Chasing Tone, Bassists vs Guitarists

[bon viesta]

the guys who say “tone is in the fingers” really get on my nerves. they have a point that you’ll always sound like yourself, but jaco doesn’t sound like he’s playing a p bass with flats, his sound is a fretless jazz with the back pickup and rounds. try it out! if you usually play motown stuff, you won’t sound like james jamerson on such a bass. you’ll sound like someone playing on a bass like jaco. will it sound like jaco? sorta, but the definitely tone will. it’ll sound a lot like YOU playing on jacos bass. which is a lot different from how it normally sounds.

point is, bass, strings, and all that stuff absolutely contributes to a certain sound and it’s a fact. it won’t make you that player, but it’ll change your tone a whole lot. you can’t go from marcus miller tone to john paul jones tone by changing how you pluck the strings.

 

[coyote1]

Ultimately, it’s about the work you put in. Far more so than about the gear you buy.

 

[glocke1]

I'm making this post here that stems from something I posted over on The Gear related Page that had a rather poor reception. Without boring everyone here with the full story these are basics... I wrote about how I came to fully realize that my personal sound came from me and not the gear. For the last 15+ years I used the same amp and guitar/bass. It was pleasing to my ear and worked within any situation so I just played. Events that destroyed my gear forced me to get replacements. I questioned and reevaluated the tone I'd had for all that time so I tried a bunch of new things. In the end I fully realized that I had it right to begin with. The gear didn't matter; I always heard my core tone which came from me and my playing style.

The one response that I got from my other post was along the lines of: The tone is in the fingers, the fingers you use to pull money out your wallet to buy new gear.

That response really put an exclamation point on what I've noticed about the way bassists and guitarists approach tone.
Bassists seem to approach it similar to my perspective. The core tone comes from the playing, the gear is just a little extra flavoring. The bass and amp used allows a more focused part of your playing stand out. But regardless of what gear is used you always hear your playing style & dynamics as the core tone.
Whereas guitarists seem to go the opposite. They seem to approach it as their tone is defined by which gear they are playing through. Playing style, dynamics, and technique automatically become better when better gear is used. It's all about the gear, the more expensive it is the better it is and playing comes second. Gear is always fun to discuss but on the guitar side it seems to come off more often as what I have is never good enough. If I had something new and expensive I'll get the sound I'm after and by default play better. Then rinse and repeat.

These are just my observations, thoughts, and opinions which may or not be way off base. What are your thoughts on the subject? Have you made similar observations to what I have or have you noticed the complete opposite?

Years ago I used to chase down tone via gear. Fell in love with Phil Lesh's tone on the Europe '72 album and pursued that relentlessly. I think I probably came close with a Demeter/SF2/BagEnd rig, but never quite got it.

Eventually I gave up, and also came to the conclusion there are lots of good tones out there to pursue and play around with.

These days I really don't give too much thought to chasing down a particular tone and largely just plug in and play and adjust settings till I get something that cuts through the mix and that sounds well balanced.

The guitarists I know, especially the ones in the Grateful dead cover/tribute band thing, are fanatical about this stuff though to the point I find it a little weird.

 

[soundsupport1]

I think for us bassists a fair amount of it is psychological. A really nice bass and a really clear sound makes us relax and correspondingly play better.

My 02c. is that bass frequencies are so low that actually the fundamental frequency of one bass isn't that wildly different to the fundamental frequency on another; that differences in 'tone' for bassists comes more from the reproduction of the harmonic overtones. That's what makes a Fodera Emperor sound different to a Fender Precision; one highlights the high frequencies more than the other. If you cut the treble totally on both they'd probably sound surprisingly similar. - Although I'm speculating.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that certain basses and certain amps emphasise certain frequencies over others, but that that is (especially in a band mix) nowhere near as pronounced a difference as it is for guitars and guitar amps. By their very nature, they have much more sound in the high mid and treble range anyway, and that's where the differences are most noticeable.

Put it another way: A Gibson Thunderbird sounds a bit different to a Fender Jazz. Especially in isolation, less so in a band mix. But a Gibson Les Paul sounds radically different to a Fender Stratocaster, especially in a band mix!

So I tend to be more sympathetic to guitarists arguing that tone is in the gear they use.
Flea always sounds like Flea, even though he uses a 60s Jazz in the studio and an active MM-style bass live. You don't notice any difference (perhaps unless you're a bass player and know what to listen for!).

Joe Walsh always sounds like Joe Walsh, but you do notice when he switches from a Telecaster to a Dusenberg.

Peace,
SoundSupport

 

[Kaa]

Have you heard of the Omnific?

I have not, but I like it.

 

[Fun Size Nick]

I just think in general guitarists (and drummers) are less likely to approach their instruments with the idea of tone coming from musicianship, technique and discipline.

I can hear the drummers cracking their knuckles for a fight all the way over here! Maybe I'm just lucky but I've found that the good drummers out there approach it similarly to good players of other instruments - you get a lot further coaxing a tone out of a drum or cymbal than you do by bashing it out.

 

[G On Bass]

I've played with a few guitarists who had many, many very expensive guitars, many boutique amps and very, very expensive pedals. No matter which set-up they used, it all sounded the same.

I played with another guitarist who had a non-descript and nothing-special-about-it Strat. For rehearsal she used one of those Roland Cube car-battery-sized amps and no pedals. The tones she got out of that set up still had me looking around for the other gear she must have hidden away. It was stunning.

Gear does not equal talent or tone. I'm far more impressed by how people play and sound than by what gear they own.

Bass-wise, I have what works for me and for every project I'm in, so I don't feel the need to buy anything anymore.

 

[Doctor Intrepid]

For sure the fingers play a role, but so too does the gear. Just compare an EBO to a EBMM. So many folks praise the Pbass because it brings a certain tone profile. Can't it be both?

 

[Pings Bass]

I can hear the drummers cracking their knuckles for a fight all the way over here! Maybe I'm just lucky but I've found that the good drummers out there approach it similarly to good players of other instruments - you get a lot further coaxing a tone out of a drum or cymbal than you do by bashing it out.

Yeah I was just being snide about the lack of musicianship I've seen in a lot of rock players. I've also been lucky to play with some really sensitive, musical drummers; many of them are far better musicians than me.

 

[Koshchei]

I'm making this post here that stems from something I posted over on The Gear related Page that had a rather poor reception. Without boring everyone here with the full story these are basics... I wrote about how I came to fully realize that my personal sound came from me and not the gear. For the last 15+ years I used the same amp and guitar/bass. It was pleasing to my ear and worked within any situation so I just played. Events that destroyed my gear forced me to get replacements. I questioned and reevaluated the tone I'd had for all that time so I tried a bunch of new things. In the end I fully realized that I had it right to begin with. The gear didn't matter; I always heard my core tone which came from me and my playing style.

The one response that I got from my other post was along the lines of: The tone is in the fingers, the fingers you use to pull money out your wallet to buy new gear.

That response really put an exclamation point on what I've noticed about the way bassists and guitarists approach tone.
Bassists seem to approach it similar to my perspective. The core tone comes from the playing, the gear is just a little extra flavoring. The bass and amp used allows a more focused part of your playing stand out. But regardless of what gear is used you always hear your playing style & dynamics as the core tone.
Whereas guitarists seem to go the opposite. They seem to approach it as their tone is defined by which gear they are playing through. Playing style, dynamics, and technique automatically become better when better gear is used. It's all about the gear, the more expensive it is the better it is and playing comes second. Gear is always fun to discuss but on the guitar side it seems to come off more often as what I have is never good enough. If I had something new and expensive I'll get the sound I'm after and by default play better. Then rinse and repeat.

These are just my observations, thoughts, and opinions which may or not be way off base. What are your thoughts on the subject? Have you made similar observations to what I have or have you noticed the complete opposite?

Without going deep down the rabbit hole, a bass is far more expressive and responsive to touch than a guitar is. Fretless takes it a step further.

This isn't to say that guitar isn't expressive -- it is, but it's much more gear-bound, based on the abstraction of a plectrum, fretwire, and gain stages of the amplifier.

Here's an example from the 2014 Carvin X-Mas Jam (my part from about 20s-1:20). It's plenty expressive, but the personality of the instrument is pretty much set, whereas with a bass, you can dramatically change the timbre just by moving your plucking hand an inch forward or back:

 

[matty1039]

I just posted this in another thread, but I think it fits here too:

 

[Koshchei]

I just posted this in another thread, but I think it fits here too:

Thanks goodness he never unlocked the SRV tone, or we'd be calling the Blues the "Schwarz und Rots".

 

[luciens]

I think we have to be very careful about saying things like guitarists are more into their gear than we are. When it comes to strings, we're way more obsessed than guitarists. I'm not sure how many guitarists even know if they're using round or flatwounds, or if they really care.

Agree. I don’t think we’re any better off than the guitarists. We have just as much GAS, huge pedal boards that make everything sound awful, we learn to slap before we learn how to carry a tune in general and do it ceaselessly at the wrong time, we overplay and piss off the band more or less the same as them. In my experience anyway. I don’t see much of a difference.

There’s more of them than us, I guess is the only difference, but that’s a difference of numbers more than a kind….

L

 

[Fun Size Nick]

Yeah I was just being snide about the lack of musicianship I've seen in a lot of rock players. I've also been lucky to play with some really sensitive, musical drummers; many of them are far better musicians than me.

Completely get you I've been (for the most part) out of the rock world for a long time, but I definitely understand the kind of musician that you're talking about!

Without going deep down the rabbit hole, a bass is far more expressive and responsive to touch than a guitar is. Fretless takes it a step further.

This isn't to say that guitar isn't expressive -- it is, but it's much more gear-bound, based on the abstraction of a plectrum, fretwire, and gain stages of the amplifier.

Here's an example from the 2014 Carvin X-Mas Jam (my part from about 20s-1:20). It's plenty expressive, but the personality of the instrument is pretty much set, whereas with a bass, you can dramatically change the timbre just by moving your plucking hand an inch forward or back:

I think it really depends on the player. Electric guitar and electric bass are physically very similar instruments - you can certainly change the timbre of an electric guitar dramatically by changing the plucking location in a similar way to the bass. Beyond 'tone' per se, chord voicing and rhythmic style have a huge effect on a guitarist's individual voice and are as much a part of a good guitarist's distinctive 'sound' as tone itself, IMO.

 

[HardNHeavy]

no matter what i play thru.. i adjust tone to "my" liking......The gear helps me accomplish it more easily or not..Guess that's why i haven't bought any amps in decades.

 

[micguy]

Agree. I don’t think we’re any better off than the guitarists. We have just as much GAS, huge pedal boards that make everything sound awful, we learn to slap before we learn how to carry a tune in general and do it ceaselessly at the wrong time, we overplay and piss off the band more or less the same as them. In my experience anyway. I don’t see much of a difference.

We agree on most everything, with one notable exception...I've been playing for decades, and....I can't slap. I do bounce strings of the frets (ala Entwistle), but Larry Graham I am not.

 

[Meenkya]

Advanced concepts such as "tone", "playability", and even "talent": I wish I had just one of those attributes.

 

[MCS4]

Tone comes from everything.

 

[juancaminos]

I always play like me, but I sound better through quality equipment. That's how I look at it.

This is it for me. And I'm talking everything from amp, guitar, chords, mic's, mixer. mains and monitors. I just cannot get why people who gig every week end use cheap a$$ equipment. I can tell the difference. The audience may not know why or what but they can too.

 

[WG Plum]

This is it for me. And I'm talking everything from amp, guitar, chords, mic's, mixer. mains and monitors. I just cannot get why people who gig every week end use cheap a$$ equipment. I can tell the difference. The audience may not know why or what but they can too.

Well, if you're in an Amphetamine Reptile/Blast First type of band, I don't think you need to drop Bergantino money on a rig. I think genre/style plays a part too.