A bass guitar’s notes live between about 41Hz and 250Hz, and its harmonics run up to around 5kHz. The weight is at the bottom, but what small speakers actually play is the midrange. So bass EQ is mostly two jobs: share the low end with the kick, and give the bass enough mids to be heard. These are the places I look first and the moves I usually end up making. They’re places to look, not settings to copy.
The cheat sheet
| Move | Where | How |
|---|---|---|
| High-pass | Usually none | Only when there’s a sub resonance problem. |
| Low shelf | Lifts everything below it, 20-40Hz included | Don’t. That sub energy masks the kick and eats headroom. Use a bell. |
| Sub / foundation | 50-80Hz | Usually the kick’s territory. If the bass needs some, a 2-3dB bell at the right frequency. |
| Body / note | 80-150Hz bell around 80-100Hz | Boost 2-4dB, moderate Q. Where the note is most defined. |
| Boomy / one-note | 100-180Hz | One note rings louder than the rest. Compressor before the EQ, or a dynamic EQ on that note. |
| Mud | 200-350Hz | Cut 2-4dB, wide Q. On the bass, or on the kick and guitars instead. |
| Growl | 700Hz-1.5kHz around 1.5kHz | Wide, gentle boost, 2-3dB. This is what earbuds and laptop speakers hear. |
| String noise | 2-4kHz | A touch, 1-2dB, for realism. If the pick or fret noise gets aggressive, a gentle cut instead. |
Two rules sit over all of it. In the low end, use bell curves, not shelves: in a whole mix I might use one shelf. And every decision gets checked with the kick and the rest of the mix playing, not in solo.
Want to see where bass guitar sits against the kick and everything else? It’s on the EQ frequency chart, with 23 other instruments.
Kick and bass: who owns what
Kick and bass are like a married couple sharing a bed. They both need the same low-frequency space, and one of them is always taking all of it. When they hit together, the kick loses its punch or the bass loses its definition.
Here’s the odd part. A bass guitar’s low E sits around 41Hz, lower than the kick, which lives around 60Hz. But in a mix the kick should own the sub. If your bass is subbier than your kick, you won’t hear the kick.
So I give them separate floors:
- Kick in the basement. The kick owns the sub, roughly 50-80Hz. A bell around 60Hz gives it that chest-thumping weight.
- Bass on the ground floor. The bass owns the body and the note, 80-150Hz. A bell around 80-100Hz for power, not a low shelf reaching down into the kick’s space.
- The growl waving from the window. A wide, gentle boost around 1.5kHz helps the bass cut through without adding any more low end.
- Someone gives up the mud. Both pile up at 200-350Hz. Decide whether you cut the bass and let the kick keep it, or cut the kick and let the bass own it. Sometimes the guitars should give it up instead.
If the kick still feels weak after you’ve boosted it, check whether the bass is masking it at 80-120Hz. That 60-120Hz zone is a battleground. (The kick side is in the kick drum EQ cheat sheet.)
EQ gives them separate floors. Sidechain ducking keeps them out of each other’s way in time. Put a compressor on the bass and key it from the kick: fast attack, fast-to-medium release, about 3-4dB of gain reduction on the kick hits. Use a FET or VCA-style compressor, not an optical one. An opto is too slow to recover before the next kick, so the bass just stays ducked. Keep it subtle. If the bass goes “wub wub wub” every time the kick hits, you’ve gone too far.
The exception is 808-based music, like trap. There the bass is the sub, and the rules change. More on that below.
Common bass EQ problems
What each one sounds like, where it lives, and what to do about it.
Boomy or one-note (100-180Hz)
One note rings out louder than all the others. Something in 100-180Hz is resonating and dominating the rest. It’s not that the frequency is bad: it’s the lack of control. It’s common on bass and kick recorded in untreated rooms.
A static cut takes that range out of every note, including the ones that were fine. Two better options: a compressor before the EQ to even the notes out, or a dynamic EQ that only cuts when that resonant note triggers it. The dynamic EQ is also the answer when the boom only turns up in one section, like the chorus. The verse stays untouched. If you do use a static cut, keep it narrow and on the resonant note.
This is one of those problems compression and EQ solve together. On bass I reach for an optical compressor, LA-2A style, with around 3-5dB of gain reduction on the loudest notes. It evens the notes out and makes your EQ more effective. The Compressor Calculator has starting settings for bass.
If it’s a mic’d amp, check where the cab is sitting. A speaker on the floor gets exaggerated, boomy low end from bass loading. Raise it off the floor before you reach for EQ.
Muddy or woolly (200-350Hz)
Thick and undefined, with the kick and bass smeared together. This is where home studio mixes fall apart, because bass, kick and guitars all pile up here. Cleaning it up is one of the single biggest improvements you can make to a mix.
Cut 2-4dB with a wide Q. But you don’t have to cut the bass itself. Sometimes cutting the same range on the guitars opens the bass up perfectly.
Two things make bass mud worse. A low shelf boost, which lifts everything below it. And reverb: don’t put it on bass or kick. The reverb carries the low end of each note into the next one and smears the whole bottom of the mix.
Lost on small speakers
Big on your monitors, gone on earbuds and laptop speakers. The sub is essential on big systems and invisible on small ones, so sub bass alone won’t fix it.
Boost the growl with a wide, gentle bell, 2-3dB around 1.5kHz. It brings out the pick or finger detail without adding mud, and it’s the single most important range for bass translation. On most instruments a 1.5kHz boost sounds boxy. On bass it’s one of the few midrange boosts that pushes the instrument forward.
Right in solo, wrong in the mix
The bass sounds great soloed, then disappears when the band comes in. Or it swamps everything. Solo mode disconnects you from context.
Use solo to find a problem, then make the decision with the whole mix playing. Better still, mute instead of solo: bring everything up, then mute the bass. The gap it leaves is what it was adding.
And ask whether it’s really a level problem. If the bass has plenty of mids but no bottom end, turning it up just gives you a louder thin bass. If it’s swamping the mix, pull it down before you touch anything else. Turning down the one element that’s overpowering often solves several balance problems at once.
Thin
Thin bass is usually a DI that needs some love. If you’re all-DI, try a bass amp sim to add some harmonic weight. Then check 80-150Hz, where the note lives, and make sure the kick isn’t eating all the space down there.
If you’ve already cleaned up the sub and it now lacks solidity, boost around 100Hz with a bell. Not a shelf: that brings back all the sub you just took out. Tape saturation or a subharmonic generator are other ways to add weight.
Blending a DI with a mic’d amp? Check the alignment first. The DI arrives a little earlier, because the sound takes roughly 1-2ms to travel from the speaker to the mic. That offset causes phase cancellation, and it thins out the low end.
Harsh or clanky (2-4kHz)
Bass usually isn’t harsh. But string noise or pick attack can get aggressive in the 2-4kHz range, and too much of it sounds like the strings need changing. A gentle cut tames it without killing the articulation. On a picked bass this range is naturally more prominent, so you may not need to boost it at all.
Distortion changes things. Drive a bass through a pedal or amp gain and it grows high mids around 4kHz that a clean bass doesn’t have. If it gets spiky, make a corrective cut at 2-4kHz on the bass bus, or blend in more of the smoother mic.
Bass frequency ranges: bass guitar, synth bass and 808
Same job, different places. Synth bass and 808s reach lower than a bass guitar, and on small speakers all three depend on their midrange to be heard.
| Bass guitar | Synth bass | 808 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Notes live | 41-250Hz | 25-200Hz | 25-120Hz |
| Harmonics | 250Hz-5kHz | 200Hz-5kHz | 120Hz-3kHz |
| Sub | 50-80Hz, usually left to the kick | 40-100Hz weight | 30-60Hz chest thump, the whole point |
| Note / body | 80-150Hz | 100-200Hz | 60-120Hz pitch |
| Mud | 200-350Hz | 150-300Hz | 150-300Hz, cut harder when distorted |
| Heard on small speakers | 700Hz-1.5kHz growl | 800Hz-2.5kHz buzz | 500Hz-2kHz distortion |
| Clear the rumble | No low shelf. High-pass only for a sub resonance | High-pass at 30Hz minimum | High-pass at 25-30Hz |
Synth bass
Synth bass can generate huge sub energy that eats headroom without adding anything musical. High-pass at 30Hz minimum. If you’re not monitoring on subs or good headphones, you might not even know that energy is there, but it’s making your limiter work harder.
Saw-wave basses are the worst for mud: all those harmonics stack up at 150-300Hz. Filter them out at the synth, or cut 2-4dB with a wide Q. If the patch moves (filter sweeps, LFOs), a dynamic EQ works better than a static cut.
On phone speakers nobody hears your sub. A wide 2-3dB boost in the buzz range, 800Hz-2.5kHz, is what makes it audible. And if it sounds thin, check your monitoring before you EQ. Laptop speakers can’t reproduce sub bass, so reference on headphones. If it really is thin, boost 40-80Hz and make sure the limiter isn’t squashing the sub.
808 bass
The sub is the whole point of an 808: 30-60Hz, the pressure you feel in your chest. So in 808-based music the kick and bass rules above change, because the 808 is the sub. Boost it with a bell on the note range, not a shelf, and high-pass at 25-30Hz to clear the sub-sub rumble that just eats headroom. The 808 should own the sub, not the entire bottom half of the spectrum.
The pitch lives at 60-120Hz. That’s what makes an 808 melodic rather than just a rumble, and it’s also where the kick and 808 fight. Make sure one owns the sub and the other owns the note.
A clean 808 vanishes on small speakers because there’s nothing above 120Hz. Distortion is the translation strategy: saturate it, and the grit at 500Hz-2kHz is what a phone plays. The cost is denser low mids, so a distorted 808 needs a harder cut at 150-300Hz. If the distortion turns into a buzzsaw, tame 1-3kHz, or low-pass around 3-5kHz.
If it sounds thin, you probably can’t hear the sub. Laptop speakers and most cheap monitors can’t reproduce below 50Hz. Reference on headphones. If the sub really is missing, boost 30-60Hz or layer a clean sine sub underneath.