I'm finishing up a recent project and am not happy with the bass in the mix. I have recorded a 5-string Ibanez bass (nothing special), run through a Radial DI into GR5. I like the sound of the bass, but to add some "growl", I layered in a sample from a bass library. Overall, bass is well defined, but is missing some low-end punch. Turning it up does not help at all. I'm thinking that I may have overdone a high pass filter somewhere.
 
The mix sounds fine on larger systems, just a bit thin on smaller systems and phones. I'm thinking I need to focus on 100 - 200hz. Does that sound about right?
 
Regards,
Dan
 

i like to split a signal, and run it thru a guitar amp, set for breakup, to get distortion in the upper mids and highs....
i roll off the low end on that track, and blend it with the direct, which should be clean and low-rich

my focus would be more in the 400-800 hz range, for what i call 'grunt'

at 100 hz, you will actually get more low end than you think, try cutting a high Q at 150, leave your 100 and 200 just slightly boosted with a high Q again, start with 1db boosts

 Yes for smaller systems the bass is usually heard in that range.Attack and waveform also play a big part in the sound.

I was just watching a Groove 3 tutorial on this, and that mixer cloned his DI track 2 times.  One was strictly for a dirty sound (he added a nice bass distortion to make it high and crunchy) and the other was for "girth" as he called it.  It was sub bass low end meat.  

All told, he had four bass tracks.  1 DI, 1 amped, then the two cloned DIs I just described.  As each was its own track, he just blended them in to taste and ended up with a very nice, balanced track.  

Furthermore, you can automate the crunchy one for chorus sections and such.  it was a pretty cool technique.

Hmm... Don't know why I never thought about cloning the track. I've done everything else...lol.

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll try them later.

Regards,
Dan

Have you tried any of the ProChannel presets?  Some of them are killer on bass.  Check out the FX Chains as well.

Keep us posted on results!

If you're layering a DI bass track with a sampled bass, try letting one or the other handle the <200Hz frequencies and emphasize 800Hz and up in the other. Sometimes with layering you get destructive interference that causes the low end to get thin. It's a good idea any time you layer anything to separate them with EQ. BTW, most of the "growl" happens well above the 200Hz range.

You want to saturate it.

http://www.voxengo.com/product/lfmaxpunch/

Well, as per bit's advice, the layering was interfering a little. After I cloned the DI bass, I went ahead and reinforced the "growl" on the layered bass tracks and they sound much better together. I also raised the HPF a bit so I can focus the low end into the cloned DI track. I then compressed the cloned DI track and filtered out the higher frequencies to keep it separated from the other two bass tracks. The bass is a lot louder now, but not yet as big as I'd like it to be.

Already am using saturation. I don't want to push it too hard though because I don't want distortion on the low end.

After testing the mix last night, I need to go back and lower the overall bass just a bit (it's too loud now), but work on enhancing the low end on the cloned DI track. It's very close, but it needs just a little more something...I'm trying to get a smooth round low end. Heck, isn't everybody?

Regards,
Dan

i have found that all these 'tricks' to getting bigger better bass sounds, end up only washing out the bass.

historically, the best pro-produced bass tones, usually are of a real bass, with at most, a DI and a mic blended.

the real pros can put together multiple tracks and do all kinds of magic with it, but most of the home recordists that i listen to, that attempt this, end up with mushy bass tracks.