MMStingray54 wrote:One can only imagine the frustration playing through a 30 watt valve bass amp (the sound of which breaks up way before maximum output), competing to be heard in the mix with two 30 watt guitar amps and a drum kit, and without PA support.
When I played in such an ensemble in recent times I used a 500 watt class D transistor amp with 2 X 2 X 10 high output cabinets - plenty of headroom, but bass sound similar to recordings on less than half output/input volumes - and even then sometimes had difficulty hearing myself above particularly the rythmn guitar - bassists often moved to solid state amps from the 70s (eg J P Jones - Led Zeppelin with Acoustic) as they produce clean sound without break up until very high output (unless using something like an Ampeg SVT - hugely powerful valve bass amp weighing a huge amount - and getting there by brute power and not getting to the point of sound break up simply by huge power thus not needing to turn up that high!!)
Back to the Beatles and Shads - there would have been no need to run the bass amps at high volume for recording purposes so I can't see any reason why they wouldn't use them, miked up, to record (once they had them of course!!).
As far as DI for bass in the UK is concerned, much of what went on at Abbey Road with The Beatles, Martin and Emrick was ground breaking. Some of us take for granted the ability to plug straight into the desk, or live, use our line out amp facility to pump our sound straight to the PA mixer - back then they had to develop a DI. As I said, apparently started in the UK with the Revolver album (also introducing the Rickenbacker bass) - unless someone else has other info??!!
Indeed!
The bass player in my first group in the '60's had a 20 watt valve 1x12 open back bass combo..I had a 60w valve 2x12 combo for guitar, so he had to trade up to a 60w 2x12 sealed cabinet bass amp...these days bass players often use rigs which far exceed the output of lead guitar amps..different world!
Regarding DI in studios, Bill Wyman said in his book that when the Stones recorded at Chess studios in the USA in the mid '60's, he was amazed when they plugged his bass into a jack plug set in the wall! This was a DI connection direct to the desk in the control room and he'd never seen anything like it before!