I play all my instruments out of necessity.  When working on the MRDC projects you have to lay it down when you have the time and inspiration. I’m fortunate enough like most musicians these days to be able to work from home in my studio.  What I’m going to talk about here won’t work for everyone, it’s  just my approach and how I get my bass sound. On the first two MRDC albums I went between synth sounds and real bass. My Bass back then was a Yamaha BB220. Really cheap instrument but it got the job done. My thoughts back then were, bass is bass.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.
A couple years back I bought an Ernie Ball Stingray 5. All of a sudden bass tracks were alive ! The sound of the instrument is so inspiring. I’m writing this to you straight up, I’m not endorsed by them. It’s sound has loads of character and color and is very versatile between many genres of Rock through Jazz. I also picked up around the same time a Bass POD  XT Live. I go right out of the (Modeled) line out into Pro Tools. Most of my tracks are recorded using the “Classic Rock” model or a tweaked version of and various different Preamp settings / pick up combos on the Bass.
Once I have the Track in Pro Tools I usually call up my favorite SSL Cannel Strip (waves SSL 4000 plugin series). The main thing to consider when mixing bass is the kick drum. You either have a phat bass sound or a phat kick. Well this is a generalization, my point is if the 2 are competing for a frequency one will get lost or your mix will end up being overwhelmed by low fuzz. Remember to start out by cutting the sounds you don’t like rather than adding more of what you want to hear raising the noise floor and making mixing a nightmare. Start with the mids, if you cut too much of the highs right out of the gate you’ll loose the attack and definition of the start of the note. I usually filter everything below 58hz and leave the highs alone to start. This leaves some thud left for the kick drum. This serves well as a good working mix while I add the rest of the tracks. Closer to final mix I’ll add some compression using a ratio of 3:1 to start then play with the attack time depending on how snappy I want it. But the art of Compression is a whole other topic. So I’ll leave you with this for now. I’ll get back to bass finishing later on, closer to writing about final mixing.