Often you can get away with a smaller amp than if you rely on the amp sound alone, as the DI will provide the entire bottom end you need. The D.I. signal will give you the very clean sound of the instrument. So the signal is just the pure sound of the bass. Sometimes this is a great tone to work with in the mix. It's usually a very tight and crisp sound, depending of course on the player's technique.

Many professionals take this combined approach. The relative phase of the miked and DI'd sound has a profound effect on the final result, so you may need to phase-reverse one of the sources to get the best result. Also, experiment with the EQ of the individual sources as well as their balance, as the EQ controls may not have the same effect as they do when the sources are heard in isolation. Similarly, changing the mic-to-speaker distance will also affect the phase of the combined sounds, so this can be useful in fine-tuning the result.

As you can see, there are several ways of recording the bass guitar, but if you like to keep your options open until the final mix, there's nothing wrong with DI'ing the bass flat via a DI box, perhaps in combination with a limiter to catch any excessive peaks, then applying one of the techniques outlined here at the mixing stage. Or if you have enough spare tracks, you can record the processed and the clean version of the sound on different tracks.

I'd certainly try to do this if I was miking the amp -- all that's needed is a DI box between the instrument and the amp (most have an audio thru connector) with the DI out connected to a spare recorder input. Computer users also have several options open to them when it comes to treating sounds after the event: in addition to the usual compression and EQ, there are now numerous software amp simulators that can produce very convincing results.

The beauty of the home studio is that you don't have the same time pressures as a commercial facility, so you can afford to experiment and see what method works best for you.

Using a mic on the other hand will give you the player's sound according to what she hears through the amp. Naturally in most cases you will want to use a lot of this sound because after all that is the "sound" of the bassist when he plays with his band. But if you use DI along with a mic you'll have two different bass sounds to play with.

Balance them. You’ll be able to experiment with the two channels that you have for the bass. Sometimes I'll EQ The two channels differently, concentrating on using the DI sound for the upper mid and high frequencies or use some channel splitters and create some bizarre panning effects.

One cool technique I'll share with here is that if you have enough space and room you can use three channels for the bass. Here it is:
1. DI Box out to console.
2. Microphone facing into the speaker and really close (almost touching)
3. A microphone close to where the bass players picking fingers are.

Now for this to work well it is best if you can get the bass player in a different room from where his amp is. So he is in a quiet space with headphones on listening to the mix and playing along. But the mic you use close the where he picks the strings will give you just the acoustic sound of the bass and can sound excellent blended in the mix. Use a capacitor mic for this.