Recording Bass with Jim Collins
(Gene Dante & The Future Starlets)
We set up Jim Collins and his Ampeg amp on top of my Line 6 4×12 cabinet in the live room for some nice isolation. He wanted his cabinet up high so that he could get extended sustain on a couple of songs where he pressed the head stock of his bass against the speaker cabinet. Set up an Octava 319, an ATM 25 (usually a kick drum mic, but also does well on bass) one foot from the cones just off center, and a Behringer ECM 8000 about twenty feet back in the room to get a natural full room sound. We also took a direct line out of his amp in combination with the three mics. Total four tracks recorded for each performance, and mixed to taste.
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Jim cut tracks for six songs over two eight hour days with distortion overdubs and an additional direct into the box safety performance that can be re-amped later if we need a drastic change in sound. The additional performance directly to tape is probably overkill, but Jim was nailing his takes so it seemed like not too much trouble to add an additional option as a “just in case”.
Next we will be recording Erik on rhythm guitar.
