My all time biggest inspiration and more than anyone the sound I try to emulate in a lot of my musical situations, not only reggae.
To add to the great posts above, he also uses a Sansamp to warm up his DI send from the WT800 to the house, and he combines a miked feed from one of his 410XLT cabs.
I've heard his stage tone on a few occasions, and better or worse house mixes. He gets a bit of overdrive, enough to charge the leading edge of his notes with some growl when needed, and his notes are very shaped, using a lot of left and right hand muting. He gets a lot more punch than most modern reggae bassists.
He mostly plays very far towards the neck, usually with the sides of his fingers, and he anchors his thumb at the bass of the neck most of the time.
Obviously a big part of his lines are the notes he doesn't play and the rests, and his lines are usually heavily syncopated. He follows the vocals very heavily on most tracks, and is melodic both in in the sense that he plays off the singer, and also often creates extremely catchy little melodies within each song that stand alone beautifully in dub mixes of his riddims without vocals. He leaves a ton of room for the other instruments and for the vocals.
He describes his playing in two ways, that I feel are very true and are worth thinking about for any bassist:
One, he compares playing a bassline to painting a picture; different notes and tones have a strong emotional component and he uses these to set up a soundscape that functions in 3D, one of the dimensions being colour if you are so inclined to experience them this way.
The other is the vocal quality to his playing. He says first, you can't play a line unless you can sing it; this has been invaluable for me when learning or creating lines, and second, he also actually sings through his bass, much like Lester Young sang through his tenor. If the sound is good enough at a Wailers concert, you can hear the vocal quality to his lines, they really do sound as if they are a very deep voice singing. His playing functions on so many levels that belie the simplicity of his lines, you only need the heart and the ears to hear them. Smoking enough ganga before and or during a show helps me somewhat...
His tonal ideal is the upright bass, and he says he tries to sound as much like one as possible. Despite the massive lows he produces, his sound is extremely transparent and the slight growl in his attack and the roundness of the notes he produces do sound a lot like an upright, especially through a good PA, or if you can hear his amp tone. His notes are pregnant sounding and want to burst out of their confines.
In terms of timing, he often plays well behind the beat or right on top of it, often in the same phrase, which gives him even more expressive range using tension and release, so important in reggae, IMO.
I've seen a lot of reggae bassists live over the last 25+ years, and none has come close to getting such a huge but clear and natural and unprocessed sound as him. He is unique and a wonderful musician (he arranged most of the Wailers recordings through the '70s, and his contributions to sessions like Augustus Pablo's King Tubby Meets the Rockers and Rockers Dub (just a fraction of his output, of course) sessions are unsurpassed in reggae.
As you can see, I like Fam's playing a bit...
