All language subtitles for Recording Bass Guitar in a recording studio using DI and Amp_ Suplex Audio Via Manny Nieto - YouTube - English

hey everyone it's manny again how you

doing hope you guys are having a great

weekend i'm just piping in with some

cool thoughts on recording bass guitar

uh bass di and base amp with mics on it

not too much in the digital world of

processing but

i did want to discuss the topics of the

good

and bad about doing this what some

people feel for instance i have a pretty

elaborate setup for the bass guitar

and i am tracking a record with a local

band called the goombs

and one thing i will say is that

sometimes for engineers i'm not sure

where you are in your life or your

career where sometimes you don't want to

take the time

to do things kind of right or

to have a cool option

for recording base

or kind of just going over the top like

kind of you may say that i am

um

my thoughts are

if you're just doing this to make some

money

then you can just go ahead and move on

because i don't think this is your kind

of cup of tea

and

i truly think that people just don't

take enough time to realize that the

base is really cool

and if you think about all our favorite

bands like john paul jones led zeppelin

beatles yes

rush

and you get into the bass rigs and what

they did and how their bass sounds on

records you realize that those aren't

just the eyes those are hands those are

jazz basses p basses rickenbackers

you know beetle bass flat wounds ac dc

flat ones and people don't even

understand when you want to sound heavy

probably even iron maiden some of their

older records are probably flat wounds

not round ones

um

and you talk about motorhead running

into marshall stacks with the

rickenbacker so

yeah i take base serious because some of

my favorite bass players are that way

so so i'm going to give you two parts of

this one you'll hear me blabbing and

talking so

uh grab a cup of coffee i'm gonna give

you some insights on what i feel about

recording bass and what i used and some

studio etiquette and things i do to

prepare for

a session like this so this isn't just

you know me for days and days going

through cases and drawers and

pelican cases to find this setup

okay so let's do the breakdown of what i

have and what i'm using and uh so uh

ryan

he's gonna be going to this wonderful

uh precision base

i don't know the year of it but it

sounds spectacular

i

recommend if you have a studio

to have some kind of pedal board made of

your favorite pedals

so every time i need to do bass i just

bring out my pedal board and i drop it

down and we have you know

earthquaker um death by audio electro

harmonics

rat

different overdrives have my favorite

delay an ep3 echoplex

one of my if you're going to get an

echoplex and they're still

affordable

threes

that's jimmy page that's eddie van halen

randy rhodes used a roland space echo so

if you can get one of those eddie van

halen used the 555 which is the

larger

format i think it's rack mounted that

could possibly fit in a recording studio

a lot nicer than this one but i love the

ep3 because actually just using it

without even plugging into it

it drives that amp really wonderful

jimmy page used to do that where you

wouldn't even have it on

it's just boosting so if you have two

that's even double the tone if you're

running straight in

um

my pedals are

all hand picked ones i love

and um

[Music]

give you a little quick view of all of

them

and like i said i don't know uh what

we're going to actually be doing

we did a whole record

um these are really cool

tascam hooks me with some really rad

headphones

important in the

aesthetic or the setup

so i have these pedals already set up

they're wired powered up there's no

fooling around cables my ep3 is already

ready to go always ready to go

i give the bass player even though you

know i'm in

this room over here

and i'm he's playing in here because i

want him to hear zam

um always a talkback i mean obviously

you need to talk to the guy

and then when we break it down so we

have these pedals set up

and then as we set up his tone

i'll find out what he really likes and

what sounds good on this particular song

the

full tone catalyst

and the

uh

delay pedal

slightly on

i have the tape echo on with boost

because it is kind of a pre-amp in

itself it's a tiny slapback and the

delay is moving uh really fast

and then on the

amp

this is called the twin 12.

that's made by sears also a silver tone

they come in smaller versions that are

half that like it'd be like right there

this head and this cabinet are

spectacular i use them for guitars

i love them on bass

we have it set up fairly uh kind of

middle ground

i don't know if you can see those but

they're all kind of

you know volume is barely up

uh base is a little bit past uh maybe

one o'clock two o'clock

one o'clock two o'clock on the treble

there is reverb

and there is tremolo on this

but um

yeah it's wonderful

m

so on this setup on the mics

uh i've got

a pretty incredible

huge

tube condenser

called a myberg

it's called the myburg m1

let's turn this on because we're going

to start our session

put the power supply on

it

all right

so that's a myberg

um this one is really cool because you

can see there's a selector right there

you can go from cardioid to figure eight

and the other side you can't see it but

that's omni

and that's a like a high pass filter

but it's a tall boy it's a huge mic

i have the capsule

on the just outside the center cone of

the speaker

i always recommend having a flashlight

so you can see where the cone is some

people like it in the center

when you talk about sounds

you know obviously i have that baffle

off tascam makes these wonderful

um gobos these mini gobos and i stacked

them

so they cover the whole length all the

way down to the bottom of the cabinet

gives me great isolation

now if this was a really louder rig like

an acoustic rig or a ampex stack

i'd probably move this mic back about

three or four feet that's kind of how

john paul jones just recorded his base

the beatles do that

and when people talk about

oh well i may not have a lot of money to

record or this is crazy

the expenses of this

this is only a lifetime of of working

working my ass off to afford some of

these but also

through experience wanting these so i

set goals and worked hard and saved and

these mics came into my world

the beatles even used headphones so if

you have a set of headphones at your

house you can plug those into a di

put those on your speaker and you will

be surprised that turns into a

microphone and that's how the beatles

used to do some of their bass guitars

um

a little bit of a

boutique way of doing this um

that is that smaller mic

a lavalier is called the shear sm-98

now

that is a legendary mic because rage

against the machine when they play live

that was the guy on it um

[Music]

steve albini used to tape those on the

top of his 201

biodynamics that were taped to a snare

with that lavalier

taped to the top of it so you get two

mics and a very small profile on the

snare drum

he also and you've seen me hang that

over

the beater of a kick drum to get

attacked it takes incredible

good amount of sound pressure doesn't

buckle

it sounds incredible man i love that mic

it's so good

this

looks like a buyer

it is a buyer but it uh symbolically is

a buyer

oh god it's something x50

it's a newer model of a mic that was a

copy

and this body style of a really true

buyer 380. there's a very sought after

microphone

um i always talk about this mic there's

a guy named cole pix i got the name

right

in nashville

he specializes in refurbishing mics

so i got this microphone as a donor body

and he's able to find the proper

capsules that were in buyer 380s which

are really hard to find really expensive

and a lot of times are broken

so i bought this donor for like 150

bucks sent it to cole

he put in the right capsules and

basically makes it into a 380. now lucky

for us

this later model

was just retrofitted with new um

capsules inside or elements and that's

what made it easy for cold to just

switch them out because they're pretty

much identical

and the real 380s were actually speaker

headphones when i talked about paul

mccartney

they actually had speaker from

buyer headphones that when they

discontinued them

or they didn't make them anymore they

stopped making the 380 but those have

become real sleepers and now really

sought after

so i have a buyer

i have an sm-98 on this speaker

i have a myberg m1 on that speaker

i've baffled this off because i'm

looking for a particular sound that i'm

hoping to have some more control of

and then once again this is bass guitar

then

i have

a di

so my bass setup is

um

[Music]

m1

buyer technically now 380

on the same speaker in sm98

and then i have a di

so you're looking at four

sources for bass

and what's cool is i'm still running a

di which is faithful to what people say

you know i don't want to hassle with the

bass because we're doing a full length

record i don't know what it's really

going to bring i just want to make sure

i have options i could ramp to the eye i

could run it into

have this cool um

polytone

i love that uh it's called a brute or

mini brute

so i can always run it later into that

if i want but he's having a lot of fun

playing in this room

and he's really kind of going off the

vibe of the amp so his playing is just

on fire and that's what i really wanted

i try to get the sound in his headphones

pretty close to what we'll be mixing

with

and it's always inspiring it's like a

vocalist that hears himself with his

delay and reverbs and no delaying

reverbs kind of gritty and clean or

dirty

they always sing better

so

elaborate set up for some bass guitar

um

and like i said if you were doing kind

of a john paul jones things i could have

still kept that setup of the buyers i

could remove that and put that mic about

right here

but the sound of this m

isn't really

um

it's not like running out of an acoustic

360 or or a tall ampeg that's the the

low end is only going to be kind of

contained around the amp it's open back

so there isn't a lot of pressure coming

out because it's being relieved to the

back of the speaker so i'm just making

sure that i get a really cool sound i

could even possibly mic the back of it

but i think that's overkill i've already

done all this stuff on it and also i can

use a an r base in pro tools to make it

sound heavier which i will show you

later on how i did that

so that is

my base setup which i

hopefully do faithfully a lot of times

so the preparation for this whole setup

i wanted to also give you some tips on

so i mentioned this pedal board

kevin who shares this room with me

that's his rig

um his band is called spirit in the room

kevin has a company which i'll share the

link with and he makes these custom

boards that are just spectacular

so i'll connect you with kevin and he

can build you some of these boys you

just throw them away somewhere and when

you're ready to track guitars or bass

you just bring them out now

some purists will go like well after

your signal runs all that gets into

there maybe you're not getting as much

signal honestly who cares

i mean hendrix is sound was sometimes

the pedals

suffocating the sound when everybody

does true bypass now

i mean i understand how you want to get

the amp to work great

but since i am embracing pedals

the sound that you get after going

through all that is some ways the sound

as well

and even jimmy page would boost his

signal with an ep3

brian may

would uh

boost his stuff with a

um i think it was these small little dan

armstrong boosters and all kinds of

tricks people used to do with that

so on the preparation so i get my pedal

boards made prefab so i'm good to go

i have all my cables wound up

everything's tight

and then also for the recording side of

things as a producer

i bought all color-coded

it really helps me as i'm following

lines in about like okay this is the

yellow is the sm7 for talkback the red

is going to the um

where's the red going

it's going to the buyer i can just

easily see where it's going and

the sm7 is going directly in

the myberg is coming off a white one

that's going into there so everything's

sorted

really easy to see

and when you have this kind of setup

carrying this around is a little bit of

a bummer

i've invested and i've always had these

really cool industrial cards i love this

one it's three tier

i think it's rated for five or six

hundred pounds

um

this is a really cool tip here

if you get a drum bag

and um

i make it into holding cables

really easy protects the cables

um you can just you know if i have to

run into the room and i just want to

you know grab something really quick

hold on

this thing is killer so i can just move

this around

set it on the floor whatever you want

so this card is rated for a lot of

weight within the cart i have all the

paraphernalia for my mic so when i roll

this in

even after i'm done with all that that

gets stacked up on this cart cart

i get these cool little bags this one

has skulls on it um these have

miscellaneous screws and bolts and

things from mic stands

i have these little cases these are pads

are these just miscellaneous types of

xlrs female to female male-to-male any

kind of quarter inch stuff is in this

one

um

totally recommend this

this is an amazing um for channel

switching on amps it's so good

let you do phase switching so if i would

have been running two rigs i would have

had this on the floor

running two amps which i do often with

guitars mostly or even i could have done

on bass here's some cables and like i

said they're color-coded so it's really

easy to move around um through the my

broke case

um this

is a must

i just have all my mics

miscellaneous more dynamics in this one

i have

my condensers ribbons and tubes in

another case but this one is you know

most of my sessions

are basically built around a lot of

dynamics so this works great for that

in the case you know i have some

headphones will go on bottom

miscellaneous cables some foam i use uh

the bottom

are power supplies this is my uh

c12a power supplies i have two of them

uh

there's the other one behind it

i think

i have a altec

there's an altec one somewhere over here

maybe oh there it is

that's the all-tech m11 for 1950

coke bottle 2 bikes so

this

rack

saves me

all the time when i'm running it out of

the studio i have a session

when i go to clean up the session it's

really easy to um

just get everything sorted i just get

that all wrapped up

put it on top of the cart and then i

roll it into

my studio which is really next door

and that room in there

so that's the setup for

bass guitar i hope that made sense with

you

like i said tips would be get

color-coded cabling

have your stuff sorted on a rack that's

together where you know where everything

is

how pedal boards made of your pedals

that you would use so they're easy to

install have all your xl um

quarter inch cables wrapped up ready to

go clean always

have your amp serviced that amp has

happened to be recapped it was a lot of

money to get it serviced but i have

confidence in it every time i use it the

baffling microphone selection multiple

mics

running at the eye

and then when ryan walks in

he's like oh cool

and he plays and it's like he doesn't

even give it a second thought about how

much work

went into this but that's okay

this is what i need to do to make cool

records oh shoot and it's a train

that's my view downtown los angeles

every day

my cool drum set

my heavy duty rack

plethora of pedals and options just to

record bass guitar

i kind of feel like that's what i need

to do now i hope you feel the same or

you can take what i've just showed you

and do something really great with it

alright so the next part of this video

will be going inside and showing you

what we did and how we did it hope you

dig it and talk to you soon i'll see you

in the next section

[Music]

so

[Music]

[Music]

all right now we're in the um

my control room from

the main room and i wanted to just speak

with you about some of the things here

that uh

i used on the session

um

the

myberg

which was that tall long microphone for

the bass guitar that i had the

cascam uh baffles around

that was going into

this bae it's a 1272

a really old version doesn't even have a

face switch so i always got to make sure

it's correct

that is being slammed into

the bg-1

the bg-1 is a

kind of an abbey road type of emi

compressor made by highland dynamics

uh you'll see some of these

bg ones that are stereo

you know two meters and this one is a

mono

the reason i use the mono was it has a

lot of features in it that aren't

necessarily in

the original one

um

i don't know where i put it but there is

a foot switch that comes with this one

that i can lock in

the

compressor so or the limiter so if you

see this moving and you start to peg it

you can lock it in on the peg wherever

it is

and then you set this on uh operate

and you could kind of uh

use this to adjust you'll see the meter

start to move this way this way

once you like it uh you can put on hold

or actually you just keep it there and

it just locks in the meter's not going

to move so anyways this is amazing

hot glue of compression that's really

great

so i wanted to make sure the myberg

which is that big tall mic runs into

this

which i know this is going to get a

really deep big sound

then i go into this

which is kind of the glue and what's

cool about it is i can slam it into that

and i have control of the output

so

when i was doing the bass guitar got a

good level that's not really moving

then as i push this up a little bit i'll

see this meter start to move and i'll

just leave it at that i think that's

just enough of a sound

you can even use it without any

compression it's kind of a another mic

pre so it's kind of like you're doubling

up your mic pres and even though that

may be crazy to some

a lot of big producers i know that's

what they do they double up their pre's

with different sounds it's kind of like

running into one pre

and then going into a console all right

so

this is my next section which is mostly

preamps except for

the two compressors on the end

you know this is a little ditty

you know you may be probably saying why

isn't this tt bae located up there it's

a this came out of my old studio which

had a console

and i had a new console i had a um a

neve sidecar

and this was connected to the new

sidecar so the rear of this is all xlrs

that are just hanging all over the back

i wanted to utilize that without having

to

not only cut the wires to do anything

weird and you know patch bays are really

expensive

i just kind of worked with this so these

cables all hang in the back they all

went up into these prams and they all

went up in these prams and i had 24

these are all my pro tools in so it's

kind of like a

matrix that just went right in the

middle of my patch bay so

this is just keeping it off everything

um

these are my side techs which i love

them so now we got the myberg coming

into the 10

1272 this is a dmp by bae one of their

older ones

the second mic was the

buyer um 380.

i had that going into my

avidis ma5s which i love and that's why

i have four of them and you can say

almost all my prams are bae

uh brent averill brent abriel era

and um

avidis used to work for bae and that's

where he came out of the brent avril

world and he has these ma5s which are

like brick wall

nev type of

preamps so

i can always trust these

you see my kick and snares and top and

bottoms go through these so i have the

buyer coming through this one the 380

and i have the phantom power engage

because this is the sm

98

um

once

again

i'm semi cranking them because the

output level i wanted to match up so

what i did is

i set these up on their own and looked

at the meters on my pro tools before i

put them into there because i wanted to

make sure that i think it's really good

to know before you slam something into a

compressor

that you know what it's doing so i heard

this raw dog it's not it's not even

bypassing those it's just not even

plugged into those

once i got the sound i

loved and put them into these

so this would be the

uh

buyer and this would be the sm-98

and the my bird is going through this

compression so i have three compressors

these two on another speaker so i'm just

kind of

keeping them like in their own world

and once again i put them through so the

audioscape is barely moving

as i start to increase

the compression

or limiting i could see them start to

buckle and then i just fold around until

i like them

now

they're almost

identical but the sm-98 seemed to

capture a little bit more

which is still okay

and um i really love these these are

from audioscape

they're a

recreation of the famous

la3a compressor

these are called v3as it's a 500

really wonderful tool to use i have some

other compressors like this

1178 is pretty ridiculous

but i've used those for guitars

and i wanted to have a different flavor

for the base

uh the base di

is going into the scitec

these these if you're not familiar with

scitex i love them i was first made

familiar with these with steve albini

when he showed me how to record um

he had scitex but he also had neotech

consoles so when i bought my first

neotech

i had already bought a few of these

scitecs so when i opened up my new

studio and i obviously don't have a

console

i wanted my world as always

my priest so i technically have

12 channels of neotech which sounds like

scitec or scitec sounds like neotech

they don't have transformers in them

it's a really clean sound but they're

just

so much headroom so it's such a big

sound gotta use a pad on these when

you're hitting high sound sources the

vedas

the only thing that's really cool one of

the cool things about these is that you

can probably put a mic on a jet engine

and it doesn't matter

it's never going to overload this he

designed it where the

signal is

almost before the transformer so as you

turn the volume up it starts to go into

the transformer so

if you have everything off it doesn't

matter if you're screaming your your

lungs out you're not going to peak these

so that's what i love about these ones

for heavy sound sources

apis you know you always got to pat them

um in the side text you got to pat them

too

so that's it so i got my side text

for the di1 site tech

the two mics on the other side of the

amp are going into these audioscape

limiters which are like la-3as

the preamps are ma5s

the big boy mic is my dmp 1272

and the bryce gonzalez highland dynamics

bg1 so that is

the base world

going on right here

and that was coming off that room in

there

all right let's get started pro tools

all right this is our session real drums

with our base overdub session

[Music]

that's the amp

with the bass mics uh no di

adding di

[Music]

so

that's our starting point we just mic'd

it up i'm playing it back now these

things that i've added to the tracks

are things i would do if i'm mixing so i

just want to give it to you straight i'm

going to turn all of them off

basically taking off the makeup here

giving you a real view of what we got so

this is all raw dog base

[Music]

this is the sm-98

[Music]

this is the buyer

[Music]

the myberg

sounds mean it's a tube mic

d i

now obviously you're like manny can you

turn that up yes i can so what i did to

process it to stay over the loud drums

i've added some compression

these are alley 2a's just normal joes

waves i've slammed them obviously so

check it out this is the uh

this is the uh sm-98

[Music]

this is the uh buyer

both together

so this is one speaker

[Music]

two mics on one speaker

i added some more bass to make it better

that's better

now when i do the r bass

i just love the way it sounds so

i'm just using it kind of to add some

low end

and it has this nice way of taking some

nastiness off the top

so this is with the r base on the two

mics

[Music]

with it off

with the drums

no

those are all the amps i mean sorry

those are all the mics on the amp

[Music]

that's the

myberg dog nothing on it

[Music]

[Music]

now

without the di you probably say it could

be a little bit louder so what i did on

the di

that's what it sounded like when i got

it

added a delay

compression

[Music]

distortion

and that rounded it off

now you could almost say like manny

why'd you ruin that well when we were

tracking

and the bass player ryan was in the

other room he kept on saying i need to

hear it so that was the important thing

about recording it's got to make it fun

for the people you're recording instead

of me saying ah dude don't worry about

it we'll fix it in the mix i actually

pushed the envelope on the distortion

so he could hear his bass over the drums

[Music]

if you can imagine the guy bobbing his

head that's what he was doing so that is

the sacrifice of

your precious mix at the moment but that

can always be changed so here's the di

again

[Music]

without the distortion it's fine

[Music]

without it

[Music]

with it

[Music]

now

this all may seem crazy to you you may

be like man that guy just i don't know i

actually don't know what you would think

but for me and regarding this record of

this band

you can say this is an independent band

and the bass player is really great

there's no fudging of what he's playing

he's literally playing that there's no

cut and pasting

and

part of the um

hardest part of this is to make the bass

sound exciting over the drums

now that's the di off

[Music]

diane

[Music]

di off

[Music]

only the eye

amps

[Music]

as you can tell at the end of it i just

took out the di but the one of the

things is that was just kind of a

reference for him that was making him

happy performing it

so when i described about making the

artist happy or what you have to do as

an engineer producer to make things

better it'd be arrogant if me if i just

told the guy be quiet and just play it

and the sound sucks in his headphones

so the sound you're hearing is strictly

what he heard in the room and what he

loved

now

when you hear the amps by themselves

just the uh the mics

[Music]

you can hear the tape delay and i

mentioned earlier i ran into an echoplex

and some pedals

that was that was all intentional i have

committed to that there's no way of

getting out of the mix

[Music]

so

that's okay

i'm producing this record they've

trusted me with it and this is the sound

that when i set it up i thought it would

be wicked with the drums

so

[Music]

so

when i talk about your options here i

have an option just using using the di

i have an option just using the myberg

i have an option of just using the one

one speaker

with the di

or all

[Music]

so that's the beauty of that complicated

setup was just to give me an idea when

i'm mixing it i'll choose something i

can always just disregard all these

plugins on the di run the dio to another

amp but

for the sake of this whole conversation

about the

base setup and how i'm using them

here are four uh options i have for the

bass guitar they're all excellent

i do love the buyer and the sm 98 alone

i think that sounds really cool

my berg

[Music]

the i

[Music]

alright

so we'll leave it at that that's a setup

a real band we've just did this crazy

elaborate setup

and i'm swinging my hands around that's

here in my kit

anyways have a great weekend it's a

saturday today wanted to come in the

studio we were scheduled to do bass

overdubs to finish this song

but um with all things my only

true recommendation for instruments are

get your bass intonated and get make

sure that everything's great ryan was

sweet enough to get his base intonated

but the

guy he reboot intonated it lowered his

action too low and we didn't realize

that when he lowered it low it stripped

one of the uh he has a badass bridge and

one of the little saddles was just

rolling so he went in today to get that

repaired

so i had a little bit of time and want

to use it constructively and hopefully

you've learned something from this

always get your base set up make sure

it's ready to go

ryan is a professional he went down and

had a really professional set up his

base so it's right this time repaired

what was needed to be done

and i'm sitting here talking into a mic

looking at what we did and i'm happy i

have uh

ten songs to do

this is one of ten

and uh one of probably ten different

types of setups

accordingly to the song so there you go

talk to you soon this is manny signing

out

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do

[Music]

you