FEATURE: Mississippi Bass Guitar — Wide and Deep
Posted on Sep 08, 2010 by admin
Fred Thomas lays down the low end. Photo by Mark Kilian - SIXGUN Photo
Looking to record a huge, fat, chewy, punchy, wide, deep, thumping bass sound? Here’s how Kent “Kip” Phillips of Carefree, Arizona’s, Desert Rock Sound Studios went about capturing that sound on recent sessions.
Take it away, Kip:
At Desert Rock Sound Studios, we call our bass guitar sound The Mississippi. That’s because it is very wide and very deep. We want you to be able to hear it, and we want you to be able to feel it.
Recently, we had the honor of tracking Mr. Fred Thomas, James Brown’s bassist for 31 years. As many of you know, James Brown’s tracks are the most sampled (borrowed) on earth. So, in some respects, it’s safe to say that Fred is the most copied bass player on the planet. We were fortunate to find a break in Fred’s tour schedule to bring him into old Carefree, Arizona, to play on some tracks at Desert Rock Sound Studios. We were recording Mother’s Favorite Child’s third album and finishing the foundation tracks.
First of all, let me tell you that Fred Thomas was quite a surprise. He is, without a doubt, the king of funk! Some of the younger musicians in the control room (such as Michael Mirro, drummer and founder of Umphrey’s McGee) said, “I am not sure who that guy is out there, but I could listen to him play all day!” Enough said.
Mother's Favorite Child in session with Fred Thomas on bass. Photo by Mark Kilian - SIXGUN Photo
With some advice from Kenny Bergle, our Sales Engineer at Sweetwater, plus a few twists of our own, we plowed into new mic/recording configurations for use on Fred’s tracks. Our setup for Fred was a combination of something new and something old, designed to capture the wide and deep bass action. We decided on a double-track recording system, using two channels in our Trident board, then out to two Pro Tools inputs.
On the first track, we plugged Fred’s Fender Telecaster Bass (circa 1970) into an Avalon U5 preamp/direct box, with the settings on the highest frequency boost. The Avalon went straight into the Trident.
Funk master Fred Thomas tracking bass. Photo by Mark Kilian - SIXGUN Photo
For the second track, we used a Fender Bassman amplifier head (circa 1965) and matching vintage 2 x 12″ Fender Bassman speaker cabinet. We placed the amp head on a stand by the Avalon, used the through output from the Avalon to feed the bass head input, and ran a 50′ speaker cable to the cabinet, which was located in an isolated room. We used an AKG D112 microphone on the speakers in the cab.
No EQ or compression were used during tracking. The thought behind this dual system was to get the clean sound from the direct box on one track and the ’60s distortion/funk sound on the other. Then we could pull up both sounds and adjust the blend to taste in the final mix.
As you may know, the old Bassman amps have a very mellow, natural, “built-in” funk/distortion sound. I am not sure what kind of magic Leo Fender did to the old amps, but they are very smooth sounding.
What we had in the final mix was a clear, higher-end sound on one track and a full-blast Mississippi low rumble on the other. When you get these two sounds blended in the mix, with a split pan (one sound/track to the right and one sound/track to the left), you are there! Check out the unaccompanied bass track below as well as the bass in the context of the song’s rough mix.
September 9th, 2010 on 12:46 am
Thanks for posting this. The bass has a nice vintage sound, and am
a huge fan of mic’ing the amp. I find that smaller speakers seem to work
well for studio mic’ing and this confirms it.
September 9th, 2010 on 8:08 am
I am a bass player too, I love that bass sound man. Check out my bass tracks http://www.cdbaby.com/moreland5.
September 9th, 2010 on 10:39 am
How was the pan set? Hard left, hard right or 11 o’clock and 1 o’clock?
September 9th, 2010 on 11:03 am
What was the circuit configuration for the Bassman amp? There were three different designs back then and each had it’s own unique sound.
AA864, AA165 or AB165?
Which input of the amp was used? The Bass channel input or the Normal channel input?
Which speakers were in the cabinet. They had changed from time to time and they may have been upgraded.
September 9th, 2010 on 11:43 am
Great article but neither track would play. Shame, really wanted to hear them……..
September 10th, 2010 on 12:31 pm
HI,
My name is Paris Toon and some of the information on this page is incorrect. http://select.sweetwater.com/2010/09/feature-mississippi-bass-guitar-wide-and-deep/ First Desert Rock Website is http://www.desertrockstudios.com you currently have incorrect link. Also the mp3s are incorrectly pitched. I will email you the correct files. Not sure what happened to them. Mothers Favorite Child’s website is http://www.mothersfavoritechild.com Thanks. Love Sweetwater!!!!
September 14th, 2010 on 11:39 am
Thanks Paris, I’ve fixed the link!
September 14th, 2010 on 11:42 am
Richard, I’m sorry you’re having trouble with the audio files. I haven’t heard of this difficulty from anyone else. You may be able to download the files by right-clicking on them and saving them to your computer.
September 14th, 2010 on 11:43 am
Jerry, I’ll see if I can get answers to these questions for you.
September 14th, 2010 on 11:43 am
Bert, I believe the tracks were hard panned.
September 17th, 2010 on 11:28 am
The bass sound is buttery and the playing is classic! I like the sound that Desert Rock got on the rest of the tracks as well! Those have to be vintage keys as well, modern synths just dont groove like that. Any info on the rest of this session? Producer? Engineer? and how about a rundown on those keys!