...

[woodyng]

I've used my ART Phat-boy to record,which works well. It has a compressor/limiter (i only ever use the limiter),as well as a direct box,stero line outs, a headphone jack,preamp tone controls,and a plethora of preset efx. It even has a nifty "drive" circuit to add a bit of fuzzy gain. I find i dont really use it as an efx pedal all that much,but its great for recording.

[bartyclue]

Tech 21 RBI...good enough for Geddy... good enough for me

[cassius987]

Direct + micing the "woofiest" woofer is my favorite approach, so my TC Classic 450 covers the direct out for me (alternately my Punch Factory which is the one I got from Jeff Scott), and my fEARful 15/6 cab I always have miced on the 15 with the grille off and the mic practically inside the cone. This results in a really, really fat tone with clarity from the DI that you can mix in. There's not much reason to mic the mid driver in the studio as the DI has all of those frequencies covered, although occasionally the mid driver is nice because it filters out some of the highest highs (>8-10 kHz) which are where lots of the ugly warts live. EQ on the DI can accomplish the same thing though.

When my band's EP is released I'll share it here, the song "Music Box" is the first one recorded this way with the guidance of engineer J.P. Manza, and I was really blown away with the resulting sound. It helped that I was using my 4001FL which has a neck pickup to really thump.

In a live situation (I know this is OT) if you have to choose between one or the other, many would say DI, but I have found the best approach is to put one mic directly between the 15 and the 6.5 on my fEARful cab and angle it ever so slightly toward the 6.5. This captures the rigs "room sound" faithfully and gets a lot of that "air".

[iamthebassman]

For many years I used an old Marshall bass combo for recording but I retired it a few years back, was getting noisy. A couple years ago I got a new Marshall bass combo, it's my main recording amp. 2 channels(tube, solid-state), 15"+tweeter.