Anybody using an Axe FX for upright bass?

B

bassface

Member
I have a separate rig for upright bass, but I'm thinking it would be cool to use the Axe for everything: upright, electric bass, acoustic guitar, electric guitar.

Has anyone experimented with upright, or have any suggestions?

Looking for a natural sound with a little polish, using a high quality piezo (Gauge Realist Lifeline).

Thanks!
 
Yup, both my NS Design and my "real" upright. Run into an amp (FAS Modern I believe), no cab, a hint of reverb (medium cathedral was the preset, but I tweaked it a bit) and some very very light compression. Works very well for arco or pizz. I might add in a PEQ, but I'm still on the fence about doing that.
 
I do, and it's better than any rig I've used before. I have a 15" powered monitor that I run it through. I use the tube pre amp sim for some basic controls, and some EQ blocks for fine tuning. A great feature is being able to have a filter block set up with scenes so I can engage it when using my bow to carve out some of the 2k range and bring the volume down a little, and then turn it off again when playing pizz.

I'm trying a bit of a complicated set up now. I have a K&K system with a mic and a standard piezo. I'm running the piezo in the first input on the Axe, with a tonematch block matched to a nice tube condenser mic (same process as has been discussed here in depth about tonematching acoustic guitars). The mic runs into input 2 via the FXL block, with it's own EQ/level settings. I've got them filtered a bit so the piezo is mostly in the low end of the frequencies, and the mic is the midrange on up. So far sounds pretty nice, albeit a little complicated.
 
Poparad said:
I do, and it's better than any rig I've used before. I have a 15" powered monitor that I run it through. I use the tube pre amp sim for some basic controls, and some EQ blocks for fine tuning. A great feature is being able to have a filter block set up with scenes so I can engage it when using my bow to carve out some of the 2k range and bring the volume down a little, and then turn it off again when playing pizz.

I'm trying a bit of a complicated set up now. I have a K&K system with a mic and a standard piezo. I'm running the piezo in the first input on the Axe, with a tonematch block matched to a nice tube condenser mic (same process as has been discussed here in depth about tonematching acoustic guitars). The mic runs into input 2 via the FXL block, with it's own EQ/level settings. I've got them filtered a bit so the piezo is mostly in the low end of the frequencies, and the mic is the midrange on up. So far sounds pretty nice, albeit a little complicated.
Click to expand...

I have an old fishman piezo bridge pickup on my upright.

I have had great success tone matching microphones against acoustic guitars with built-in pickups.

Does the low-end of the bass present any particular problems for the tone match block?

My typical recording chain is actually a small diaphragm condenser, Shure SM81 set flat with a good shock mount and careful isolation off the floor, into an Avalon tube mic preamp.

I've found microphone isolation is key to capturing true low end like kick drums and upright bass etc.
 
barhrecords said:
I have an old fishman piezo bridge pickup on my upright.

I have had great success tone matching microphones against acoustic guitars with built-in pickups.

Does the low-end of the bass present any particular problems for the tone match block?

My typical recording chain is actually a small diaphragm condenser, Shure SM81 set flat with a good shock mount and careful isolation off the floor, into an Avalon tube mic preamp.

I've found microphone isolation is key to capturing true low end like kick drums and upright bass etc.
Click to expand...


The low end sounds fine with a tonematch. It's actually the higher register that doesn't sound quite as nice on my bass, but playing in the low register is a great improvement over the direct piezo tone.
 
Poparad said:
The low end sounds fine with a tonematch. It's actually the higher register that doesn't sound quite as nice on my bass, but playing in the low register is a great improvement over the direct piezo tone.
Click to expand...

What I had to do with my guitars was re-take the tone match with different gain and mic position until the overall curve as seen in Axe Edit was as smooth as possible.

Then use the smoothing parameter in the tone block by ear as the final tweak.

Through trial and error I noticed the more spiky the graph as seen in Axe Edit, the more the top end sounded comb filtered / strange.
 
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