Andy Wallace Bass EQ Trick | Get Huge, Tight Bass In Your Mix 

Watching this on a phone was hilarious hahah

YESSS, this is one of the reasons why Nevermind sounds so huge. Please if you could make more Andy Wallace related that’d be awesome!

Nevermind remains one of the best mixed rock records of all time IMO so when Andy Wallace drops a kernel of knowledge it's probably worth paying attention

WOOH...that sounded gorgeous when you cranked that 1073 plugin!

Thank you for these amazing videos you upload on RU-vid 🙏

Thanks a lot ! Many people underestimate how it’s fundamental to treat right the bass and how it’s easy to mess up with it.

This is really good. Just used this on a fairly simple ballad that I thought already sounded good and wow! Everything just tightened right up. Thanks!

Cheers Joe, one of the things I've been doing recently is splitting the bass and processing it separately, one that focuses on the bass neck sounds and one that focuses on the body. It's a Michael Brauer concept

that's amazing & super simple, thanks!

Nice! Cranking the 40 Hz EQ to the max and then cutting around 200 Hz. I will try that.

Great trick for bass sound EQ. Thanks for sharing. Cheers

Really enjoying your tipps! Thanx!

nice tip. would like to see another video series of you mixing start to finish, the fabfilter one you did was an awesome series.

Incredible man, thnx for share!

That sounds beautiful

Man I love this channel! Gonna try that right away! thanks!

That is awesome - sometimes I'll try something similar, but maybe with a Waves "MaxxBass" upfront, and then filtering/eq-ing in the bass buss. Great tip here!

Cranking the lowest fundamental of the bass and then cutting some low mids around 250-350 is a pretty common trick to get a big low-end without it going muddy. The exact frequencies to boost and cut vary by song but that’s the principal, if your boosting low bass/sub frequencies create a cut in the low mids for separation and definition. If you have electronic sub-bass frequencies and electric bass doubling it gets trickier. Sometimes I’ll cut all the lows from the electric bass, and let the electronic sub fundamental carry the section

Love this trick bud, thanks a lot for sharing. I have the scheps 73 also and it just sounds great on bass when cranked, would never have thought to that extreme but sounds superb!

Outstanding

Cool concept. I’m gonna try this on my next one.

btw, for those that don't know and want to know: the boost in the bass is a very broad band with 18dB of gain.

Great tip!

Great vid! 🙌🏻 Thank you!

Looks awesome, thx!

Definitely had that Wallace sound ! I wish there as more with him as well! Thanks for sharing

Such a spectacular piece of knowledge. I love this technique! (Now if I only can get it to work for me.)

Great one!!! More of such tips

thanks, so specific! & convincing example.

Great video thanks

Nice tip.. subscribed !

Amazing 🙏

Thank you Thank you Thank you!!!!!!! Just tried it and it’s awesome !

Incredible

Much appreciated

Thanks for the tip!

Great tutorials

Yes this is awesome😍

Great great tip ! Thx ! Got a new suscriber !

Tried this with Slate VMR and works really well. Thanks!

Great bass sound!!!!

Thank you!

i like this a lot. always learning from the masters. also, ignore the haters, this is a great video

that's gem!

Wonderful.

love it awesome

Nice!

Andy Wallace is the sigma of the mixing engineers. Working quietly, wisely, and precisely with success.

Muchas gracias amigo

Impressive!

This reminded me of a pultec style eq trick which you boost somewhere around 30hz and attenuate at 30hz at the same time in order to get some really interesting heavy guitar sound

Wow many many thx appreciate it

Neatest tricks for bass out there

reminds me of indie rock bass guitar stuff back in the 90s.

Great Andy Wallace! Greatest mixer alive!

Beautiful****

Hi great tip, reminiscent of the Pultec boost and cut. Note do you have the original reference where this tip from Andy Wallace originally came?

wtf this works like crazy!

nice technique

This is kind of mimicking how the pultec eq works with the low end trick. I think i watch Jaquire King did this similar concept with the pultec styled eq. Cool stuff!

I wanna try this but may add a tape saturation plugin first and different compressor after the Neve emulation.

kewl tric thanks

Niiiiiiice!

Again, nifty! Thanks! I think I could use a Pultec for the 40Hz boost, right? Or must it be a bell? Would 60Hz Pultec be better? I'll try it....

nice

Thx for the video. Little hint: Could you do a before/after comparison without Interruption, that means without stoping & talking. That would make it more helpful 👍

I would like to know how Michael Brauer does the A B C D buses inside the DAW, he calls it Brauerizing, you are good at simplifying ideas, and I love everything you post on your channel.

Thankssss

Really interesting. The theory of it makes sense, and obviously the sound is cool. Not sure if it's applicable to every mix, but definitely a good tool for those mixes where a big low end is paramount.

This is a true gem. I recently enjoyed a similar book, and it was a true hidden gem. "The Art of Meaningful Relationships in the 21st Century" by Leo Flint

I don’t have the Waves SSL G, I have the Brainworx version, and the switches are labeled differently. I’m assuming that he has it set up here with the COMPRESSION coming BEFORE the SSL EQ. Do I have this right? ~Thanks

Great video thanks,,, i see you have Oxford inflator in your plugins, how did you get it to show,,, all my oxford plugins dont appear in studio one .

I did a test using three different EQ's. I tried using 1) the FabFilter Pro-Q 3 with a 18 dB low shelf boost at around 50 Hz, 2) the Sie-Q from Soundtoys with the low end knob cranked all the way up, and 3) the Waves Scheps 73 with the settings in this video: 35 Hz, cranked all the way. My take aways are that 1) the Pro-Q 3 was very gentle and didn't really boost the low end much. It sounded okay but didn't have the musical effect I wanted. 2) The Sie-Q did a proper job of boosting the low end but also added a lot of boominess around 200 Hz. The low end felt lifted but also muddy. 3) The Scheps 73 did an amazing job and sounds great. It's pure magic when you crank the 35 dB. I would get this plugin for the low end boost alone. It adds so much low end (at the max setting), but somehow it doesn't sound bad. It doesn't add that much boominess - it's just musical and thick in the most pleasant way. I bought the plugin straight away after this little test of mine. Thanks for showing me the world of musical EQ's, @Green Light Sound!

Thank you for this very helpful tip! I’m just getting into the world of mixing and wondering how this technique would work in conjunction with the kick drum in a song? If rock music typically has a kick drum mixed in a lower frequency range than bass wouldn’t boosting the bass at 40hz start interfering with the kick ? Thanks for any help!

Will you ever do a David Bottrill video?

I can't imagine Wallace uses these cheezy sounding plugins

How do you know Wallace uses this technique? I can't find reference to it anywhere. It's great and works well so thanks for sharing but I'm just curious to know how you know that this is what Andy does. cheers

Great teaching voice with post/pre processing, did not have to strain to hear you and the music examples were at the same levels. Simple yes, but 99% of all YT audio teaching videos have me riding my volume through the whole video. (doesn't give much credit to those teacher does it :)

If u look at the albums that andy has mixed it's pretty undeniable he's the best mixer in the business

I think this is working because despite cranking the low end, you lose low end from the compressor. Dumping a little of the low mids is a common move to reduce mud.

Great video. Would you put these 2 plug ins on the bass bus or the Bass channel? Or does it not matter? Thanks

I might just not be getting something but how is it a trick to boost the low end and then compress it?

Surprised to actually hear the 35hz on my YT monitoring system! 200 to 300hz obviously. I have noticed that the 400hz in many mixes marks the range of "mud" frequencies. Was your bass mic-ed cabinet or DI....or maybe a sample (sounds like a sample)? Funny how some analog synthesizers have gigantic bass sound over a recorded bass guitar. Was some bass compression inserted at the tracking stage, or was it all post processed?

Reminds me of the Pultec EQ Boost and Tame at the same time. Can I assume it has similar effect?

How do I get those plugins for Logic?

An important part of this technique is that a real Neve 1073 will produce very musical saturation harmonics with that boost on the low frequencies, and later when you apply a high pass filter and re-EQ the lowest frequencies, you get rid of the extremely low ones while retaining the produced harmonics, which is what will ultimately retain the feeling of a big bass sound even when it's no longer intrusive. Now, using plugins for this, may or may not work the same, all depending on how well the 1073 algorithm is implemented on the emulation you use.

1:43 "Push it all the wayyyyy up"

Just curious, why did you use stereo version of the plugins on the bass buss?

Awesome! Does this also work with 808s ?

How should I do this if I use parallel distortion for my bass sound?

I learned a less refined idea of this for Bass or kick- on an aux channel, low pass cut everything above 60hz. crank everything below 60hz., compress it almost to death, a little distortion is fine, blend a bit of this with your clean track. this works with any gear

Simple and cheapest way that works for me is rolling off at 3 or 4 k . Then raise the general volume and your 40 hz comes up in ratio . I agree that the sweet spot for bass tone is 300 to 500 and compression is the finishing touch . Most important , you must here the bass clearly on tiny mixing speakers ( within the mix ) . Monitor the clarity of your bass and drums as you start adding the rest of the instruments in the mix . Mid range instruments like guitar should be rolled off around 120 as not to muddy up the lower end . Compartmentalize the range of every instrument to avoid mud and cancellation of sound . If you are fortunate to receive a budget to do your work ... leave your home studio and let the big boys with their million dollar studios do the session . I’ve worked with Tom Lord Algie - you can’t compete with these guys and their complex bussing and equipment .

I kinda hate the sound of SSL G series. I am amazed at all these guys who make them sound so good. No idea how that is done. Andy Wallace's work is mind blowing. Evil Empire is some sort of black magic.

Don't forget the Chorus he uses on just about all his bass tracks 👍

What settings are you using with the compressor in this example?

wait but he’s doing a low shelf at 40, then filtering up to 40? isn’t that just gonna create essentially a small boost at 40?

wow

How is this different than just using the SSL? Is the EQ curve of a Neve something the SSL can't replicate?

I am confused. None of those plugs actually sound like the hardware. Yes the GUI and usage is similair and the reponse curves but the actual analog sound no. Is that right or am I mistaken?.

How to do it on FL studio with their plugins