Bill Gould Tone with Darkglass

[Obese Chess]

Hi all,

Like the title suggests, I'm looking for a little bit of guidance here. I'm a huge fan of Billy Gould's tone on all the Faith No More records, and I know that around 2014 he switched to a Darkglass B7K (I think previously he was using a Fulltone Bass Driver through a broken-up Peavey amp) which I believe he used on 2015's Sol Invictus.

I would think, then, that it would be pretty easy to approximate his bass tone using a B7K, which I have, but I don't really have the vocabulary to know where to start. Like, I don't know what makes his sound "his sound" in terms of what to tweak on the EQ.

Anyone happen to know his settings or able to point me in the right direction? I realize, of course, that a key piece of his tone is his custom Zon bass with a proprietary distortion circuit built-in, but I'm thinking using the same pedal as him should get me in the ballpark.

The bass that's gotten closest for me on this has been a MUB G5 with Nordstrand Big Splits and an Aguilar OBP-3, which is hilariously versatile - it has the snappiness, but after that, I'm lost.

Thanks in advance!

 

[FaithNoMan]

Billy’s main tone came from his Peavey amps but you can def get in the ballpark with Darkglass and a bright bass.

Here is a very old recording from when I had my first gen B3K, playing along with Faster Disco. I modded my bass after that for more upper metallic/glassy attack:
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EDIT: I just saw you already have the B7K. You should be able to get there with lots of high mids. Also, stacking that with a VMT or Alpha Omicron would work wonders.
I got some awesome tones stacking other overdrives into my B3K, esp the VMT. You have even more flexibility with the B7K.

A while ago I had the awesome builder JohnK join a thread I made about Billy’s tone and he made two different preamps that are based off the amp line that gave Billy his tone.

Here is that thread. And yes, those two pedals he made replicates his tones VERY well. Someone should build a killer dirt pedal from this line of heads(Peavey MarkIII/MarkIV content)

Here is that Centurion preamp into a Tech21 Oxford. Lots of 1.5K boosted on the Centurion and some 2.5K on the Oxford.
RicCenturion moregain by Centaurus A

031920b by Centaurus A

 

[Obese Chess]

Got it, yeah, he switched to Aguilar a while back too so I wasn't sure how much of it was the amp. I'll check those threads out, thank you! I've been thinking about stacking a different overdrive with the B7K but if I were going to make that expenditure I'd want it to be my own sound rather than someone else's. Still, I'd probably scoop up one of those Centurion pedals if he made another run of them...

 

[FaithNoMan]

Got it, yeah, he switched to Aguilar a while back too so I wasn't sure how much of it was the amp. I'll check those threads out, thank you! I've been thinking about stacking a different overdrive with the B7K but if I were going to make that expenditure I'd want it to be my own sound rather than someone else's. Still, I'd probably scoop up one of those Centurion pedals if he made another run of them...

Here is one directly related to the later era and Darkglass
And yes you should grab one!

Billy Gould sounds awesome in Superhero. Doug, is that your pedal?

 

[FaithNoMan]

I finally got to see them for the first time in the summer of 2015, after being a fan for life.
Best concert ever and they sounded completely awesome.

I live in FL but my sis and i drove to Raleigh, N.C. Well worth it.

 

[Obese Chess]

Ah, so that's just the Zon on Sol Invictus! I'll keep my eyes peeled in case John does another run and I'll scour local spots for a Centurion, just in case. Tons of used stuff all over the place here.

And yeah, I saw them here in Portland on that tour and then flew to Montreal for Heavy Montreal a few months later. The latter was one of the best shows I'd ever seen.