I heard almost every major reggae bassist live that was touring in the late '70s, and few had the same tone, or even similar. What they all had was the ability to use what they had (and this was often very sophisticated equipment for the time) to best effect.
Lloyd Parkes had a straight up P with flats through an SVT type tone, a bit overdriven, as did Fully Fullwood, both mic'ed. Family Man went for the cleanest biggest tone he could find, with Ampeg and then Acoustic, through trace and now Eden. Robbie Shakespeare had clean but more heavily fattened up by EQ tones with his Jazz and Steinberger, probably direct, and Flabba Holt got a huge, wide and very thick tone from his Jazz and Hofners, often with a sub harmonic device of some sort. I think the thing they all had in common was flatwounds, and at those levels and with the space around the instruments you could really hear the tone they got clearly and feel it deeply in your bones.
I agree reggae bass is all about feel, but these guys knew exactly what they wanted to sound like, and used room acoustics to great effect, too. I rarely hear modern reggae bassists who have the personality to their tones as did the players from that era, probably because of the trend for huge clean almost synth like recorded bass tones these days.
The engineers from that period were real geniuses, too, and really knew how bring out a bass' personality in the mix. I'm still astounded at sounds on some of the old Studio One stuff, even with the crappiest mics and basic boards and amps, and the warmth and fullness of Jackie Jackson's Jazz at Treasure Island, and the bass tones that came out of Channel One studio later on, for example, are just mind blowing. I can still remember the way those Channel One 12" singles sounded the first time I heard them over 20 000w+ tube driven sound systems, and have spent a good part of my life chasing that kind of a buzz.
Lloyd Parkes had a straight up P with flats through an SVT type tone, a bit overdriven, as did Fully Fullwood, both mic'ed. Family Man went for the cleanest biggest tone he could find, with Ampeg and then Acoustic, through trace and now Eden. Robbie Shakespeare had clean but more heavily fattened up by EQ tones with his Jazz and Steinberger, probably direct, and Flabba Holt got a huge, wide and very thick tone from his Jazz and Hofners, often with a sub harmonic device of some sort. I think the thing they all had in common was flatwounds, and at those levels and with the space around the instruments you could really hear the tone they got clearly and feel it deeply in your bones.
I agree reggae bass is all about feel, but these guys knew exactly what they wanted to sound like, and used room acoustics to great effect, too. I rarely hear modern reggae bassists who have the personality to their tones as did the players from that era, probably because of the trend for huge clean almost synth like recorded bass tones these days.
The engineers from that period were real geniuses, too, and really knew how bring out a bass' personality in the mix. I'm still astounded at sounds on some of the old Studio One stuff, even with the crappiest mics and basic boards and amps, and the warmth and fullness of Jackie Jackson's Jazz at Treasure Island, and the bass tones that came out of Channel One studio later on, for example, are just mind blowing. I can still remember the way those Channel One 12" singles sounded the first time I heard them over 20 000w+ tube driven sound systems, and have spent a good part of my life chasing that kind of a buzz.
