Advantages of 'clean' tone compared to driven tube tone?

[ishouldbeking]

This has been on my mind lately... generally speaking I've always opted for a very driven tubey kinda sound. I play with a pick, I play hard, and cranking the gain on my preamp tubes always seemed to thicken up my tone in a good way. Its like the grit transforms what could otherwise be a bit clanky and thin into something with snarl. In fact I have a VT bass pedal with a good amount of grit dialed in so my DI tone is sufficiently gnarly on its own. I play rock and roll -- or indie rock/pop with a classic rock influence -- and the dirty tube sound has always felt best.

But often i'll read that someone is looking for "big clean tone" or they need to have enough "headroom without breakup" and i wonder what I'm missing. I can understand why players trying to do something that requires maximum articulation might want a perfectly clean tone (funk, jazz, solo stuff, probably a lot of other applications too), but I think it was an interview with Nate Mendel (of Foo Fighters and Sunny Day Real Estate) and he was talking about getting the cleanest tone that he could... and I'm thinking, here's a guy who plays a p-bass with a pick, always on a set of bright new strings, and he plays pretty much in the same basic style that I do, yet he's taking a completely different approach. got me thinking, that's all.

What do you think the advantages and disadvantages of clean vs 'dirty' bass tones are? I'm particularly interested when it comes to rock and roll applications, but anyone should be more than welcome to chime in.

[johnk_10]

i've run my amps both ways.

to me, the advantage of having a bit of grit is that you can get some tube compression and some sustain. sometimes, when an amp is too clean, it can have alot of punch, but very little sustain, unless you're using brand new strings or a compressor.

[Edword]

I've used tube amps for a long time, but with the G-B Shuttlemax 12 I've found that I like using the FET channel much more than the tube channel.

[megadan]

I like the added harmonics and sustain that a good gritty sound can give you.

That being said I think a clean tone is best for retaining low end - real, deep, 5-string and modern cabs kind of low end. I guess that's the tone they are going for, where they want the bass sound to be down under the guitars with the kick drum, instead of filling in the low mid range.

But yeah, I personally would not use a clean tone for rock and roll, so I can't help ya there...

[Nic.]

Personally, I love the grit in the sound, but I find that it's often easier to cut through with a clean sound. I'm not very experienced with bass, but I find that under a wall of distorted guitars, it's pretty hard to get a gritty bass to be heard... while a clean bass just sits right there. I'm guessing it's probably something to do with distortion adding more highs to the mix, so even when blended, I hear the clean below, and hardly hear the drive.

I'm not running through a tube amp, but a tube based overdrive, and even when I feel like my driven tube tone cuts through pretty nicely, the moment I turn it off it suddenly cuts through even better. I'm still on a quest to get a nice driven sound that can cut through well.

Besides that, admittedly, while I love the overdriven bass sound, there's something about the clean sound below that just seems to work for a lot of songs.

When playing with just one guitarist, and most of the spectrum is still unoccupied, I find I have much more freedom to overdrive and still sit nicely in the mix.

Edword- I bought a shuttle 3.0; while at the showroom I testdrived the shuttle 6.0 and found that I liked the FET much more than the tube. So I figured it was going to be pretty pointless for me to pay more for the 6 when the 3 was going to give me the sound I wanted... sometimes there can be *too* much warmth I suppose.

[newbold]

generally speaking, Clean needs headroom to be heard while grit doesn't so much.

ISBK: running your rig both ways...big fat clean, with the VTbass there when you need the grit will probably get you everywhere you've ever thought possible.

[Jim C]

Clean sound always comes through better in the mix be it live or recorded.
Clean can also be more full range, punchy and/or more open sounding than a distorted signal.
Agrre with John that adding a good compressor offers the the sustain and even attack characteristics of a tube rig that is being pushed.

[Calaverasgrande]

I have been moving to a more clean tone lately. I find that it cuts better when you are in a band with dense guitars and lots of bashing drums.

[BassJunkie730]

I've been taking my Precision with an NP4 loaded direct into a FET DI straight into the input of an API clone mic preamp into logic.

I'm getting the BEST recorded sound ever with this sound.

Clean is a contextually complex word.

For me a great clean is still thick - it just doesn't overly favor any one frequency - save the tonality of the bass itself.

The transformers in the preamp really work wonders for getting a GIANT clean tone that's still very musical, natural, and juicy.


If I were to bring the tone to the stage - I'd run the preamp into a LA2A clone into a super light power amp in a big 15" cab with a midrange.

Real big sound real simple. if you need eq - use an eq pedal

[chaosMK]

I go slightly dirty. In high gain, low-tuned modern metal you need everything to cut through (some great tones on my just-released album- www.myspace.com/leftbrainband).

I'd use a clean tone if I was dialing out all my highs and playing with generally other "clean" sounding instruments.

[derridiandrift]

Originally Posted by ishouldbeking

generally speaking I've always opted for a very driven tubey kinda sound.

but I think it was an interview with Nate Mendel (of Foo Fighters and Sunny Day Real Estate) and he was talking about getting the cleanest tone that he could... and I'm thinking, here's a guy who plays a p-bass with a pick, always on a set of bright new strings, and he plays pretty much in the same basic style that I do, yet he's taking a completely different approach.

From years of playing, and much of that playing was with loud rock bands, I can say that almost every front-of-house tech that I worked with tried to convince me to use a pick instead of playing finger style because it provides more articulation to the bass tone in the context of the big mix out front. The bigger the venue, the more important this is, because the bottom end of a mix can become a mushy wash of rumble just from the reverb of the room alone. And in that context, the FOH tech would always prefer clean over slightly distorted bass, especially if there's a distorted rhythm guitar playing a part that's very close to the bass line. The Foos are very much that kind of band, so I could see that kind of approach being something that really help to bring alot of punch to their live sound.

In the context of recordings, when I listen to The Colour and Shape, I can rarely hear the bass without that rhythm guitar track on top of it, so Mendel's bass tone could be very clean if the guitars were stripped away. When I listen to the intro of Hero for instance, that sounds like a p bass into an SVT to me, with a real heavy pick-hand, but still with some headroom. Another example is Let it Die, at about 1:45 or so, the bass comes in. It's fat, but clean.

But I think there's a difference between "tube amp clean" and "DI straight off the bass" clean. This is starting to sound absurd, but really, there's a difference, and I think that you might be confusing one for the other. If Mendel said he likes to use a very clean tone, he might be making a distinction that is all within the realm of tube amps (I have no idea what gear he uses, so this is just conjecture on my part). An SVT will always have a blossoming fatness to it, even when it's not driven into distortion.

And lastly, I would not be surprised in the least if Mendel's recorded bass tone is relatively "tube clean" throughout the entire track, and if there is a breakdown where the guitars are stripped away for a few bars, the producer probably threw on some distortion for that passage in order to make the bass sound more gnarly when it's soloed. But a big fat clean p bass is arguably the sound that sits best in a recorded mix for this kind of music.

[derridiandrift]

I just found a great example of what I was talking about in my previous response. In Stacked Actors, there are two very distinct bass tones going on there and my best guess is that there's a clean bass part right through the whole track and a distorted bass part on top of it in the choruses. If I were doing that song live with two guitar players I'd probably not change my tone through the whole tune and let the guitars add the crazy distorted tone unless I could run a distorted sound and a clean sound at the same time. That super crazy distorted part alone would lose much of its punch without the clean bass under it.

[Bigjohn]

Yeah, Nate Mendel has used all kinds of tones on Foos recordings.
And I've seen him with 70's SVT heads and with Ashdowns.
He's had grindy, compressed-blurry and relatively clean.
It's varied a lot over the albums.

[guroove]

I prefer a sound that's almost right in the middle. I run my ampeg B-25 a hair under the volume that makes it have audible distortion. The sound is basically a clean sound, but with lots of compression. It is very bassy and has lots of punch and sustain. The amp has no gain control, just one volume knob. I mostly run it at this volume because that's about as loud as it goes, which happens to be perfect for most of the stages I play on.

I'd like to add that I don't play through a tube amp for distortion, but for the clean sound. I think that most people have it backwards when they talk about overdrive being "tubey." Most OD pedals use transistors, and very few bass players get distortion from their amplifiers. I get my distortion from a transistorized pedal. I get the warmth, harmonics, and compression from the tubes.

[derridiandrift]

Originally Posted by guroove

I think that most people have it backwards when they talk about overdrive being "tubey." Most OD pedals use transistors, and very few bass players get distortion from their amplifiers. I get my distortion from a transistorized pedal. I get the warmth, harmonics, and compression from the tubes.

truth

[SpamBot]

I chord and slap frequently, so I use a very clean sound. IMO neither slapping nor chording sounds very good with distortion of any variety,

[JimmyM]

ya, i can never turn a tube amp up loud enough to get any od out of it so mine comes from a vt bass pedal and a modded british pedal.

however, having always been a clean running tube guy, i'm quite shocked to discover that i actually like a slight bit of distortion on my clean tone at all times. just seems to be more cohesive and works better within a lot of the music i play, so i think i'm going to make it an always-on kind of thing.

[JimmyM]

Originally Posted by SpamBot

I chord and slap frequently, so I use a very clean sound. IMO neither slapping nor chording sounds very good with distortion of any variety,

sure it does. just can't do too much of it when slapping, but with chords, i love distortion. the more the merrier. also imo.

[Ric5]

I mix clean and dirty together to get the sound I want.

This sound byte here ...
http://www.3dentourage.com/425/effects-fenderbird-1.mp3

Was produced with these effects
http://www.3dentourage.com/425/effects.htm


And using this bass

[johnk_10]

this might be kinda relevant, in so far as to having both tones at once. back in '83 when i recorded one of the tracks with my band, i used two completely different types of basses and doubled the bass track. one of them was used to get the 'thump' and punch, and the other to get the grit. it actually worked out pretty cool.
rather than describe it, here's a short clip of the intro. (please keep in mind that this clip is from an old cassette with dropouts and was recorded in 1982, so it may sound a bit dated):

http://johnkvintageguitars.homestead...lleen-clip.mp3