Billy Sheehan's Tone

[RustyBass]

I know this guy and I have seen him play some other stuff as well and he does it really good...I like his playing, now a days everybody's influenced by some famous players, everyone wants to become a Victor Wooten, a Jaco, a Flea,etc...I don't blame on somebody for being a "clone" so all my respect to him for getting to this level. I wish I could play just half of what he does.

 

[bassist 4 life]

Can you ask him what the secret is to getting Billys tone ?

 

[Zalle]

yes people, there is no easy way to the Sheehan sound, but as many here mention, its two sounds, one clean and one dirty, and alot of compression. Im workin on some sort of near-close sound, a preamp + eq (rane) and to that a zoom 9030 and an eq to that also, first I split the signal, one goes to the preamp with clean sound, the other signal goes first into the eq where I trim off the low freq, and raise the middier parts and some of the high freq before it hits the zoom for distortion, both signals goes to a mixer, where i blend in the distorted signal, I can tell that its kind of a shimmering distorted tone, its maybe not the Sheehan sound but its a really good distorted sound, well, the way to sheehan sound is loooooong.

 

[RustyBass]

Can you ask him what the secret is to getting Billys tone ?

He said there's not such secret...just play as much as you can and never stop practising and learning.
You can use a similar sound settings, the same bass, same effects,etc... but there's a bunch of other important factors such like your hands, your technique, the knowledge you have on the instrument, your creativity,etc...