Bass is one of the trickiest things to mix well, because it’s dynamic and it covers a huge frequency range depending on the player’s tone and how they attack the strings. Here’s how I EQ and compress a bass on the Behringer X32 to get it consistent and give the band a solid foundation to stand on.
Start by listening to what the player is giving you
This particular bass was played with fingers, no pick, and it had a throaty, almost barking tone. Not bad, just not my usual taste. And the player was digging in pretty hard, which can make the low end jump around from note to note. Before you touch anything, solo the bass and figure out what you’re actually working with, because the tone and the playing are most of the battle.
EQ: cut the boxiness, add body
On the EQ, the main thing I wanted to clean up was that boxy, throaty mid-range, right around 550 Hz. That’s the spot I kept coming back to that I didn’t like. I also ran the bass through the Pultec EQ in the effects rack, which adds a little body from its transformer emulation. I liked the added body, even though the frequencies on that EQ don’t actually reach low enough to cut the throatiness I was chasing. So some of it is EQ and some of it is just the gain and body that unit adds.
One honest note here. A lot of what I wanted, I couldn’t fully fix with EQ, because it just wasn’t in the signal. I’d have loved more up around 3 or 4 kHz, but there was almost nothing being sent up there, so boosting it did next to nothing. That’s a source problem, not a console problem. Honestly what I really wanted was for the player to grab a pick for some sections and add a little scrapiness up top.
Compression: don’t be afraid to hit it hard
For compression I keep it on the auto setting at a 4:1 ratio and clamp it down pretty good. Here’s the trick with a bass player who gets excited. Set your threshold to where they’re sitting when they hold back, like at a verse, so that the moment they dig in and get loud, the compressor immediately pins them and holds them in place in the mix.
And don’t be scared to compress a bass hard. There’s a ton of energy in the instrument, which means it can get out of hand fast, but it also means it can take a lot of compression and still do its job. It’s covering the low end that nothing else in the band is, so pinning it down actually gives everyone a solid foundation to stand on. As long as you add your makeup gain back, bringing up the quiet parts and holding down the loud ones, you’ll be in good shape.
If you want my X32 scenes and presets already built so your bass starts in a good place, they’re in my X32 preset packs.
