For me the best slap tone starts and ends with Marcus and his Fender.
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Best Slap Tone Ever????
- Thread starter Dr. Cheese
- Start date
Man, Melvin is wicked. I remember seeing him with his Ken Smith 6 in 'Coming to America', and I have a hard time seeing him play anything but his 7. That jazz looks like a toy in his hands.
I know this music isn't for everyone but this has been my favorite slap tone for more than two decades. If I remember right it's just a Warwick thumb nt5 into two amps. An Ampeg rig used for lows and an SWR combo pushing a Mesa 412 guitar cab for mids and highs. I think the use of the guitar cab with vintage 30s is what makes it really unique. It sounds like an amp without having that weird plastic vibe of a horn/tweeter.
I agree, I've always like the way Warwicks sound kind of in general, but especially when slapped. They go "Ping!" where most basses have more of a growl like the Jazz bass.
I'd love to have one especially for harder music like this, but I've never been able to deal with the necks. They're just too tree-stumpy for me...
L
Marcus Miller has become the template for active Jazz Bass tone.
This is now a sampled 70's Jazz bass, but it seems like some of the Celinder is still in there as one of the songs has Celinder in the title. Scroll down a bit for the sound samples.
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For me the best slap tone has always been on Seinfeld and it's not even a bass, but the tone in the OP is very reminiscent of it.
Like I said in my post..."it's not even a bass"
The best slap tone has always been Larry Graham
I've had a half dozen over the years. There are different neck profiles in different eras. The early ones were pretty thin necks, then around 2000 they started doing the chunky baseball bat like stuff. I want to say they stopped making basses with chunky necks about 5 years ago. But of course Depending on where you live Warwick might not have any distribution in your area now (they haven't in my area since Warwick parted ways with Dana b goods). So lot of people who dislike the brand because of the chunkier necks haven't tried the newer neck profile. I have actually played a gig opening for Ryan. He had his old modded production thumb NT5 and his custom shop fretless with him. He let me check out his bass and we talked a bit about them. His custom basses are made with a thinner neck. His production thumb basses like the one he is holding in this picture have shaved necks. Imo his bass kind of feels like a jazz neck. Even being a 5 string it felt slimmer in some ways than some 4 strings necks. But yeah his production basses are no where near stock, all the electronics are swapped out, the neck is shaped differently. He told me he doesn't have anything against Warwicks electronics but that he just replaces stuff as it starts having issues and after years of playing in Mudvayne and sweat and water getting on them he had to replace stuff to keep them working. Kind of thought the knobs on this one looked cool. Reminded my of 3po from Star Wars with the black and gold knobs. I played a thumb nt6 that night
For me, you can pretty much put Marcus Miller's discography on slips of paper, put them in a fishbowl and pull one out and you've got a really good chance of hearing the best slap tone you've heard all year. Maybe longer. Here's "Detroit". Bass is more out front on this one. Starts out strong. 2:55 in is even stronger.
