How to get rid of hum on the Bass guitar track?

Hey, guys!
The bass player recorded a track and it has very loud distinctive mid-range hum from the cable or pick ups- it some time is louder than the bass sound. I ignored it then because the bass player did not have another instrument and I wanted to have it done, but now- it sounds horrible- don't know what I was thinking. Is there any plugin that would treat it? I do not have any extras for Sonar X3, only effects that came with producer version and I have Komplete 9 Ultimate. But what do you use to get rid of such issue- the EQ? Thank you.

I never used Pro Channel- is it EQ on every channel?

Alex... your new sig is a trip, as usual....

Is the track still isolated and has a part in it where the hum is isolated from any notes being played?
 
Audacity has a noise removal tool (I have not used Audacity though) and is free. I have Adobe Audition (not free) which I *believe* is similar to Audacity in this capacity... basically can select and area of just background noise, and then process the entire clip to remove it. Depending on how isolated a hum is, using an EQ can be destructive to the rest of the signal.
 
Edit: Here is a tutorial on Audacity's Noise Removal tool.

If you can isolate the fundamental & notch it out, try adding further notches at multiples of the fundamental, thereby notching out the harmonics

Working exclusively within SONAR Producer, Sonitus EQ has two different hum reducing EQ presets and R-Mix (from X2) has a "Noise Cancel" section.

I agree.... retrack it..perhaps with a bassist that has a better bass or amp. Why spend hours of your time trying to clean up his mess? 

Well looking at the responses here, until we hear it we don't really know I guess... As always everybody has different assumptions and experiences and therefore come up with different solutions and methods, one person says that works, another person says no it doesn't but this works instead. So this proves there really is no right or wrong and people do things different. such is the nature of things... You can't do noise reduction by committee :)

Perhaps multi-band compression is another option to consider?
 

mettelusAnother workaround that may work for you is to shift-drag the bass track into an empty MIDI track and use that track to feed a soft synth bass. Depending on the playing style that was used, this may or may not be effective.

And if that doesn't work, try doing AudioSnap on it and generating MIDI using RMB-click (context menu on the clip, not the clip header) Copy to MIDI.
 
If either of these work, they'll come pretty close to preserving the performance.

Agree with bitflipper except that I would be more likely to replace the bass with a virtual isntrument.  I have Scarbee Rick, J-Bass, and P-Bass and they sound awesome.  (You can also get a good bass from a Yamaha MegaVoice patch if you have a Motif or Tyros, but Scarbee is the Gold Standard for me.)  If you can only buy one, go for the J-Bass because (in my opinion) it is the most versatile.  Since these run on the free Kontakt player (please verify before buying!) they are less expensive than the audio repair software and you will use them all the time.
 
A guitar player once played on awesome lead part for me but he had single-coil hum all through the track.  I went nuts trying to fix it and finally ended up just replaying the parts myself (using RealStrat and GuitarRig).

Thank you for your replies. Will try to address what I got questions about.

scook
Working exclusively within SONAR Producer, Sonitus EQ has two different hum reducing EQ presets and R-Mix (from X2) has a "Noise Cancel" section.

I know what you talking about- those profiles do not even touch this type of noise.

bitflipper
Agreed that a notch will probably not work well. It rarely does, unless the noise is pure sinusoidal 60/50Hz hum on a track without a lot of low frequencies in it.
 
What you need is a noise-removal tool such as the ones provided with the better audio editors. These work best if you have a section of audio that has just the noise in it, perhaps the lead-in before the bass part begins, or a rest where the bass briefly stops playing. From that the software generates a profile of the noise so it knows what to remove. 
 
Rather than go out and buy Sound Forge or something you could probably appeal to the forum for someone who has iZotope RX, Sound Forge or Audition to volunteer to fix it for you.
 
Other alternatives: re-track the part (best), or convert to MIDI and replace the track with samples (iffy).
 
 

It is hard to retrack as it has been over a year, I am not in contact with the person at a moment and he has the same bass that would sound the same.
 
I used Prochannel EQ, and the hum is so strong- I have to bring all 4 frequencies levels down all the way wide as it gets and it still hums. Also 70% of bass guitar itself is gone, now it sounds like if somebody choked it. So I had to put a Boost on it for volume, which brought back some hum, and also for some reason brought very low frequencies and now it vibrates. So I put another EQ on it to get rid of low and have almost nothing left from that base. I can hardly hear what left from original recording.
 
How do I convert it to MIDI? (Without me re-playing everything on keyboard)?
Is there and Noise removal tool by Cakewalk for Sonar? I thought there was something.

Bristol_Jonesey
If you can isolate the fundamental & notch it out, try adding further notches at multiples of the fundamental, thereby notching out the harmonics

Ok- this hardly makes sense- what is it saying in plain English? Notch- it is like bring it down?
 
I have Komplete Ultimate, I remember having Scarbies something- cant remember what it for- I have too much stuff but no right tools when I need them. How do I convert it to the MIDI?
 
Thank you for all your replies- if I did not quote your post- I consider it as well. I need a tool that gets rod of noise, because my house some how generates a lot of noise on guitars and bass- old wiring, no ground, I guess.

vladasyn

Bristol_Jonesey
If you can isolate the fundamental & notch it out, try adding further notches at multiples of the fundamental, thereby notching out the harmonics

Ok- this hardly makes sense- what is it saying in plain English? Notch- it is like bring it down?

Notch = a very narrow cut at a particular frequency rather than across a wide range.
If the hum is at 60Hz, then you may need to cut at 60, 120, 180, 240, etc.
 
To find out whether a particular frequency needs cutting, try boosting it first.