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[quote name='Bill Fitzmaurice' timestamp='1320417621' post='1426650'] At a couple of inches off the driver the difference would be minimal; remember that port output is omni-directional. And there's also baffle proximity effect, which enhances the low end. True close micing to separate the driver and port outputs is done from more like a half-inch away. [/quote] Strange, thats not been my experience. Is the port the true origin of the extended octave or so of bass? Certainly seems like it to me. If so is it not possible that a combination of phase and off axis rejection from the mic would cause the mic to be significantly less bassy when micing from a couple of inches off the cone? Especially a cone a long way from the port? Just IME getting that lower octave from a mic close to a speaker cone just doesnt happen.

[quote name='bassman7755' timestamp='1320410802' post='1426475'] The thing about miking a bass cab is that by the time your audience hears it they are getting the sound processed by two sets of speakers (the actual cab and the PA) and a microphone. Generally your better off DI-ing with appropriate EQ (say to remove the highs is you dont use a full range bass cab). [/quote] Depends entirely on the sound of your cab and the amount of your sound that is derivived from your amp after the DI (can anyone say Power amp tube overdrive?). WHat you say suggests that guitarists ought to DI too, and we know that isnt right...

[quote name='Bill Fitzmaurice' timestamp='1320409709' post='1426444'] The two are inseparable. The point of close micing is to take the room out of the equation. [/quote] I'd beg to differ here Bill. If you close mic a couple of inches off the speaker you get none of the benfit of the cab port producing the low end. So by close micing you tend to take at least some aspect of the cab out of the equation as well as the room.

Well I can understand that, after all his rendition of suck my kiss is pretty much the best I've ever heard ......

A mic will output what it does based upon where it is placed (including the angle of placement), its ability to cope with the SPL and its own frequency response. The PA/recording device will get a sum of this and the characteristics of the mic pre being used. The biggest factors here are the polacement of the mic and its frequency response (on and off axis depending on what angle the mic is at to the source). Lets not worry about mic pres at this point! SPL drops at a rate based upon the root mean square of the distance from the source. So, if you put the mic very close to a speaker a couple of things happen, you get almost no meaningful spill from other sources (ie the drum kit and guitarist) and you get pretty much nothing but the speaker's output, so nothing that comes from the port or the tweeter of the cab (or any of the other drivers). In order to get the sound of the cabinet as a whole you need to move the mic back several feet off the speaker grill. The trouble is that you are then fighting for your life against the spill from any other instruments and the potential horrors of the room acoustic. The result will sound further back in the mix, and much more in a space - because you have picked up a lot of information relating to the space in the way of reflections of the boundaries of the room. As with all things in recording its a compromise. One of the reasons I hate and strongly advise against the use of kick mics on bass cabs is they are massively eq'ed, they will cut up to 20dB of mids out of your sound (AKGD112 for example) which is hopeless if what you are trying to do is capture the sound of your bass. These mics are used in the belief that only they can handle the SPL up close - which is a nonsense, lots of dynamic mics can cope up close to a bass cab, and SM57 is happy as can be right in there. They give the initial sense of deeper bass, which is a lie, its not deeper there is just more of it at about 100Hz compared to what is available at 350Hz ([url="http://www.akg.com/mediendatenbank2/psfile/datei/38/D1124055c25c068d6.pdf"]pdf datasheet[/url]). Bass is all the way down to 40Hz though. So, what to do? Well if you dont use loads of effects or rely on the sound of your amp overdriving to get your tone use a DI and you're golden, the simple fact is that in most cases live its the most complete signal you can give to the engineer and he is best placed to tailor that output to the PA, which will have a completely different frequency response to your cab and so should be pre-eq if at all possible (otherwise he will be fighting your amp eq set up for your cab which wont suit his PA speakers as well). If you really need that mic'ed cab your best possible outcome live IME is something like a Heil PR40 and a DI, failing that a Heil PR20, Sure SM58 or 57, Audix D4, Sennheiser E835 or E845 are all fine. That mic is compromised due to close micing, its there to get all the interesting mid range information from the speaker, its not there to get the bass end of the spectrum or the absolute top end, thats where the DI comes in. The two signals are filtered and or eq'ed and mixed together to create a single glorious entirety. Point to note, you absolutely must get the two signals in phase from the mic and DI, in practicale terms that means moving the mic until the output form it is in phase with the DI, which is no where near as hard as it sounds. They are in phase wheh the output is hottest. Using multiple mics on a cab is perfectly possible (and I've done it often) when recording to get more of the room/cab, but you have to be very very confident of your ability to get everything phase aligned. It is not really suitable for live IMO.

Hopefully be able to get up to see it in the new year, absolutely snowed until then!

Me!

[quote name='xgsjx' timestamp='1320176818' post='1423445'] Not sure if you're having this issue with your current rig at rehearsal, but it's one reason why vertical arrays (such as a 2x10 or two) are a better option than something like a 4x10. So when you are off axis, you still get a decent volume. I dare say you probably know this, but it might come in useful for those that don't. [/quote] Absolutely, but for various reasons of practicality I went with the 410. However my current rig has no isssues in a reheasal room because its just immensely punchy and louder than the loudest loud things...

[quote name='razze06' timestamp='1320141085' post='1422701'] Fair enough, we can't all like the same things. Shame that so many people end up having to judge kit only based on the skip-worthy stuff that is usually found in most practice rooms. Peavey stuff is omnipresent and cheap, and they get all the flak. I am equally guilty, having yet to find a piece of Trace Elliot gear i enjoy playing through. [/quote] True this is based upon a lot of kit in reheasal rooms, some kit on gigs, and trying out some kit in shpops (where it gave the impression it might do the job to be fair). Personally I think a reheasal room is a harder space to 'fill' than a pub or stage, its to do with the acoustics, the massive SPLs due to the tiuny room size, the fact that everyone is on top of each other (so you end up way off axis to your cab) etc etc etc Even then Peavey gear ranks lower than the nasty woefully underpowered Hartke stuff you also find in reheasal spaces. Yes I am spoilt with my rig, but my opinion of Peavey comes from way back when all I had was a Laney G300 and a couple of 8ohm 410s, which blew away the Peavey kit (for me at least).

Nah, sorry, voice of dissent here, never heard a decent sounding Peavey rig. Oh it will last forever, and produce an horrific farty punchless bluuurgh of a noise that in no way relates to what my basses have ever sounded like and absolutely will not keep up with a hard hitting drummer and a couple of loud guitarists. And that isnt any particular Peavey rig, it is every single one of the joyless misused and abuses piles of rank plop I have ever had the misfortune to find waiting for me at a gig or in a reheasal space. From mark 3s and 4s through 215s, 210s and 115s, 810s, dynabass heads the daft 2x8 +115 thing, all of it. Rubbish to a rig. I hate every single one....

I really want to hear that room, I love the design elements that went into achieving it, and the no hold barred attention to acoustic detail, I just wish I could hear it is all.... It looks superb too by the way!

[quote name='steve-bbb' timestamp='1319975632' post='1420648'] the other bass player is pretty good too [/quote] Yes, pretty darned awesome, but it only shows how good a bandleader she is that she lets the other bassist take center stage for large sections of that.

Saw Gong at the Zap in Brighton in the early 90's, superb gig, very, errr laid back, as it were

Totally utterly killer bass player, singer, songwriter and bandleader.... Check this out at about 3:30:- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_0SU2jLTjY

You aren't alone, the sr300 series are very very low output for active. If you amp has a passive input you can and may as well use that. Using the gain control is perfectly OK too. It is a bit of a PIA but look at it this way, you probably change battery less as a result....

Pats self on back and feels smug for coiling cables properly for years.....

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1319726664' post='1417819'] We should all turn up somewhere wearing them. What's the collective noun for a bunch of monumental bell-ends? [/quote] I think you'll find its a mixing desk of knobs....

Mine turned up today too! Woot

[quote name='ironside1966' timestamp='1319713163' post='1417540'] Then use the Di sparingly possibly with heavy compression with a fast attack. but just because you have recorder with a DI it doesn't mean you have to use it. It seem to be standard practice to record every instrument has close has possible ,this is not always the best method and in the right acoustic space moving the microphone back can produces a much more natural sound, in short If you like what you hear then record what you hear. Condenser microphones have a faster transient response then dynamics so a condenser may make the problem worse. My advice to anybody recording is get the sound right in the first place if you find a floor in your technique use the opportunity to learn and improve has a musician lastly it is worth listening to the sound in the context of the full track before making the final decision. [/quote] In this case though the issue is it is already tracked and the OP is looking for solutions other than rerecording I think. The problem with moving the mic back are the room has to sound very very good, the bass in the final recording will have a far more distant roomy sound (which wont work very well on a large number of genres as a rule) the bass will be 1ms late for every foot awayt from the cab you place the mic, which may well change the feel for better or worse. There is no problem capturing the bass sound close mic'ed and with a DI, however you need to listen very hard to what you are capturing and make proper judgements about how these sounds all will stand together in the mix. Tracking and mixing is a huge set of compromises which you have to sift through to get the best overall result, it may be that moving the mic back is the right compromise ( or not even a compromise ) when you next track, but right now some careful peak management will sort out the tracks as they stand.

CheddaTom is on the right track. A carefully set up limiter to catch the peak, a notch on the offending frequency and even som fast compression (softknee) to swell into the note slightly can all help control this. If you can find one a dynamic eq can be a godsend here too, or even a multiband comp set to virtually duck out the nasty part of the transient. Lots of tools out there to hel pyou out if you know what you are doing. The difficulty is not immasculating the performance whilst fixing the issue...

Thats vey hard to say really. I like the Zoom series, I have an H4n, mainly because of the mic configuration which is one that I particularly like for stereo (no phase issues between the two mics) The question you need to ask is what is this for? If the answer is taking a note of what we did in rehearsal, then a Zoom H1 plus the goody bag with the extras is a very good value for money solution, if you need more options wrt mic placement in the room, faux omni directional recording the H2 is good, the H2n is a better device (easier to use blah blah blah) but watch out because you only get the power supply in the extras goody bag on that one (which is more than a bit naughty IMO) If you would like the option of 4 tracking things a bit the H4n is ok, but very fiddly to use, if I had the money again I would get the R16 as I could easily use 8 mics getting drums down....

Dependant on the style you are after I would say dont boost the top end. Guitar is a funny old thing, if you are in a genre other than the super scooped metal thing then avoid adding top to it, it usually doesnt sound great IME, especially for lead tones. It will also fight like hell with the rest of the mix if you make it too toppy. There is a lot of presence to be found in the mids rather than top, I find myself using a very gentle shelving filter to remove at least a couple of dB of top (ie >4KHz) off most guitars in a lot of genres. I know this can be differnt live from in a mix, but try it, listen to a lot of stuff in your chosen genre and concentrate on the guitar tone and top end and use that as a clue. An issue I find with a lot of fx units and their delay/reverb is you often cant eq that fx. If you can then roll off more top and a fair bit of bottom (not so much as it gets honky) on delays and reverbs, it will help the original stuff sound up front and will put the delayed/reverbed effect back behind it. If you are running into a nice bit of valve gear try setting it up so that it supplies the overdrive, ie get a clean tone at a level on your clean patch such that its right on the edge of overdriving, then use another couple of patches each with more level to cause the amp to break up. Combining this with some mild overdrive off the fx unit can lead to more overdriven sounds still, with loads of sustain.