70s jazz vs 60s jazz for cutting through the mix

[GreyBeard]

Which one sounds better in a mix? Is the 70s jazz too prominent? Is the 60s too muddy?

Ime the 60s needs some eqing and hard attack to pop through.

What other instruments and how many are in the mix? How loud does the drummer play? These things have to be considered when talking about cutting or blending in a mix. A smiley face EQ will work well in a relatively quiet jazz trio but won't cut it in a thick heavy mix with a loud drummer. In this type of mix I have found that if you EQ your tone so it sits above the kick drum and below the keys and guitars will give you the best chance of balancing in the mix. A deep muddy tone can work with an un-mic'd drum kit and relatively quiet instruments and vocals but again will get swallowed up in a loud thick mix. So the answer to all this is, "It Depends"

 

[bigtone23]

If you blend the bridge pickup in with the neck pickup, as quite a lot of JB players tend to do, the difference between the 60s and 70s spacings becomes pretty subtle.

I’ve used both spacings for many years and I can’t say I hear a huge, night-and-day difference. The bridge pickup has just a little more bite with the 70s spacing, that’s all. It’s not very noticeable with the neck pickup favored or with both pickups at full. With the bridge pickup favored it’s more noticeable but we’re still not talking about an Earth-shattering change.

Same. I never solo the bridge pickup, so 70s vs 60s spacing is completely lost on me.
With all being equal with 60s and 70s spaced basses, they have the same woods, strings, electronics... with the pickups being blended equally to favoring the neck pickup, the difference is pretty subtle. The phase scoop is a little different for sure, but that gets lost in the mix.

Cutting through the mix is more about mixing the bass in it's sonic pocket, so it fills the space carved out for it.

 

[Maxi Funkl]

I prefer 70's spacing but I own both.

 

[slapDoctor]

I prefer 70's spacing but I own both.

Why do you prefer 70s

 

[slapDoctor]

Same. I never solo the bridge pickup, so 70s vs 60s spacing is completely lost on me.
With all being equal with 60s and 70s spaced basses, they have the same woods, strings, electronics... with the pickups being blended equally to favoring the neck pickup, the difference is pretty subtle. The phase scoop is a little different for sure, but that gets lost in the mix.

Cutting through the mix is more about mixing the bass in it's sonic pocket, so it fills the space carved out for it.

What is the sonic pocket for the bass? How do you fill it

 

[slapDoctor]

Favor the neck pickup to cut through.

I believe a 70s jazz stands out more if you slap and pop

Also...Get a Precision bass

Do you prefer a P bass to a jazz? If so why?

 

[corvette_br]

This was a '66 Jazz that my brother-in-law let me do a few videos with before he flipped it. I remember really having to do some extreme EQing to get it to cut through at all. It was definitely the "bass-iest" Jazz Bass I've ever played.

Well, I don't remember the bass, but I certainly remember the videos. Thanks for helping me learn YYZ!

 

[pepj]

I have 60's Alder and Rosewood and 70's Ash and Maple. I favour the 60's consistantly..
But sure, I sometimes take out both.
In studio, I think 60's.

 

[FullumMusic]

Thanks for the enlightening response. I appreciate the perspective change from "cutting thru the mix" to "supporting the overall mix". The shows i play are very low budget, wall of sound guitarist type stuff. It is very hard to hear any definition to be honest, unless it's a high register guitar solo.

How do you go about distributing the sonic space to make the mix better overall? Let's say in a grunge setting where there's lots of guitarists with their distortion pedals piercing. How do you go about supporting that mix? Providing solid fundamental? When do you need to cut through the mix as oppossed to supporting?

Best,

Mike

I'm no dummy and i know a bit of things, but "enlightened" might be a bit more than i deserve.

Seems like the issue is goes back to what i was saying about the arrangement needing to have sonic space for all the instruments. Even with a wall of sound, walls are built brick-by-brick on the foundation. It's not just a pile of bricks. Longwinded way of saying, they need to make room for the bass in their tone.

Unfortunately, trying to get a guitarist to pull back their big sound could be a futile task.

What it sounds like to me, sitting at my desk far away, not in the room with youse playing is the guitarists are using their "At Home Tone" and not adjusting it for playing with other instruments. When they're at home playing alone, the only thing making sound is their guitar and they can fill up all the sonic space they want. Their guitar sounds HUGE because it's just them and whatever lush, big tone they're using. That same huge tone with another guitar and a bass and vocals (or whatever other mix of instruments) is now taking up all the sonic space and leaves no room for anything else. Sounds great at home, terrible in a mix.

So the guitarists need to pull back a little in the frequencies where the bass is, and the bass can pull back a little in the freqs where the guitars are. I can't say which frequencies are emphasized or de-emphasized for each instrument, because it really depends on the situation and the instruments and what sound you're going for in the song.

And it doesn't take much to make space. You and they don't need to cut all the way out of the EQ. Just a few dB goes a long way. If you're playing a Jazz bass with both pickups 100%, it naturally scoops the mids a little. So maybe the guitars can keep their mids up but take their lows down to -3dB to -6dB? Then you bump your lows and low-mids up tp +3dB to +6dB.

Or if their distortion is big, lush, lows with a glass top, if they're boosting lows and highs aka Smiley Face EQ, have them pull their mids down a touch more and you push your mids.

Whatever it winds up being, everyone needs to pull down a touch where the other instruments are gonna live, and bump a touch where they have their own home. It can be a hard sell to a guitarist because this mix tone will sound worse to them when they play alone. But they gotta understand they're not playing by themselves anymore. They're playing a song, in a band, in a mix.

There's a lot of great info in this video on this subject. You might have to parse it out a little because he's going into a lot of detail about recording and mixing guitars, (and a lot of people are put off by Glenn Fricker), but so much of what we're talking about is in there. About how at-home tone is different from in-the-mix tone, and how guitarists have to adjust their tone to sound good in the mix, not alone. It's true for in the studios; it's true for live; it's true for rehearsal. Pay less attention to the nitty gritty of what he's specifically doing to the tone for his mix, and just look at how he's listening to what the mix need and adjusting, and how he points out where it wouldn't work in isolation, but works when everything is together.


Of course, he's doing that in a studio and adjusting things in the DAW. Youse need to sit down as a band and just do it on your amps & pedals in the room, since you're doing this for live situations. And you gotta get the guitarists to listen to the mix as a whole, not their own tone when adjusting things.

And once everyone has their own little home in the mix so that everything can be heard clearly, you're both supporting and cutting through the mix, because the mix is being glued together and you can hear the bass guitar. And one step further, to "cut through the mix" (as much as i hate that phrase), will only require being a little louder in the mix, or a little louder in your frequency ranges. If everyone has a nice home in the mix, what cuts through and what blends in is just a level balance thing. So, even after all that, what all of this goes back to is arrangement (where everything sits sonically) and "mix engineer" (volume balance, even if the "mix engineer" is the just the band setting their amps to the right level.)

And for an example of this listen to how big and lush the guitars sound in Alice in Chains' "Down in a Hole" and then listen to how brash and thin they sound isolated.


And i say all this not as a bassist who just wants more bass and less guitar, but as someone who's produced and mixed and done live sound professionally.

 

[Gervais Cote]

To me, a 70 spacing with flat strings is the setup that will cut in the mix the best.

A precision with flats will cut even more.

I own p's and j's with rounds and flats and according to the tests I did without touching the EQ or pedals, that’s the conclusion I came to.

 

[OldFenderPlayer]

I've had the same 1965 Fender Jazz Bass for nearly 50 years (its currently for sale at Carter Vintage - its the Olympic White bass), and I think its ability to cut through a mix is a combination of the instrument, the amp settings and the player; I've never owned or played a 1970s JB to be able to compare. My best example of my Jazz Bass cutting through a mix is on a 43 year old recording of my high school jazz band playing a Hank Levy tune called Chiapas. I can't recall what strings were on the bass, but the pickups and tone were wide open, the Fender Bassman 100 (4x12 cabinet) was set with the Treble maxed out and the Bass on maybe 3. The recording was made from microphones set up in front of the stage; no direct box was used. I was young and played pretty aggressive finger style back then.

Dropbox

www.dropbox.com

 

[bass12]

In theory (based on woods used and pickup spacing - if nothing else), a '70s Jazz will have a brighter, snappier, grindier tone with more pronounced harmonics than a '60s Jazz (which, in theory, should produce a "warmer", fundamental-rich and less grindy tone than a '70s Jazz). But which one will cut through a mix better (when I think "cut through" I think the opposite of "lost in") will probably depend more on the individual bass and the band/mix context than anything else. Either can get lost in a mix if you have the wrong one.

 

[chris_b]

With the EQ's available on most amps these days you can get the sound of 60's and 70's Jazz basses close enough for any differences to be irrelevant.

 

[ad9000]

I've owned a few of both 60's and '70's Jazzes and my overall take is that the 70's Jazzes tend to be brighter. I don't think the pickup spacing is the only factor there.

I have a Road Worn Jazz with Fender '62 Custom Shop pickups that has a very pointed and mid-forward sound. It's not necessarily my favorite bass to play, but I can always count on it being very present in a band mix. I don't ascribe that to the pickup spacing or the choice of pickups (I've swapped out the pickups and the bass still has the same basic character). My guess is the neck and body and the way they are interacting have more to do with it in this case.

Also, a big part of cutting through a mix has to do with technique and playing style. I just did a gig where the bass player in another band on the bill was just barely touching the strings and the bass was not cutting through at all, even when the FOH mixer goosed the bass. There was just not much attack or separation of notes, so even though it might have sounded fine through the amp on stage it didn't translate at all in the house.

 

[ad9000]

a 43 year old recording of my high school jazz band playing a Hank Levy tune called Chiapas.

Dropbox

www.dropbox.com

I had completely forgotten about Chiapas! In my high school jazz band, that chart kicked our asses up and down the street, especially the brass players. Thanks for sharing the recording, and the bass sounds great.

 

[denchiq]

besides having owned a few JBs, I also owned quite a few Lakland -94/ -02s . The Laklands have a bridge MME pickup that is switchable to a '60-s or a 70-s jazz so it is quite easy to tell on the fly, just with a flick of the switch
So I would say there isn't that much difference in cutting through the mix per se, BUT the 70-s is definitely edgier which , depending on the mix, may or may not underline or define your notes. The 60-s position may subjectively sound even more 'low' than the MM with all coils on (although the MM is meatier and fuller) , so it fills the pocket probably a bit fuller and more massive than the 70-s; but it may be less definitive, also depending on the mix

 

[JazznFunk]

Tonal differences between a 70s and 60s spaced J are really kind of subtle if you are running both pickups. I definitely find the 60s J to inherently possess more overall 'fullness' by default, since the bridge pickup is farther up. That said, with subtle EQing, you can recover the low end on the J easily, especially with an outboard preamp like a Sadowsky or Aguilar. The 70s J definitely is a bit brighter and edgier. All that being said, if the band itself isn't willing to work on the collective sound (and volume balance) to give you room, the subtleties will never make a marked difference.

 

[OldFenderPlayer]

I had completely forgotten about Chiapas! In my high school jazz band, that chart kicked our asses up and down the street, especially the brass players. Thanks for sharing the recording, and the bass sounds great.

I'm lucky that recording survived. At the 1981 concert at West Virginia University in Morgantown, I bought a cassette recording of our band's performance. I left it in our house when I went to college later that year, finding it in an attic crawl space 14 years later when my Dad was preparing to sell the house. The cassette was still good and I was able to figure out how to save it as an MP3.

 

[Maxi Funkl]

Why do you prefer 70s

It's the sound in my head of Funk/Jazz players I grew up listening to. I.E. Larry Graham

 

[bigtone23]

What is the sonic pocket for the bass? How do you fill it

It's finding the space for the bass in the mix. The bass guitar has frequencies competing with the bass drum, the low end and lower mids of the guitar, the lower end of the keyboards or synth bass...
I remember reading an article about the engineer mixing Korn, said it was really difficult to carve out space in the low end for the bass, bass drum and two down tuned guitars, all of which had pretty wide bandwidths, so even finding space up top for the clicks of the bass guitar and bass drum got in the way of the guitars.

The reply below hits on this nicely.

I'm no dummy and i know a bit of things, but "enlightened" might be a bit more than i deserve.

Seems like the issue is goes back to what i was saying about the arrangement needing to have sonic space for all the instruments. Even with a wall of sound, walls are built brick-by-brick on the foundation. It's not just a pile of bricks. Longwinded way of saying, they need to make room for the bass in their tone.

Unfortunately, trying to get a guitarist to pull back their big sound could be a futile task.

What it sounds like to me, sitting at my desk far away, not in the room with youse playing is the guitarists are using their "At Home Tone" and not adjusting it for playing with other instruments. When they're at home playing alone, the only thing making sound is their guitar and they can fill up all the sonic space they want. Their guitar sounds HUGE because it's just them and whatever lush, big tone they're using. That same huge tone with another guitar and a bass and vocals (or whatever other mix of instruments) is now taking up all the sonic space and leaves no room for anything else. Sounds great at home, terrible in a mix.

So the guitarists need to pull back a little in the frequencies where the bass is, and the bass can pull back a little in the freqs where the guitars are. I can't say which frequencies are emphasized or de-emphasized for each instrument, because it really depends on the situation and the instruments and what sound you're going for in the song.

And it doesn't take much to make space. You and they don't need to cut all the way out of the EQ. Just a few dB goes a long way. If you're playing a Jazz bass with both pickups 100%, it naturally scoops the mids a little. So maybe the guitars can keep their mids up but take their lows down to -3dB to -6dB? Then you bump your lows and low-mids up tp +3dB to +6dB.

Or if their distortion is big, lush, lows with a glass top, if they're boosting lows and highs aka Smiley Face EQ, have them pull their mids down a touch more and you push your mids.

Whatever it winds up being, everyone needs to pull down a touch where the other instruments are gonna live, and bump a touch where they have their own home. It can be a hard sell to a guitarist because this mix tone will sound worse to them when they play alone. But they gotta understand they're not playing by themselves anymore. They're playing a song, in a band, in a mix.

There's a lot of great info in this video on this subject. You might have to parse it out a little because he's going into a lot of detail about recording and mixing guitars, (and a lot of people are put off by Glenn Fricker), but so much of what we're talking about is in there. About how at-home tone is different from in-the-mix tone, and how guitarists have to adjust their tone to sound good in the mix, not alone. It's true for in the studios; it's true for live; it's true for rehearsal. Pay less attention to the nitty gritty of what he's specifically doing to the tone for his mix, and just look at how he's listening to what the mix need and adjusting, and how he points out where it wouldn't work in isolation, but works when everything is together.


Of course, he's doing that in a studio and adjusting things in the DAW. Youse need to sit down as a band and just do it on your amps & pedals in the room, since you're doing this for live situations. And you gotta get the guitarists to listen to the mix as a whole, not their own tone when adjusting things.

And once everyone has their own little home in the mix so that everything can be heard clearly, you're both supporting and cutting through the mix, because the mix is being glued together and you can hear the bass guitar. And one step further, to "cut through the mix" (as much as i hate that phrase), will only require being a little louder in the mix, or a little louder in your frequency ranges. If everyone has a nice home in the mix, what cuts through and what blends in is just a level balance thing. So, even after all that, what all of this goes back to is arrangement (where everything sits sonically) and "mix engineer" (volume balance, even if the "mix engineer" is the just the band setting their amps to the right level.)

And for an example of this listen to how big and lush the guitars sound in Alice in Chains' "Down in a Hole" and then listen to how brash and thin they sound isolated.


And i say all this not as a bassist who just wants more bass and less guitar, but as someone who's produced and mixed and done live sound professionally.