The most consistent results come from close miking and just off centre seems to get the best balance of sound but of course you can experiment with different mic postions. In any situatiion where you are recording something with two or more mics you have to check for phase problems and recording bass guitar if you have two mics out of phase you can pretty well lose all the bottom end. Careful positioning is crucial and always flip the phase button on one channel to hear the sound as well as relying on your phase correlation meter if you have one. There are pieces of kit out there that enable you to progressively move the phase rather than simply flipping it through 180 but they are pretty expensive.

Compression is pretty much a must when recording bass guitar as there is often a huge difference in level between the open E string and something played high up the neck on the G string. The trick is to just take off a few dbs at this stage to even up the whole performance. If you can hear the compresser working then its too much. Back the attack time off enough to let the pluck of the string get through and set the compression ratio around 5:1.

Of course a lot of you out there wont be able to afford some of the more expensive condenser mics we have used here but the joy of the bass is that you can get pretty good results with almost any mic and even the lowly sm57 will get you a workable sound as long as it sounds right coming out of the speakers. Best first choice will be a large diaphragm condenser but you really can have a go with anything and most dynamic mics will give you a result.