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Anyone Know what Entwistle was using for OD / distortion
- Thread starter pablomigraine
- Start date
Digitech 2120 Valve Guitar System into a Digitech Studio Quad for chorus.
He combined a full-range clean signal with a grungy, scooped guitar distortion and what sounds like a light chorus. His style of popping the strings off of the frets really brings out alot of what his sound was, though.
He combined a full-range clean signal with a grungy, scooped guitar distortion and what sounds like a light chorus. His style of popping the strings off of the frets really brings out alot of what his sound was, though.
That's my least- favorite period of his playing/tone. I love his old Live At Leeds overdrive and he explored with all sorts of distortion over the years, but I thought it was pretty gross when he got into the rack gear like in this clip.
...Really?
You couldn't find something more constructive to do with the fifteen seconds that it took you to type and post that?
I mean, I can make a few suggestions if you'd like...
Yeah, everybody's entitled to an opinion, but seriously, if anybody cared one iota about whether anybody else thought this or any other bass solo was boring, we would have asked. As far as I can read, nobody did.
Do you know anybody who goes to political discussion groups to tell everybody involved that politics are boring?
Yes, they really are. I'd rather listen to a song than to a bunch of fretboard gymnastics.
Nope.
No thanks.
Yeah Ive actually made a concerted study of that style (in depth HERE).
I'm gonna try my hand at replicating this kind of tone in the next few weeks. Method: Lakland 44-01 -> EBS Multicomp -> Genz Benz STLMAX 12.0 with Both channels mixed and an EBS valvedrive in the FET channel's FX loop. With the independant level controls for each channel I'm sure I can find a good mix with some experimenting. Will be pushing two Genz Benz Uber 212's with the tweeters off. Stay Tuned!
The Steve Harris/John Entwistle fingerstyle approach makes perfect sense for hard rock/metal. That regular thumpy sound you get when pulling the strings upwards instead of smacking them against the strings (albeit musically!) just doesn't cut it sometimes. Compare Pino Palladino's very straight bass sound with The Who to Entwistle's. It just doesn't fit, too "nice" sounding.
I lowered my strings about a year ago and have been using this technique in my band, playing Cream/The Who/Black Sabbath covers. Doing the normal bass player thing just ended up getting me lost in the overall band sound. After disconnecting the tweeter and doing the type-writer tap style, well...that changed. There is no way you won't be heard loud and clear with this playing style, but you can still get a vintage sound by rolling of the treble and upper mids if you want. The typewriter method won't work for jazz or country, however.
I'm a song man myself, but it's not like there's anything lacking in that department with the Who. Did Entwistle's bass craziness make 5:15 any less of a fabulous song?
Entwistle's solos usually got some of the best audience responses of the later Who concerts. Part of being a virtuoso player is impressing people with technique that nobody else can cop.
It's usually only a few whiney nay-sayers that try to crash everybody else's party and some people, particularly mediocre musicians, have a problem with any unique displays of virtuosity as oppsed to "serving the song".
I thought all the early Who songs were bass and drum solos with rhythm guitar holding it together, in a great way.
It still amazes me how the tornado playing of Entwistle and Moon still grooved as a unit, one of the wonders of the world.One thing we should keep in mind about his tone in the later years was the amount of hearing loss he'd suffered.
Eh, people say that, but I'm fairly certain he must have had a pretty good idea of what he sounded like. I mean, even in the sixties, if you hear a recording that has both his clean and distorted cabinets in the mix, it's pretty harsh sounding.
When you do the strings-against-the-frets playing and add any kind of overdrive or distortion, you end up with some pretty outrageous tones regardless of what gear you're using.
