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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 .
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".

if the clip I posted doesn't sound overdriven and sounds "as clean as it gets" to you, then I like your idea of clean.
 
I listened to those three Iron Maiden youtube clips. The third one sounds more "overdriven" than the rest, but they seem clean to me 95% of the time, but not a punchy, snappy, bass heavy clean that I'm used to hearing. On some of the little bass runs he does higher up on the neck, it get's a nice little breakup, but I think that is just his tube amp doing it's thing, and not a pedal doing it. It sounds pretty natural. If that's what an SVT does, then maybe I need to go shopping! I like that sound, and I can see where it would sit in the mix of a lot of rock music.
 
I listened to those three Iron Maiden youtube clips. The third one sounds more "overdriven" than the rest, but they seem clean to me 95% of the time, but not a punchy, snappy, bass heavy clean that I'm used to hearing. On some of the little bass runs he does higher up on the neck, it get's a nice little breakup, but I think that is just his tube amp doing it's thing, and not a pedal doing it. It sounds pretty natural. If that's what an SVT does, then maybe I need to go shopping! I like that sound, and I can see where it would sit in the mix of a lot of rock music.

I confess I had not heard the "The Trooper" clip. That one sounds dirty indeed, my bad.
 
As far as pedals go, I've heard overdrives are warmer sounding than distortion pedals since they use (round wave?) verses the distortion pedal's square wave.
first i ever heard that one. overdrives aren't always warmer, first off. and overdrive is just considered less intense distortion, but it's made the same way.
 
Right. I believe the even harmonics are considered warm and the odds are considered harsh or cold. Need to read more on the subject.

Around the end of the last millenium I bought a MosValve brand power amplifier for my rack rig. The selling point was that it used MOSFETs, which, like tubes, reproduced all harmonics (including the "warm" ones), unlike most other solid state amps available back then which allegedly did not. My understanding is that most power amps today use MOSFET or other technology that does reproduce all harmonics.

Hopefully someone will offer corrections as necessary.
 
Around the end of the last millenium I bought a MosValve brand power amplifier for my rack rig. The selling point was that it used MOSFETs, which, like tubes, reproduced all harmonics (including the "warm" ones), unlike most other solid state amps available back then which allegedly did not. My understanding is that most power amps today use MOSFET or other technology that does reproduce all harmonics.

Hopefully someone will offer corrections as necessary.

not a matter of reproducing but adding...
 
After listening to several youtube clips of a variety of isolated bass tracks from rock oriented players like Geddy, Steve Harris, Flea, and even Sting I was amazed at how dirty the tones sounded. They sit well in the mix. I grew up admiring those artists but never realized how they sounded in isolation.

I've been reading this thread and saw a few people refering to isolated bass tracks...

I think it would be cool if some of you posted links in reference to the various isolated "dirty" bass tones you are talking about ?

Also, I'm curious to see (and hear) the same but with the "clean" bass tones...

Is there that many isolated bass tracks out there ?

Would be really interesting to build a list, right here and now... to see (and hear) what comes up !

Anyways, just an idea.

Nitram :)
 
I've heard it work, but only with multiple-amp setups. Basically where you have a rig set up to sustain the pure tone of your bass with emphasis on the low end with another amp (or several) geared towards distortion (in some cases, several layers of..) and upper-mids/highs. (Billy Sheehan, Jon Entwistle, Tim Commerford, Justin Chancellor...) I think subtle use of envelope filters would be your friend here as well.

Of course this is only my perspective, there have been well backed up points made that suggest otherwise.
 
someone recently posted the isolated track for Pearl Jam's "Jeremy." I was suprised how much fuzz was on that.

Thanks for your reply raymondl3 !

What esle ?

Anybody else want's to pitch in ?

I can recall a very cool and jaw dropping moment the first time I saw that video of John Entwistle on that isolated score video playing "Won't Get Fooled Again" from The DVD "The Kids Are All Right"... I mean F%@K !!!!! Such a nice overdriven tone that is...

Nitram :)