Bass Tones W/ Low Guitar Tunings?

[Carl Kolchak]

A question for people playing/mixing 8 string/baritone guitars, how are you eq'ing the bass on your songs/tracks? I ask because I'm playing a 30" scale guitar now and am having real difficulty dialing-in a bass tone that gels with the guitar.

My guitar tone,
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9256687/p2.mp3

I've tried clean and dirty/distorted bass tones, but can't really find anything complementary.

Any suggestions?

 

[TheDrumEquation]

A question for people playing/mixing 8 string/baritone guitars, how are you eq'ing the bass on your songs/tracks? I ask because I'm playing a 30" scale guitar now and am having real difficulty dialing-in a bass tone that gels with the guitar.

My guitar tone,
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9256687/p2.mp3

I've tried clean and dirty/distorted bass tones, but can't really find anything complementary.

Any suggestions?

I've been toying around with this as well.

I used to do a pretty harsh high pass on the guitars, leaving plent of room for the bass. But this led to my mixes sounding weak. So I've recently tried getting a more full range guitar tone and try to get a more percussive sound from the bass.

I've had some mild success on my first few attempts, and I hope to better perfect it.

I still do a high pass on the guitars just not as much. I also like to find the sweet spot on the bass, sweep around on the EQ until you find a frequenct you like, then boost that slighty. Then go to your guitar tracks and cut that same frequency about 3-5 dB.

Hope this helps!

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

Whatever the range is that the guitar is filling, scoop that out of the bass, or vise versa.

 

[Kittenflower]

I used to post-process a clean guitar tone one octave down and EQ it further got a pretty massive bass sound at times but it only worked well for my 7-string tracks. Higher notes just sound really weird when you pitch it down an octave.
Also the sound is okayish only if you did single coil or middle positions with your pickups, there's something about a full humbucker that makes it sound muddy and undefined even more.

 

[yanzfoot]

Since I once played 8 string guitars on a band, and in the same band I latter played the bass (and did all the mix and stuff for they)... My conclusions we're not so easy.

If you are playing the 8 string guitar on lower tone than F# (like E for example), than the best thing you can do, it's just to play a standart 4 string bass (because the 5th string just won't be tight enough, and the pickups + stings of a bass guitar can't reproduce well lower than 60 Hz tones). Actually if listen to the last Deftones records with 8 strings, you well see that they use a standart 4 string bass tone, and so the "A Wolf against ravens" from After The Burial (so the 8th string guitars) are 320 Hz and above (in After Burials case, and in the Deftones 160 Hz and above -E octave-), and the bass is in the 80 Hz zone and above (rest of the room, is for the kick)

If you are going to play in a standart F# tune, than yes, you can play a standart 5 string bass, with the 5th tuned in F# (and yes, you will get this huge 46 Hz tone).

In terms of distorsion or not, this is personal (if I gonna play with the pick, then it's cool, if you are doing some slapping, tapping or technical stuff with the bass, then no).

Here's a song I made for looong time ago in G tone (between 7 and 8 strings) https://soundcloud.com/pcfriki/ian-cavalcanti-crg-1 . From second 0:50 you can see I play a standart 5 strings bass in the G tone (adjusted bass, new strings etc.), and keeping in mind that the G tone is a 25 Hz wave, i've eq the bass so it has it's peaks in the 50 Hz and 100 Hz (G octaves), and the guitars begin in the 200 Hz, so it's all about the G octaves.

Sorry for my bad english, and I hope I could help you somehow (I use Pro-Q plugin for the EQ on the bass and guitar), because it's pretty flexible with the Q factor, so I can choose exactly wich frequency I would like to cut or enhance.

 

[pkgitar]

I cut aggressively between 200-600 (depends on a lot of stuff). The lower of that area is usually mud city. Although it depends on your initial tuning, tone etc. Then I check for spikes by sweeping across areas I think I'm hearing spikes. If I find somehing I pull it down with a narrow-ish Q depending on how bad it is.

This is my method anyway. I'm 100% sure someone else does it different, but it's worth a shot.

Oh and compression. Slam that .....

 

[Lokasenna]

Let the bass have some of the midrange that your guitars have abandoned.