How to switch to slap sound?

[phaneo]

I play a Jazz Bass direct into a Markbass 210 Combo amp. I have a nice full warm sound and I play fingerstyle. This tone works great for me in my cover band and I along with my bandmates love my current tone.

We are venturing into some new territory and some of our new material requires me to slap. My current tone sounds great and easily works for everything including our reggae songs. My slap tone is horrible.

How do I change between the two without tweaking knobs on my amp.

I know it can be done. 311's bassist plays reggae and then slaps all in the same line and it sounds great.

I have a Sans Amp that I keep in my bag for amp issues, but not real familiar with how well it will sound or how much it will diminish my signal when not in use.

Thanks

[Stuggi]

If you have the Sansamp PBDDI then you can just program a slap sound on one of the presets, and a good fingerstyle sound on an other. If you have the ordinary BDDI, then just set it at boosted highs and lows, and turn it on when you want to slap.

[bongomania]

There are two handy solutions: get an EQ pedal (almost any one will do) or work on your slap technique. Tone is in your playing as much as anything.

[Stuggi]

Yeah, but some EQ setting does not simply work with slap, like a pure mud reagge tone.

And btw, the Sansamp is true bypass, so it will not affect your tone when bypassed.

[bbe]

Originally Posted by Stuggi

Yeah, but some EQ setting does not simply work with slap, like a pure mud reagge tone.

And btw, the Sansamp is true bypass, so it will not affect your tone when bypassed.

wrong. sansamp is not true bypass, and when bypassed, it really affects your tone, thats why i sold my sansamp.

and eq pedal is exactly what this guy needs.

[Valerus]

Originally Posted by bbe

wrong. sansamp is not true bypass, and when bypassed, it really affects your tone, thats why i sold my sansamp.

Really? I need to reconsider then.

[GlassJaw]

Thinking you need to "switch" to get a good slap tone is indicative of other issues in my opinion. You might want to kick on an effect to change the color of your sound but you should be able to switch between fingerstyle and slap without a loss of tone.

A good compressor will help out a lot. I use a dbx160A but set it so it barely kicks in when I play fingerstyle. It's there only to balance my slap vs fingerstyle playing.

Other than that, I might change the pickup position on my bass (neck to bridge for example) but it's key for me to be able to go back and forth without any noticeable loss.

[CapnSev]

I recently sold a Warwick that I had this problem with. I had pan to both pickups on the fly to get a good slap tone, while using mostly the bridge pu for fingerstyle.

My old Geddy Lee jazz was the same way too. A simple MXR compressor pedal solved that on beautifully.

The only bass I own that I don't touch a thing on when switching from fingers to slap is my Stingray. It transitions perfectly IMO.

[Stuggi]

Originally Posted by bbe

wrong. sansamp is not true bypass, and when bypassed, it really affects your tone, thats why i sold my sansamp.

and eq pedal is exactly what this guy needs.

I tried that 60 seconds ago, and all I heard was that the sansamp boosted my signal somewhat. But since I don't have a true bypass box, I can't be sure.

And I also have to take back the "true" part, the sansamp uses some kind of relays or actuators to switch your signal, and these need power, which means that the sansamp does not pass any signal un-powered.

I really need an recording setup to settle this debate, maybe tomorrow I'll put it in the effectsloop of my amp and see if it does any difference.

[phaneo]

Thanks,
I'll try a few of the suggestions and let you know how it works out.

[Brad Johnson]

The main thing is working on your technique and if you have a two pickup bass figuring out which combination works for the slap style you want. It is quite possible to have a kiler fingerstyle sound and slap sound without changing EQ, using compression, etc.