How to Record Solid Metal Bass Tone in 5 Minutes!
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- Опубліковано 29 жов 2018
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There are a lot of options when tracking bass: record a bass amp, a DI track, a pedal, combine them all together...
That's cool, but most of the time, I like to keep it super simple when recording bass guitar.
Here's how to get a solid heavy bass tone in just a few minutes with minimal gear - even a free plugin! Watch to the end for the bonus trick that delivers the ultimate tone.
Mentioned in this video:
Tech 21 SansAmp Bass Driver DI Effects Pedal - imp.i114863.net/oxyNm
I don't see this mentioned enough but a key factor to a good bass tone is fresh strings. Of course good setup, consistent playing, pedal/amp/cab selection and post processing are important, but fresh strings bring out a lot of aggression and presence on bass.
The root of this sound is new strings! Even with the sansamp you don’t get that tone without the bright rattle of new strings.
you could also boil them but it works only 2-3 times
@@HeWhoDwellsTheShadows No boil! Just loosen then and stretch- pop them really good, then tune back up. All boiling does is stretch them, which you ca achieve by actually stretching them. A buddy showed me this trick
@@johnhareiel5118 boiling helps clean off oils. Also using alcohol helps
@@almostliterally593 yea! Mr.know it all( just kidding)! Actually you got a good point. I didn't think of oils that remain on there. Having the string look new makes it look sleak to me. Alcohol won't mess up the fretboard or strings? Tell me more tips to use on cleaning my guitars. Your right....you seam to know your stuff
I used to take the strings off, then put them in a recipient filled with isopropilic alcohol and use a tooth brush to clean them really well while sumerged in that alcohol. That would generally leave them sounding just as new. However, these days I pretty much prefer to just buy new strings often and save myself the trouble.
Exactly the information I was looking for. I tried what you showed us here and what a difference it made. Much more tight and less muffled sounding. I was using way too much EQ before trying to get this tone. Thank you
Double yes-yes for the sansamp plung, it's a killer if you don't have the pedal !
Great tutorial as alwas, Jordan !
Cheers from france
I was just looking into buying one of these. Thanks for helping me make the decision!
I bought a used Sansamp Bass Driver Deluxe back in 2015 and I love the tone...and the smile of the sound guys when they see it in my pedalboard
Three weeks, I battled phantom bass. It reproduced literally anywhere but the car. Watched this. Found a free Sanamp bass DI plugin (BOD). Started with your settings but I could tweak to taste. No more phantom bass- it just works! Love your channel, Graham, thanks so much!
i use BOD as well
P.S his name is Jordan not Graham
He looks a lil bit like Graham though 😂
Common bass chain I use:
BDDI > Darkglass Vintage Microtubes > Interface for simulated 'Amp' sound
Radial Bassbone - DI to interface, EQ'ing out some of the stringiness and clackiness I'll always want to get rid of anyway.
I can get almost any tone I want from this setup, depending on the bass I'm playing, strings, fingerstyle or pick, etc. It's really versatile. I could track extreme metal with this, or old school country. Doesn't matter.
I love what the combo of Sansamp and B7K does to dynamics with the drive on a low heat. It's not just for metal, it can really coax out some serious overtones while supplying a natural compression.
I am rerecording the bass in some projects and i was hoping that my fav. channel will offer something. Not disappointed ❤️
I couldn't agree more on the Sansamp PSA-1 that comes included with Pro Tools. It's a monster!
Just bought this Sansamp on your recommendation and copied your settings. Sounds great and doesn't need any "carving" to cut through the mix. And, I'm playing through a cheap Yamaha bass I bought for $80 on Craigslist. Awesome!
I can't believe I haven't noticed the SVT preset after years of using pro tools and sansamp, sounds so good!
Great info and awesome Dead and Divine track!
You have some of the best mixing tutorial on the internet.
I've had a SansAmp since around 1998. It goes with me to every show and every studio date. It has even saved me live when my old amp fried. I was running the DI out of the SansAmp to the PA and the audience never noticed that my rig went silent.
I just discovered you. Dead and Divine is my all time favourite band. Thank
It’s a killer tone. I got the new sa bass di pedal. I run the bass into a dbx 166xs first to level off the spikes, then into the sa.
Great video as always! Owning a sansamp pedal really changed my homerecordings a lot! I take a quite similar route like you. I own 2 Squier basses (one of the newer Vintage 70s style for not too low tunings and one old korean with dimarzio Jbass pickups in A/BEAD tuning) that ended up on many stuff I recorded for other people. The combination of jazzbass + sansamp is just a great combination that fits very well into the full mix.
Additional thing I learned for recording heavy music with this setup: fresh steel strings make a lot of difference! D'Addario Pro Steels or Rotosound Stainless Steels are my favorites. Adds a lot of clank you hear in modern metal recordings.
I run from my sansamp into an older DBX 160XT which is super inexpensive but amazing on bass!
Dbx160t is the SHIT!!!!
Sans amp is to bass as like the tube screamer is to guitar..and yea,it shines when its not overdriven..and this coming from a guy that massively prefers overdriven,ALOT bass tones..I tried SOOOOO MANY diff bass distortion pedals too,and I swear,the equivalent to this Sans for distortion is the old Boss yellow bass overdrive..that has hands down the best bass overdrive,distortion ever..good vid
Damn, Jordan...I own you my songs! This sounds great (as everything you recomment/teach). At the moment I'm using Modo bass because I have no bass but as soon as I get one I'll give this a try.
New sub here, really digging your format and direction!!!
This was super helpful! Subbed.
I really enjoy the Aguilar Tone Hammer. Sansamp is cool too
sounds like a great investment for the home studio
Man, great vid to teach how not over complicate things... only thing I having issues with is some noise that I get when using most of the overdrive plugins with my instruments, specially the ones with the J config, which drives me mad at applying some filter like the noise gate cos those reduce the cleanliness in the sound🤦♂️
Love this vid. Can you speak on the ompression and eq setting please?
hey great video mate! Loving it ! the sans is very underrated :D
what's the fader console you're using there?
cheers°
I use a sansamp running into a boss bass EQ and that into a boss BB-1X preamp, sounds awesome
That's amazing, I have a PSA-1! Have you tried how active pickups affect the tone?
Sounds great! Are there any appreciable differences in sound between the older model in the video and the newer version 2 of the pedal? Are there any good reasons to seek out the older version pedal?
Don’t forget, your first gain stage is where your fingers or pick hit the strings. To get a heavy sound that cuts through the distorted guitars, you need that percussive clack of the strings smacking against the frets. Beat the f__k out of the bass. It can take it.
You mean like Steve H.🙂
This thing is certainly cool, but I personally love my DOD FX-91 combined with Hartke Bass Attack. It has exceptional bite and cuts through any mix effortlessly. But, of course, it requires exceptional playing technique to sound solid, any mistake you make is gonna cut through the mix too.
Nice. Added to my Sweetwater wishlist. 🙂
Hey man, awesome video! Do you have any suggestions for those of us not on protools? Cheers!
What is the settings for the click track? I always hear that click on heavier music but haven’t found the same one in PT, it cuts through really nice.
Great bass tone. Jman, what amps were used for the main guitars.
Useful stuff , thanks!
What about the eq? Just leave it flat?
I love this pedal, we used it with my older band. Now i have a Kemper and i usually split the bass and make a Disorted High and a Clean Low track and then i add the Kemper "Bass AMP Tone" just to hear it as a real warm amp so that makes it 3 Tracks. Do you think its a good technique or should i buy this pedal ? Thanks
Have you tried the free TSE BOD plugin meant to emulate the sansamp bass driver?
dead and divine is tight. maybe you could do a video on how you go about mixing an entire song off of antimacy.
Could you please remind me how to set up the plugin to go to whatever we want. Thanks
I’ve always been a giant fan of the bass sound from The Flood by Of Mice & Men. Would there be some adjustments that could be made for that sound or would this be similar to that?
What about the bass preamp? Do you focus more on bridge pickup vs neck, how do you eq or leave it flat?
What's your thoughts on active and passive bass pickups?
15k subscribers what in the actual f"#$ :D Jordan you deserve at least 1M subscribers because you give out just awesome info on mixing that has helped my mixes out so much that words can't even describe so thank you man truly.
What is that controller is that with the faders on your desk? Does it allow you to control plugins as well? I use a Softube Console 1 atm but it's got a super annoying bug with my DAW so I'm looking at selling and getting something like the Presonus Faderport 8 (since i use Studio One) or something similar.
Do you end up panning the bass tracks off center at all when you blend a cleaner and dirtier signal like that for fullness, or both right in the center?
If you are using a darkglass drive would it be too much to use the sans amp too?
Hey, for those of you that don't have the actual pedal AND aren't on Pro Tools (or even if you are) there's a free TSE BOD, a great copycat plugin of the Sansamp bass driver pedal.
Antimacy is my all time favourite metalcore record I miss dead and divine so much.
are you using a .rack pre-amp and compressor after the pedal and before the daw?
Pro Tipp for peolple running on Free Plugins: you can download the TSE BOD overdrive which is literally a simulation of the sansamp pedal c:
This sounds awesome! But what if you don't have the plug in alternative to make the second track more dirtier? Just track with the sans amp again with different settings?
TSE BOD 3.0 and Softamp PSA are both free and both really good!
Hi Jordan ! I see several rack versions of the Sansamp...which one is accurate ? I saw the RBI one, which seems to be the same. Thanks :)
Is there a similar or alternative plugin to Sansamp PSA-1 for other DAW's?
The pedal has better low ends imo really worth to invest on it \m/
What is your signal chain? Even your D.I. sounds really good, usually it doesn't sound so when recording direct to interface.
Make sure your bass (and pickups) are set up well, new strings and keep cable lenghts short. Long cables eat up high end really fast.
Great tutorial as always, Jordan. On a side note: the drums sound fantastic. Is that real drums or a plugin? How did you manage to get that snappy & fat punchy sound on the snare and toms in particular?
Valentin Zwick i can’t speak for him but personally i’ve found that a mix of softtube saturation knob (great free plugin) and the right compression make my drums super fat and hit hard
Snare- boost 8k for snap
Boost 200 for body
Cut 400-800 to take our ring and boxy sound
oooh i gotta get one of those pedals. sans amp should give you a cut!
i use the b7k from darkglass in the same way :)
Thanks for the tips! Do you pan the two bass tracks? Also I found that compression and a limitter is useful but I having hard time to set all this things, it just doesn't sound right.
Thanks again
No, leave any and all bass tracks in the center unless you're going for a specific effect.
Evil Empire by RATM has a panned grit track with the low end in the middle.
Hi Jordan, awesome tutorial as always! Love your videos.
Is there any other good plugin for the Sansamp tone that can be used in Cubase and other DAWs?
I'm actually not sure - maybe some others can chime in here
@@hardcoremusicstudio No worries at all. I'll have a look around and try some out if there are some and post back 👍
Joe B_FoT TSE BOD is a free sansamp bass plugin. Check it out!
Hey, fellow Cubase user here! TSE Bod is a free Sans amp clone plugin. Try that one out!
Joe B_FoT Forgot to @ you, but check out TSE BOD!
is the TSE BOD a similar plugin to this, got it but not had chance to try it out yet been using the audio assault bass grinder for my last couple of recordings
TSE BOD is a model of SansAmp.
@@marct6613 thanks
This is the sound i was searching for my bass i need to but this paddle
I love your videos man, your channel is so solid!! Is there a decent way to record bass guitar without a bass guitar? Money is tight :/
Bass amp sims like Loki Bass, Prominy Rock Bass, Avalanche Bass, just to name a few. Loki Bass is AMAZING for metal.
AxonRiseMusic thanks for a reply! Was afraid about a reply for midi bass. I just feel that would so tedious to do, on top of having to program drums as wel :/
@@sammytheman8994 The ones above I listed are midi bass (Loki bass gives you a killer DI and a ready to be used metal bass tone as well though). But you could just get a guitar recording you're using and export it as MIDI then bring that in to the midi editor for the bass amp sims. There are of course other options as well. I've honestly stopped using my actual bass guitars in favor of Loki and Prominy and I save a ton of time doing the midi notes instead of recording and tracking haha.
What is this midi controller you are using in this video? Thank you!)
For those who want a good free Sansamp sim there's TSE BOD 3 (even for Pro Tools Users): www.tseaudio.com/software/tseBOD
There's also the Ignite Amps SHB-1 but that one isn't a Sansamp sim but their own bass amp sim.
Why won’t use sans amp vst?
what kind of strings you got on it?
What's the name of the band from that track??
Do you think the bass is taking away from the vocal? #dirkdiggler
Dude, you have to try DARKGLASS
ULTRA PLUGIN. :)
no, buy their 900W amp head instead, that things a real killer!
@@jhpv89 The plug in doesn't cost a grand though lol
What about the compression?
What app you are using?
can a passive p bass sounds like that too? or only works with active bass? thank you
He used a Squier Jazz Bass, which is a passive bass. New strings helps too.
0:40 aren't all basses low end basses?
What is a good alternative vst to the sansamp plugin? Any good free ones?
masters-of-music.com/softamp-psa-free-sansamp-sim-plugin-win-x64/
www.tseaudio.com/software/tseBOD
@@sda5150 Another vote for the TSE BOD 3.
There's also the Ignite Amps SHB-1.
Thanks everyone! You guys are fantastic! Anyone have any experience between all of them? Any preferences? Also, I'm not an expert on bass. Are any of these more straight forward than the other? SoftAmp PSA looks like it has many features, but are they overkill?
Great video, and you are very chill, the world needs less annoying producers lol
I don't doubt that the sansamp is good but it's too expensive for me. Is there a cheaper alternative?
Behringer BDI21. Although the Sansamp is more expensive, it is really worth it if you are a gigging musician. It is a solid piece of gear, very reliable and soundmen love it.
Sounds amazing! I can't buy another pedal (too many) but will aim to get a similar sound from my pre. Thanks! Everything was great in this video; great information, production, presentation and even the makeup. The only off-putting aspect is the screaming. I love guitars and rock, but not the screaming teenager style. If you're teaching something, it worth considering
is it direct to mic input of audio interface (phantom power on or off?) ?
No mic...just direct. 1\4” cable doesn’t require phantom power. : )
Not sure...
Guitar into interface usually is with a regular guitar cable.
Try looking up a tutorial in your interface.
Should be easy 🤗
What series is the bass? Affinity? California?
Seems a Standard Series to me.
Can anyone tell me the sansamp pedal setting, can't tell
Blend nearly full, treble at 12 o'clock, level at 10, rest is flat
Miss this band :(
Raydog 97 what is this band?
Antony Charest Dead and Divine
What band / song was in the video?
Dead and divine i think
Dead and Divine ♥️
What is your controller for the faders?
Looks like the Avid Artist Mix. Designed for Pro Tools, but the product details say "Also compatible with other DAWs, including Cubase, Logic Pro, and Digital Performer"
Yes Avid artist mix. Works with any software that supports Eucon.
@@mrunconventional The thing to remember is that the Avid controllers run Eucon software though - much deeper integration than third party options, which are generally just level/pan.
mrunconventional my point simply was that what looks like a cheap option for the same thing may not be anything like as good. That’s all.
To me the plugin sounds gated and compressed compared to the pedal
Just one thought: it seems to me that you pick the strings very lightly, is there a reason? We are always recommended to play hard on guitars and basses :/
Playing softer gives a more consistent transient/sustain ratio, and is likely to mix better. I like to play bass too hard as well, but my recordings turn out better (and need less compression) when i don't go all spaz on pick attacks.
I wouldn't say I'm picking very lightly. Trying to have a controlled but strong technique. I like hard players too, but you've gotta be controlled
PALM MUTE Studio as Brian Hood would say “you pick like a bitch, youre gonna get bitch results”
I dont think Jordan was picking soft, didnt sound like it at least
What pickups in your bass?
Probably just stock J bass PU's, what that sansamp DIY pedal you don't really need special pickups because it does the active punch sounding affect thing for most any bass.
what a plot twist: Jordan was a closet bass player all along?!
😛
I cant for the life of me get my tone to sound this good through DI on my Cort Bass. Is that Squire really the secret?? 😂
Get new strings, make sure you’re using a guitar with a recent set up so that you avoid fret buzz or dead spots and intonation issues and play somewhat hard and a bit lower to the bridge of the guitar.
Usa ampeg peavey trace elliot ejp.
For anyone not using Pro Tools www.kvraudio.com/product/softamp-psa-by-axp
If you really hit your bass hard it will sound even greater
Haha came here for bass left with a sick song
can someone define "good set up"? What does that even entail?
A bass that has been correctly setup, with frets dressed, proper relief on the neck, bridge intonation and pickups with adequate heights.
@@GugaRamone thanks, my dude! Wasn't sure if that meant spend tons of $ on specific components or hardware or just making sure what you have is functioning at it's best
Antimacy!
I can't even hear his bass in the mix
i don’t have a fucking pedal