Anyone here know anything about *gulp* bass?

Moe45673

Moe45673

Roadie
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Specifically signal chains. Bassists apparently have very different ideas than guitarists about what is a must in their signal chain and what is not. For example, your typical bass player (someone that plays it as their primary instrument and are better than average) knows way more about right hand technique than just about any guitarist outside of classical or Chet Atkins-types. Which makes finding stuff on bass signal chains a bit daunting, as they're way more likely to say "Fix your technique" than us who are like "good enough for rock n roll!" and then wonder why we're not as famous as the Beatles when we play Don't Let Me Down on the guitar almost as well as Ringo.

On the plus side, I learned you can make a bass synth using just an envelope filter, a fuzz, an octaver, two 5/16" flat screws, caulk (>= 30spf), a ball-peen hammer, a peen-ball wizard, a virgin, and some AI-enhanced crushed amethyst. Truly a golden age to be a musician!
 
Depends on what style strongly. Modern metal stuff is all about splitting and parallelization and clank for example. A few main things are:

- Amps are often not that important relative to the rest of the gear
- Pickup location/configuration matters a LOT, and therefore the type of bass matters a lot compared to guitars
- "active" pickups refer to both active pups and passive with onboard preamps (most being the latter)
- Many times bass runs direct with no IR or is run in parallel with a DI
- picking vs fingers is a stupid debate, use whatever you like/suits the sound the best
- overdrive/distortion will mostly wreck the low end so blend/mix knobs are essential to me
- you want a preamp/eq of some sort, compressors are optional but common, and the rest just depends on style
 
Yeah, that is what I wonder about quite a bit.

For one thing, I watched a few vids on setting EQ for bass, and many of them were "All the knobs on the amp at 12, then maybe tweak a bit the high end". I was like "for all the amps???" Apparently the answer is, in technical terms, "yup".

So I guess my question is how do you tighten up that DI'd bass tone? How do you play a fuzz through a DI (or even a split parallel thing) without it sounding like a can of bees? Is it best to always just have a completely dry signal mixed with your wet one? I mean, I've done this before, but.....

FWIW, amazing post. Thx. I'll follow up with pointed feedback when it's not the wee hours
 
Eq is often used for DI tones - eg the smile curve - parametric Eq with a cut at 400 and boosts at 80 and 2.2kHz. What exactly you will get out of an amp and miced cab depends on so may factors it is hard to generalise.
 
Yeah, I've seen stuff about that. Also, I've seen to cut below 80! Apparently that does wonders. And LPF above 3K! It's nuts :D

Convenient to boost at 400. That area of the frequency curve is pretty much an auto-cut for electric guitars as it makes them sound like their amp is a cardboard box, so as far as I am concerned, you bassists can crank the gain on that frequency if that tickles your fancy. Knowing the EQ generalities of bass is definitely something I need to bone up on. Guitar I can do no prob, but bass I don't know how to solve X issue with my ear and intuition. Good tips!

Oh wait, you said cut at 400. As I just mentioned, wee hours, so that's what you get with me now! But I do know there's something in that range (600?) that is good to boost for bass and cut for guitar.

And obviously the different amps matter. But so much of the advice I see for bass is..... grounded? Not based on hype and "use this doohickey to solve all your issues". It's a very interesting contrast, almost polar opposite. Nonetheless, I did see that advice (set em all to noon and slight tweak) from a number of monster bassists on youtube.
 
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Very important: don't judge and EQ based on the solo tone, it should always be done with the band context in mind. Careful how you dial in live vs in a recording because it's likely going to be very different. If you EQ the perfect bass tone solo without much experience I can almost guarantee it's either going to vanish in the band or sound way off when you get in a room at full volume, so don't overthink it.

Tighten up can mean a lot of things - but mainly just EQ and/or compression are the most important. I don't like fuzz on bass for the most part personally, unless the bass is really prominent. Fuzz can vanish a bass tone really quick in a metal mix but in other places it can fit really well. As to can of bees - well, live the sound person will just low pass it as much as they need to if it's direct / no IR. It's different from a guitar in that it's not a main focus in that range, and most listeners will automatically associate the distortion with accompanying guitars and not the bass anyway. But I use IRs and go direct from my ADAM live
 
Thanks for the valuable advice! I'm aware of the solo vs in-the-mix thing. What I mean is that I can hear a solo'd guitar that sounds awesome and have a very good sense if it'll sound good in a mix or not, plus how to boilerplate tighten it up with EQ. Similarly with vocals and probably keys as well. The mid-frequency instruments I'm well acquainted with.

But bass, even though I've mixed songs before and generally get good bass tones, if I hear a solo'd bass I'll have no idea how it'd work in a mix (stomp all over the others or disappear), nor what to adjust if it does. My ear hasn't had to focus on that prior, and now going out there and dialing in something tasteful is a great game of panicky "BOOST ALL THE THINGZ!"

FWIW (even though I love Muse) I'm not a fan of thick fuzz, I more like it to get that cranked ampeg sound (so pretty low gain, almost off but not quite)
 
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It's much less consistent live - I often have to re-EQ every time I set up and it's often totally different. I'd say your best bet is to learn what frequencies do what, rather than "cut X or boost Y" since it will be very room and volume dependent (for live anyway), and also very pickup/bass dependent.

but I usually do it a bit like this:

< 60 hz = gone, don't need that and it can actually help the amp if you do that
60 - 250 = where the bass you can 'feel' is stored, thump, etc
250 - 750 = good spots to try cutting for clarity or boosting for warmth but really depends on the bass and mix
750 - 3k = definition and clank when boosted, softens harsh attack if cut
3k - 6k = noisy range (good or bad)
6k+ = I mostly always lowpass below this anyway, it sounds good by itself but it just adds noise in a mix

New strings are important and sound completely different than old strings. Stainless steel for brightness/clank, nickel plated steel for warmer tones

bass cabs may or may not have tweeters, and if they do they can be turned up or down in back from off to almost "flat" levels (much brighter than guitar cabs)
 
I probably go against the grain on bass setup, my stage amp is "FRFR" with a toob preamp,
I use a few of multiFx and synth units (SY-1000 +GM-800) but my main base/tone unit is the Tech21 Vt-Bass preamp/drive pedal (Ampegish tone) which does my analog chain (I use a lot of parallel chains).
Once the base tone is laid down, the other icing is laid on top,
effects, overdrives, SY-1000 instrument modeling (more basses or sometimes guitar),
then the GM-800 synth are usually pads, synth bass, dirty organ (deep purplish).
My main gig bass is a Fender jazz used for rock, where others would generally use a P-Bass.
I get a far ken nice full sound.
Always get good comments on the mean bass sound at gigs.
 
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But yeah, as mentioned, the key to using effects is to have that blend ,dry/wet, control as found in much bass effects/pedals.

And that 400Hz mud cut (I tend to do it at 250Hz and boost at 100, and have a 30 Hz low cut/high pass.

Edit: correcting spelling mistakes, happens when your at the pub for a beer.
 
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@Moe45673
What digital solution do you use? (Maybe I overread?)

In '21 I joined a band that plays a melange of Metalcore to Crossover. I played guitar since mid '00s and my only bass experience was playing whimpy bass on demos at home.

It's a whole new world. So different IMO. I use a Helix btw. Need a good clean for guitar? Gimme 2 minutes. Usable metal rhythm? 3 minutes and I am done. You get it. But a good, usable bass sound, that won't get buried, but isn't *too* nasty in bass-only passages? Umph... Grab a coffee and have some patience.

What works for me (my preset) with a 5string Ibanez SR in B-E-A-D-G:

Noise Gate - Slight use of comp (Opto Comp for me) - Darkglass like distortion, that does not have the Blend at max (Obsidian 7000) - SVT4 Pro sim in the Helix at bare stock settings (no Ultra Hi/Lo) with the stock cab it brings up - after the cab is just a chorus for mellow parts and a 10 band EQ to boost certain freq bands for short bass solos. Everything inportant happens before cab.

As others pointed out: Parallel processing is the key. But... I don't like DI sounds. So my parallel chain is the blend of the Darkglass at 7 or 8 to protect some of the low end, but still everything going through amp and cab to get a warmer sound.

If I then need more clank I turn up the treble on the (active EQ) bass.

And sometimes I just go straight into the Gallien Krueger RB800 sim on the Helix without any pedals before or after it bc in the end it works, too. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
Room acoustics will greatly impact any live tone so tuning Eq for the space you are playing in may well be necessary as nothern fox says. The Eq curve I mentioned was primarily for recording DI but cutting the mud at 400 may help in live mix also as others have said.
 
Moe45673 said:
Thanks for the valuable advice! I'm aware of the solo vs in-the-mix thing. What I mean is that I can hear a solo'd guitar that sounds awesome and have a very good sense if it'll sound good in a mix or not, plus how to boilerplate tighten it up with EQ. Similarly with vocals and probably keys as well. The mid-frequency instruments I'm well acquainted with.

But bass, even though I've mixed songs before and generally get good bass tones, if I hear a solo'd bass I'll have no idea how it'd work in a mix (stomp all over the others or disappear), nor what to adjust if it does. My ear hasn't had to focus on that prior, and now going out there and dialing in something tasteful is a great game of "try everything simultaneously!"

FWIW (even though I love Muse) I'm not a fan of thick fuzz, I more like it to get that cranked ampeg sound (so pretty low gain, almost off but not quite)
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On youtube you'll find tons of isolated bass parts.
How close they match what's really going on there is everyone's guess, but immersing yourself in bass tones and how they work in context has never been so easy.
If you can do it with guitars, you can learn to do it with bass.
 
It’s so style dependent it’s like asking “does anyone know anything about guitar?”

I play a lot of bass; my favorite bass tones are the simplest:

P with flats and tort. Bump 120Hz, cut 300Hz, fingers, DI, done.

It doesn’t work for everything obviously, but it’s my favorite
 
jay mitchell said:
FYI, "active" pickups are, without exception, passive pickups with a preamp inside the cover. IOW, the only difference in your comparison above is the location of the preamp.
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I don't think our robot overlords agree with you.
 
Orvillain said:
I don't think our robot overlords agree with you.
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And who says a robot can't be full of shit?

FYI, "active" pickups are still magnetic pickups and can generate an output signal with no power applied. The preamp boosts the signal level, provides impedance buffering, and might perform some equalization and/or compression, but the signal source is still a passive magnetic pickup.
 
I have a lot to say and respond to, but Jay, did you mean that an active pickup has the preamp on the instrument itself (hence why you can go direct) as opposed to a passive pickup that requires an amp head? Because if you meant that as a very fuzzy, generic abstraction (IRL, active pickups can go into bass amps but ignore that!) I think GPT misunderstood your sentiment

Additionally, I wish GPT would clarify what aspects of active pickups besides the preamp contribute to their difference in sound. I mean, why not modify passive pickups to be just like active ones without the preamp, if active ones are louder and better at avoiding noise?
 
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