Secrets for Big-Sounding Electric Bass?

I was listening to some Indy stuff online on SomaFM the other night and actually caught some decently-produced songs. One of the things that stood out was how BIG and meaty some of the electric bass sounded -- lots of fundamental and depth -- but for the life of me I couldn't figure out how they did it unless they were subtly doubling it with synth. What are your techniques for accomplishing bass bigness? [I seem to remember a thread about this from a year or two back, but I can't find it, if it ever existed.] Thanks!

One the best tools for getting a big sounding bass imho is a Tech 21 Sansamp Bassdriver. It's pretty versatile too. There are a lot of examples on the youtube.

Multing as mentioned by Suleiman. For that subbass all the kids like, make a mult and pitch it down an octave. Low pass just the sub band to isolate it get rid of the higher artifacts from the pitch shift. Here's your subbass track.

Yeah I do both of the things mentioned above - double a track for distorted highs (usually compress the crap out of if too) and occasionally another for subs. I also use the Sir Elliot RT-1 on a lot of bass stuff; it really adds a lot of low end can beef up a thin track without even twisting any knobs.

Pultec, distortion, compression, js/Stillwell Hugebooty, Waves Rbass... Not all at once, of course, but those are some of the tools I use to "embiggen" bass.

Oh, and highpass the guitars. And get the kick drum into a different frequency space than the bass.

Less is more 

I'm not certain the style of music, but if your arrangement will allow for fewer instruments playing near the bottom, then the bass will naturally be allowed to sit in a larger area. This isn't always the case, but can be effective. The previous tips on multing are great too. I use those ideas, along with tube harmonics to help make the bass more audible and defined in the mid-range.

good player good bass good recording chain. And if that doesnt work, THEN try the stuff outlined above. I have always used a compressor on the way in, but subtly, only evening out my sloppy performances. But in all seriousness it sounds like the OP heeds to do a quick online read-up n surgical EQ and where things should fit sonically in a mix. All down to doing it and doing it and doing it, really.

I usually resort to frequency splitting the bass into two or three bands (subs, mids and sometimes highs) and processing each separately as mentioned above. It's best to keep the sub as clean as possible since it's very prone to distortion. Add some slight saturation to the mids, some nice colour EQs and then blend with the sub to taste. As for compression, I only really like the sounds of 1176/LA2A emulations on bass since they are the only compressors i've tried that don't distort the sub even at crazy amounts of gain reduction.