while searching for a perfect bass tone?

setup and preparation

I set out to capture a specific bass-guitar tone. The goal was to create a preset that could be recalled at the touch of a few buttons. 

so I grabbed a bunch of mics and sampled the sound of the room (see the impulse response post)

after that, I quickly mapped out how the signal flow might look. 

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After that, i began modelling the room. grab a handful of mics, set them up, untangle tangle the cables, load the session template set gain staging, and capture the sound... I chose to use a bunch of different variations, all placed at cone-centre on the amplifier (being unsure which one would be ideal), with a single omni-directional at listener positron, and sort them out later. 

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​the mic set-up spreadsheet in case I need to remember it later...

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Testing and fine-tuning

Now that the impulse has been recorded, It's new session for testing. I grabbed the song (currently in its very early stages) tuned the bass, and warmed up a bit. Recorded it, and started to sculpt the tone.

the whole process took a couple hours to set up, but now, after saving the whole thing, The sound can be recalled in seconds.

as it turns out, some adjustments had to be made. an overdrive and a Metal distortion had 'the sound'  after some serious EQ on the distortion bus tracks.  

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A spectral analysis of the bass (and guitar from a practice session) 

yep, its a deep warm sound, with a some nice punchy tone. 

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