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Does an overdrive tone sit better in a rock mix?

Does an overdriven dirty tone sit better in a rock mix?

  • Most likely yes

    Votes: 71 46.1%

  • Not necessarily

    Votes: 83 53.9%
  • Total voters
    154
  • Poll closed .
#61
My take on all of this, which will vary based on your preferences, goes like this:

Studio:
If you want a clean bass tone, you don't necessarily need any dirt, but I do find a bit of dirt can help your tone sit in the mix better. A little goes a long way. Adding a little seems to help my tone "spread out" and "glue" everything together a bit better. If it's sparkly clean I actually think that it gets too dynamic and can cut through the mix too well. Likewise, an overly distorted tone can get so compressed that it will cut through the mix too well. It's all about finding the right balance between clean/distorted and dynamic/compressed. This will vary from user to user as well as within different genres. I'll typically put a Radial JDI or J48 in front of everything, then mic up an amp/cab that's either tube-based and being driven hard enough to break up ever so slightly, or solid state with something to emulate tube breakup. I'll make sure everything is properly aligned in post and the results are usually great for the overall mix and achieve something that couldn't happen with just the clean signal or just the dirty signal. Again, when I say "dirty" I'm not talking about much more than some slight breakup.

Live:
This is always a guessing game. I typically give the soundman a DI just after my effects, but before my amp, and a mic on my cab. If he wants some dirt, I can supply that, but typically sound guys want the bass clean and compressed. I can supply that too.
 
#62
I've found that for me it definitely does! I played all tube amps for years (from slightly dirty to full on distorted), but started missing some of the punch that I heard from some of the solid state players I loved- I tried a handful of more modern "uber-clean" amps that gave me all that punch and more, but none of them seemed to fit as naturally in a mix for me and I personally was not able to find a pedal that gave what I was missing (most of my OD pedals are holdovers from my tube amp days, when the amp was doing most of the grit work). I came to the same realization as you- even the non-tube amp using bassists I've loved in the rock genre all still had some dirt to their tone. For my uses, a mild overdriven tone is ideal for rock. If you already get it from a pedal though, I don't think you really NEED anything. And I have yet to use any bass amp that has a great clean and a great dirty channel, so your pedal situation is probably better than the alternative in that sense- you could just pretend that the pedal is a footswitch to an OD inside your amp!
 
#64
Fuzzbass said:
As Bill explained, there are different levels of overdrive. For awhile I borrowed a friend's Bassman rig that could do nothing but fart. It was cool for vintage Jack Bruce/Noel Redding/Mel Schacher/Felix Pappalardi tones, but bad otherwise.
Click to expand...

I fully understand what bill posted. Having owned a Bassman rig I can attest to just how horrible it was as a bass amp! It's one of the reasons I got into designing my own amplifiers.

Paul
 
#65
As a general practice I find that the more heavily distorted the guitars are in the mix (live or studio) or the more dense the mix overall, the cleaner I want my bass tone and vice versa. I started doing it this way because of articles I have read in Bass Player and elsewhere where bassists have talked about having success with this approach. I find that it works for me, but as we all know, there are always exceptions to the rule.
 
#66
A growly bass and (certain recording techniques?) might make some think the amp is not as clean as it actually is on many recordings?

When I was using my old bass and VT bass I used a dirty tone, and I liked the way it sounded in the mix but when I started using my Jazz bass I found that the Jazz was growly enough to just keep everything I plugged into clean.
 
#68
FWIW: despite my username I rarely use heavy distortion. I'll sometimes use moderate OD for hard rock, but for most applications I prefer just a bit of grit: not enough to be audible in the mix (except maybe when I'm digging in hard), but still enough to provide punch, harmonic richness, and a bit of extra sustain.



JimmyM said:
oh, i just thought of another one...johnny april (staindbass) uses mostly clean tones with staind.
Click to expand...

The example I think of is Mudshovel... I don't know that his bass is completely clean there, but it's mostly clean.

Edit: i realize now it's a bad example, I hear grit. Nevermind. :p
 
#70
If you've ever looked at the waveform coming out of a naked bass pickup, it's not a pure sine wave. Different pickups and picking hand techniques yield different amounts of harmonic content from the start. So a clean amp/speaker combination can still sound "dirty" if you want it to. Part of the MusicMan tone, for example, is due to this effect. Add in any further distortion from the setup (clacks, fret buzz - think Stanley Clarke on an Alembic on the high frets) on top of what's coming from the pickups inherently.

Add more dirt to taste in the amp system if you like, but be aware that you start out with varying degrees of it depending on how you play your instrument, and how you choose to set it up.
 
#75
taurus1 said:
here
Click to expand...


That is not dirty! I understand dirty as some form of distorion, and I hear none in these recordings! Steve has always sounded as clean as it gets!
There is plenty of clanking and some buzz, but it is not dirty in my bass dictionary.
If you call this tone dirty it is ok, but as the thread was about overdrive, I was imagining that "dirty" meant "distorted".
 
#76
GianGian said:
That is not dirty! I understand dirty as some form of distorion, and I hear none in these recordings! Steve has always sounded as clean as it gets!
There is plenty of clanking and some buzz, but it is not dirty in my bass dictionary.
If you call this tone dirty it is ok, but as the thread was about overdrive, I was imagining that "dirty" meant "distorted".
Click to expand...

It is slightly distorted. There's a little bit of break-up in the signal.

"Overdrive," "dirty" and "distortion" can all mean anything from very slight, hardly noticeable breakup (which often makes it sound a bit clankier than it otherwise would, and also a bit more "fat") to full-on saturated distortion.
 
#77
okcrum said:
If you've ever looked at the waveform coming out of a naked bass pickup, it's not a pure sine wave.
Click to expand...
Aside from synthesizers that's the case with every musical instrument.
That is not dirty! I understand dirty as some form of distorion, and I hear none in these recordings!
Click to expand...
Distortion in most cases is not audible. The term 'distortion' doesn't refer to anything obvious. It simply means that, aside from the volume level, the sound coming out of an amp is not precisely the same as that which went into it.
 
#78
I struggle with this. I am a clean player for sure. My jazz stuff obviously that is the desired tone. I do also play in a cover band and would love to have some slight dirt at times, but have never found the right sound so I just keep playing clean.
 
#79
Great thread. For playing bass guitar in rock, country-rock or blues, I now leave my EBS ValveDrive on all the time, in light overdrive "vintage" mode. It's not even on my pedalboard, it sits by my amp as I don't turn it on and off as I do with my pedalboard. I side with those who say at least a little overdrive is part of the basic sound for most forms of rock and blues. And this is from someone who is a fan of "clean" tone - but as Bill just said, clean is just the delta between in and out. "Clean" isn't necessarily a virtue if you are trying to achieve a certain sound.
 

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