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Got the Geddy/Ox grind!

stratovani

stratovani

Nov 18, 2007
3,653
1,131
Spencer, MA, USA
#1
Towards the end of yesterday's band rehearsal I was fiddling with the knobs on the amp I was playing through, and by boosting the mids, turning the Drive knob on the Behringer and turning the tone knob on my P-Bass all the way up I suddenly got that heavy grinding tone that Geddy Lee and John Entwistle got on their basses. The setup = P-Bass>Behringer BDI21>Acoustic B600>Hartke 4x10, and I played with a Dunlop Big Stubby 2.0mm pick. My P-Bass is strung up with La Bella Deep Talkin' Flats, 45-105. It caught me by surprise, and our guitarist when he recognized the tone started playing "My Wife" by The Who. The drummer joined in, and we had a little impromptu jam! :D

So that's how they got that tone! Of course, they were much louder! But since I'm in a Tom Petty tribute I'll have to return to a quieter, darker tone at the next practice. :hmm:
 
#5
Eric Moesle said:
I'm envious of you for being happy with your tone - it seems most of us are always striving to get it perfect but never quite reaching that point of nirvana..... but I can't help be dubious how you can truly get a Geddy tone with flatwound strings.
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Well, it's not EXACTLY Geddy's tone, but it's in the ballpark! Actually, being a P-Bass it's closer to the grind John Entwistle had in the Live At Leeds album. Still, I got it completely by accident, but it's a lot of fun to play! :)
 
#6
stratovani said:
Well, it's not EXACTLY Geddy's tone, but it's in the ballpark! Actually, being a P-Bass it's closer to the grind John Entwistle had in the Live At Leeds album. Still, I got it completely by accident, but it's a lot of fun to play! :)
Click to expand...

That's a pretty huge ballpark ...

The Geddy Lee / Entwistle tone is all roundwound and not flatwound at all.

If you want to cop their tone dump the flats.
 
#7
I recall reading an interview of Entwistle many years ago, in which he complained about the Fender Precision that whenever you turn up the tone control to get some more brightness and definition into your tone, the bottom drops out. Listening to Live At Leeds, I think I can hear that very quality in John's sound: not a lot of deep, round low bass, but plenty of rip-roarin', high-gain mids! :bassist:

My very first bass was a Fender Precision, and as I recall, I noticed the same thing. I dealt with it pretty much by carefully dialing up a tone somewhere in the middle: for rock played with a pick, tone control cranked up to just before the point where the bottom begins to drop out; for reggae, blues and/or old-skool R&B, tone control dialed almost all the way down. :cool:

MM
 

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