Recording live bass

I'm having a few problem recording my live bass playing with the MPC- at the moment I've got my bass going into an amp, then a cable from the 'phones' jack from that going into the MPC's Record In (mono), which is giving me a very distorted and flat bass tone. I was wondering if there's a more efficient way of doing this, or something that will recreate the tone that would normally come out of my amp more effectively....

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

mic up your bass amp.

I guess I should have realised that

I'll definitely do that at some point, but I don't actually have a mic with me where I am at the moment....any other ways around it? Not to worry if there aren't really....

If your amp has a regular line output you should try using that, if you are getting distortion then turn down the amp (and/or the rec gain on the mpc). But yeah, the best way would be to mic up the amp if you want the sound of the amp.

is it because you want that cabinets sound going into the mpc? i don't have any external instruments so i never had the need to hook one up to the mpc, but can't you just plug the bass directly into the mpc? or does the bass need amplification similar to a turntable?

just curious.

I think it needs amplification. I tried plugging the bass straight into the MPC but didn't get any sound. It's mainly because I don't have a mic with me in my college room, but I'd still like to be able to have some live bass lines in my music.

Get a DI (Direct Injection) box for your bass.

DI boxes come in several flavours, from the Line 6 PODs to more expen$ive options, to cheaper (~75$ US) "amp modeling" boxes.

A DI box basically colors the sound of the bass/guitar, and can be used when mic'ing a cabinet is an unreasonable option.

I put my bass through a bluetube prior to the mpc. It works great although you have to tweak the levels a lot depending on what style you're playing.

yeah those line 6 pod things are cool. they emulate the sounds of several well known amps, all in one box, which is nice.

flipnile wrote:Get a DI (Direct Injection) box for your bass.

I always called them direct input, but direct injection sounds more exciting i guess...

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but a DI box does more than just color the sound. It changes the signal from a line level to another more suitable level. Damn, I can't remember the exact terminology but it does something to the signal. Maybe somebody here can give a more technical answer.

Oh and IMO, I think the reason I would want to run a bass into an amp as opposed to just plugging it straight into the MPC is that the pres on the MPC, don't sound as good as if it were plugged into some other sorta preamp.

For example, if you go into almost any pro-studio, they don't just run instruments and mics straight into the board. They got em hooked up to a whole bunch of other s**t, pres, compressors, to warm up the sound.

Anyways, I hope this made sense. If I strayed off topic, sorry...

a DI box changes the signal from unbalanced to balanced.

About the DI box, I think it´s something like this:

DI box not only switches between unbalanced/balanced, it also alters the impendance of the signal which is the same as adjusting the levels. For example the signal from an electric guitar requires a input calibrated to a much higher impendance than the signal from a keyboard.
Plug a el. guitar straight into a mixer and the sound is weak and kinda strange even if you gain the channel a lot.
Plug a keyboard into a guitar preamp and it will very easy overdrive and distort, even if you have a clean signal path on the preamp.

The box alters the impendance, brings it up to line level and thus making it possible to plug a guitar or bass directly into the mixer. The sound of course gets really boring as much of the charachter of the sound is created in the preamp and mostly the cabinet/woofer.
The impendance change is depending on wether the DI box is active or passive.
I´ve mostly used it in live situations myself, mostly on electric bass and old strange keyboards/electric pianos.

yep it's all about the impedance. Instrument line level is different than regular line level.