BASS: Tone that CUTS but still holds the BOOM

Morbid

Morbid

Inspired
Primarily, I'm a guitar player, but I play bass in a local band for the enjoyment and the experience. Part of the experience has been on the engineering side of things, as I'm usually responsible for our FOH sound, and with that experience has come a lot of "ah hah" moments, one of which being the realization that my bass tone cuts nicely and sounds great (to me), but doesn't have enough low end (all of the low end I THOUGHT I was hearing was a result of the sub woofers, not my tone).

While this is fine for people in the audience, it is not so fine for my direct recordings out of the board (It's an older board, so no multi-track recording for me!).

So tonight I started diving into adding some low end without losing all of my punch and...well, I'm struggling, and haven't even gotten to the point of changing the tone with the other instruments in mind!

Anyone got any tips? I've attached the preset (XL+) so you guys can scope it out if you feel so inclined.
Using a 5 string LTD Bass, EQ all set to middle (I try to get my tone as close to what I want as possible before playing with the EQ on the instrument).
 

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  • Bass.syx
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I don't have an AFXII so I'm not able to test the preset. Try a compressor in Dynamics mode directly before the amp set to -1, then set Preamp Dynamics in the Amp block to +1. That ought to give you some punch to start with. After that if you're still wanting for low end add in a little dynamic depth (Amp block) to taste or test some different IRs in the cab block.
 
G'day Morbid,

Sorry but I don't have a solution for you. I am a bass player (of sorts) and bought the axe fx with the express requirement for it to be my bass rig. After literally 2 years of trying, I gave up and got a bk7 .... Cheap little box does bass way better. I'm not suggesting you don't try - and if you succeed, please share!!, I'm just relaying my experience. For guitar axe fx is king. For bass, well....
Please keep us posted.

Thanks
Pauly


Morbid said:
Primarily, I'm a guitar player, but I play bass in a local band for the enjoyment and the experience. Part of the experience has been on the engineering side of things, as I'm usually responsible for our FOH sound, and with that experience has come a lot of "ah hah" moments, one of which being the realization that my bass tone cuts nicely and sounds great (to me), but doesn't have enough low end (all of the low end I THOUGHT I was hearing was a result of the sub woofers, not my tone).

While this is fine for people in the audience, it is not so fine for my direct recordings out of the board (It's an older board, so no multi-track recording for me!).

So tonight I started diving into adding some low end without losing all of my punch and...well, I'm struggling, and haven't even gotten to the point of changing the tone with the other instruments in mind!

Anyone got any tips? I've attached the preset (XL+) so you guys can scope it out if you feel so inclined.
Using a 5 string LTD Bass, EQ all set to middle (I try to get my tone as close to what I want as possible before playing with the EQ on the instrument).
Click to expand...
 
Same here. I gave up with trying to make a Bass tone and instead just go direct into my audio interface then EQ within Cubase to shape the tone.
I tried your preset. For me I had to turn it down -6 to stop it overloading the output.
 
Well, this just became a new challenge...unexpectedly, haha.
Thanks for the input fellas.

@HarrySound - You must have higher output pickups than my LTD does. If I slap pretty hard on the low E or B string (5 string), I'll clip a little, but barely.
 
The trick could sometimes be to apply more saturation in the mid range, the usual mixing method, it helps with perception of the bass sound. Bass signal in parallel, low cut somewhere a bit higher and a bit of distortion, mix it in up to taste. More important is to locate the dominant freq range of the kick drum. If the kick and bass are overlapping, there is nothing you can do volume wise. For practical reasons it's more probable that you'll have to find another range for the bass since you have more options. Just a simple cut at the same freq of the kick drum for a few dB could help the bass.
 
Try setting up the AxeFxII for "dual output", so that (for example) the L output is the main, overall bass sound, and the R output is discretely ONLY a feed that contains separately treated sub-low frequencies. Where you pull the signal within the AxeFx that feeds this sub-low output is a matter of taste, and you can accomplish this in a number of ways, using EQ, crossover, Filters, the Multi-Band comp, a Cab block with a Sub-Kick IR...etc. With these two channels for bass, you can add in low end to suit your taste.
 
The easiest way to bend the AxeFX to do your bidding in that regard is to use the crossover block, set it to 250 Hz and pan below 250Hz to one side of the signal to exclusively feed the lows to one amp block & cab, pan the above 250Hz to feed another amp block & cab.

Set the below 250Hz amp block to be clean and punchy.

Set the above 250Hz amp block to cut as far as distortion. Make sure with EQ you are leaving holes for the snare, guitar, & vox or you will all be competing with each other for sonic space.

Tonight I will fool around with your bass preset, but I will have to convert it in FracTool, since I only have a II mark II.

I don't have your model bass, but I will down tune my Gibson to try and get close to your tone to experiment.
 
IMO the lowest value for crossover in both the Crossover block and the Multi-band compressor block is set too high for this type of purpose, where the low band is capturing too much of the frequency range above100hz to be really effective as a low-pass filter WRT sub-frequencies. I recall a wish list request eons ago (in the Ultra days) to re-address this to make it more bass friendly. (....crickets...)

Not sure where exactly the optimum low/sub-low range would be in the estimation of the OP, but when I tried to do exactly what he is trying to do, I was frustrated that the low crossover was set as high as it was. Nevertheless, it may be fine for the OP.

An aggressively set HPF with steep roll-off on a parallel path would give much more flexibility in terms of setting the LPF frequency and roll-off slope.
 
OK, Here's some things I noticed.
  1. Cab 2 does not have a bass cab selected, instead you are using an ir of a Fender Vibro-King whose frequency response rolls off at 70Hz, well above the fundamental of your low B string. You can't bring the thunder with that kind of roll off, especially since your SV Bass setup for amp 2 seems to be set to bring some serious bottom. http://celestion.com/product/1/vintage_30/
    1. Changing the speaker to a more bass friendly ir in F017 or F112 allowed me to boost bass on the Amp and EQ section and actually have it make an audible difference.
  2. Amp 1 was way too loud in terms of output level and was overpowering the Amp 2's volume. Lowering the level of Amp 1 allowed the grind to still shine but the bottom to peek through. You will probably want to play with the balance a little more because your pickups are different than mine.
  3. I moved the drive pedal just to drive Amp 1 (your distortion amp). You set the Rat with a 60 Hz roll off which was again stealing all the bottom end from being audible by Amp 2 when engaged.
  4. Your chorus pedal Tone section had a roll-off starting at 20 Hz. so every time you kicked in the chorus, there was serious phase cancellation that was attenuating your low end fundamentals.
    1. Changing the roll-off in the Tone section of the Chorus to 200 Hz seemed to improve the low end by not adding chorused bottom end to phase cancel the dry bottom end response while keeping the swirl for the mid bass, mid range, and treble frequencies.
Roll offs & phase cancellations are the most common killers of bottom end and they sneak in with all sorts of blocks or selections, so you need to look out.

Hopefully the attached file is still in the same wheelhouse as the tone you wanted but with more bottom.

Let me know what you think.

There are not a lot bass ir options baked in the Fractal unit. If you are looking for different flavors of cab, please check out: https://www.drbonkerssoundlab.com/shop/
 

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  • BassBonkerized(AxeFx II XL+).syx
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My take on that tone. i used some of the same amps and settings, but wandered off a bit. my bass strings may be getting a little old. Ibanez BTB, all knobs set flat.

added 4 bass presets to my superpack.
 

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  • Bass Growl 1.syx
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I am mostly a guitar player, but I do play bass in bands from time to time and the Axe Fx ive seen cut through a mix with low end. The axe Fx is more than capable of giving you the tone you want. You just have to sit there and tweak it. I honestly prefer to run my bass rig thorugh my 2 4x10 cabs which just gives you that thump and cut. But ive had a couple instances where I ran it direct and sounded great. Just sit down and work with a bass preset till you feel its what you want. Just need some patience
 
Also a suggestion don't just rely on the axe, also try using the tone knobs on the bass as well or using maybe using one pick up louder than the other. Just mix to taste it helps
 
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