Cliff Burton fuzzy recordings

[metallibass95]

On the Metallica albums Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets, I listened to a few of Cliff's bass tracks on certain songs and I noticed that his sound is always fuzzy and alot of the times muffled, why is that so? It seems listening to the albums that his bass sound has clarity and is just fine, but on these bass tracks its so fuzzy and muffled. Could someone explain why these sound so fuzzy?

Here are some sound clips:

Fight Fire With Fire



Also notice on Orion that at 4:00 when the bass plays by itself that the sound is perfectly fine just like it sounds on the album, but then it just turns fuzzy again.

 

[b4nny]

In Orion, I think it's because he ran his fuzz pedal (big muff?) all the time with some clean blend. The only thing he changes between heavy and soft sections is whether he plays... heavily or softly. So basically, during the bass-only interlude, Cliff was able to restrain himself and pluck very lightly, which was too quiet to fuzz out, but then after the guitars came back, it got a little more difficult to hold back, and he played louder and more fuzz was triggered!

 

[Korladis]

In Orion, I think it's because he ran his fuzz pedal (big muff?) all the time with some clean blend. The only thing he changes between heavy and soft sections is whether he plays... heavily or softly. So basically, during the bass-only interlude, Cliff was able to restrain himself and pluck very lightly, which was too quiet to fuzz out, but then after the guitars came back, it got a little more difficult to hold back, and he played louder and more fuzz was triggered!

Or... he just changed the pickup setting on his bass and/or the volume.