The cleanest tone possible?

Do you want to hear your bass at its most natural? Does your amp have an effects loop?

Well instead of plugging your bass into the normal input jack, plug directly into the effects loop return. This (typically) bypasses the pre-amp stage of your amplifier and connects you directly to the power amplifier! You lose all the gain and EQ control that the pre-amp gives you, but instead get to hear your bass in its most natural state!

Is it useful? Maybe. Depending on what you your bass to sound like. But it’s definitely interesting!

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Bass -> DAI -> phones works great for this too :slight_smile:

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Just tried it as I was practicing. Very interesting :thinking:

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Something to try. Thanks

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the famous Motown records were made this way : a passive Precision Bass plugged directly into the recording console. They even didn’t used a DI, the bass was plugged straight into the input of the Neumann tube console. Later they used a Neve transistorized console with DIs (because the input impedance of the Neve was much lower than on the Neumann).

the 2020 home studio version of this approach is pretty much what @howard describes. if you want that Motown feel, it would’nt make much sense to use an active bass, of course, the goal being to NOT have any preamp before the recording gear.

about the Motown tone, the Ampeg B15 was used only for live performance, so it’s not on the album tracks.

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Yeah if you truly want to record that tone and feel, P-bass right into a DAI is a good bet today.

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I love reading all this stuff . Certainly an eye opener and for someone very new to bass certainly adds another thing to experiment with.

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Hi @howard,
I am now practicing through dai into Apple Mac GarageBand to my Bose quiet comfort 35 headphones.
I’m following the videos that @Lanny has Uploaded, it works really nice.
I have made a few phone calls to him and he has been really helpful in guiding me through the recording process, so hopefully I will be able to upload some covers soon.
Not looking forward to my next phone bill🤔, but not only have I had some great help I now have a new “MATE” ( Bill @Lanny will get a laugh from this quote)
I’m loving it👍
Cheers Brian

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This is exactly what I was going to write… For me it is a bit low though. Strangely lower on my active bass.

My active bass can by pass its EQ but pre-amp is always there…

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You sure? If you have passive pickups, EQ bypass is almost always a complete preamp bypass (it’s really simple that way). What some preamps are good at is balancing their output to the level of the passive signal so it just seems they are the same.

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Yeah. No sound without battery so I am sure. Cort A4 is simply made that way. Having the switch in OFF position is same tone as having TREB-MID-BASS knobs at dead center…

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Weird. It would actually be harder to do it that way :slight_smile:

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maybe active pickups with integrated electronics …

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:rofl::rofl: “BRO” @TNKA36 Brian,… We’re “BRO’s”… I’m a “BRO”… You’re a “BRO” :rofl::rofl:…

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Right… (said Fred)

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