How to Record a Bass Guitar

A tooth-loosening, earth shattering bass sound is attainable at the home studio level through two highly effective recording methods: by micing the bass amp with a quality signal chain, using a direct injection box to go straight to the board/input, or both!

The most important ingredient to getting a good bass sound is the player's technique. No matter how advanced, expensive, or high-tech your bass rig is, if the player you're trying to record has substandard technique, you really should be expecting to get a substandard sound.

The next link in the chain would be the choice of bass guitar. A $10 flea market bought bass would sound radically different from a $1000 Warwick, so choose which one suits the music wisely. Choice of strings (roundwound, flatwound, etc) also influences the resulting sound and character of the bass, as well as its behavior in interacting with the bassist's fingers.

If you'd like to mic up the bass amp to get that certain bass sound, you could use a large diaphragm cardioid mic like an AKG D112 or Shure Beta52 positioned in front of the cone. You could also couple these with a dynamic cardioid like a Shure SM57 to get a bass sound that offers more control during mixdown. Just be sure that both mics are in phase so that you don't get the distinct hollow sound of a recorded program that's out of phase which will ruin the thick, meaty sound you're supposed to be getting out of a bass guitar (unless you're really aiming for that effect).

A simpler setup would be to connect your bass guitar to the input of a direct injection box, which offers a different, rounder character compared to the crisp sound that you get from micing up a bass amplifier. There are a multitude of active and passive DI boxes to choose from, so try them out at the local guitar shop to see which one appeals to you the most.

You could also opt to pursue both methods, setting up a direct injection box to send the bass signal directly to your recorder/sound card, and then using its parallel/link output to send the same signal out to the bass amplifier which features one or two mics of your choosing. This will enable you to craft a unique bass sound during mixdown by offering you at least two different bass sounds to manipulate from the same take.