Hi Frank, Here is some info that may help....
You might want to try recording using both a direct box and a mic. Then mix the two until you find what you're looking for. The bass amp should be positioned in a place where the standing waves don't interfere with the amp speaker. Try moving the amp around in the room you may have to turn it 10 degrees to the right or left at a time until you find the best spot. This helps you find the best room position for the amp.
put one finger in your right ear and have the bass player play while you hear around for the right place to put the mic. The main problem is that things rattle, like the pictures on the wall etc...
You can use two mics but a single AKG d-112 should work just fine. It can pick up the low bass frequencies without a problem. Another thing that you can try is reversing the polarity or "phase" of the microphone(s) just to be sure that something isn't out of phase. The best way is to mike up the bass. Place any decent mike - sm57 is great - half way between the center and edge of the speaker close to the grill. Set your bass amp settings on flat, don't use EQ or sub bass boost etc. Go in at about half volume if you got say 100W amp. Sure you might get stuff around the amp rattling but you won't hear it on the recording if you go fairly loud. It is good the get the speaker cone moving same as with guitar amps to get full sound. Then you can EQ the track as you like. Going bass direct just don't sound good and you might experience certain bass frequencies being inaudible at times .
You shouldn't overlook the bass guitar amp and the sound of the room the amp is in. The compressor does give you a lot of sustain but the midrange and some of the musical sound of the bass comes from the interaction of the bass and amp. run the bass into a DI Box and split the signal and send one to the bass amp and the other to a mic preamp. I would then use something like the AKG d-112 or Shure BETA 52 kick drum or even a shure sm58 mic as any good mic should work just fine. Plug that into an inexpensive Presonus TubePre</a> then to a dBX 166 compressor and into the board. Or you can use an all in one solution like the Joemeek ThreeQ which is like the Art Pro Channel but a bit cheaper.
When recording direct into the board you may want to remove anything below 20-30HZ because it's only going to use up the headroom and bandwidth. When mixing if you recorded your bass tracks using both the direct input and from a microphone you'll may have to slide the track that was recorded with the microphone backwards in time. This is really only necessary if you used more that a couple of feet distance between the amp and the mic. Remember sound takes time to travel and the sound arriving at the mic is delayed. (1130 feet per second)
Another suggestion for nice bass sound is to use the pre amp from the bass amp plugged directly to your board, or instead of into the board, into a tube pre amp and the directly to the track. On some bass amps you can kill the speaker out put at the same time, and you can record the drums and bass in the same room with out any bleed onto the drum mics.
Fenderphil
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