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How To Get A Noel Redding Bass Sound

#22
Don't sweat the amp, as long as you can get loud enough. I assume you want something like the tone(s) you can hear on the Are You Experienced and Axis Bold As Love albums.

The main ingredients are a 60's Fender Jazz, a stiff pick, and either Fender Medium Flats or RotoSound rounds. Keep both pickup pots open full, but roll the bass's treble pot off about 80%.

Check youtube videos to see where Redding typically placed his picking hand.

Then, adjust the volume and EQ of your amp to nail his sound.
 
#25
There just wasn't that much available in the way of bass gear back then and what was available wasn't all that great. You pretty much just got the most power you could, hooked it up to the most speakers you could (whether they were good or not) and cranked it up in hopes to be heard. That type of sound was the result and you dealt with it.

Now they probably make a pedal designed to make a full/powerful sounding rig emulate that type of sound with all it's technical flaws 'cause it's cool, and that's not a bad thing.
 
#28
That's a killer bass tone, I don't care what anyone says. People worship Jack Bruce's Cream tone but they don't like that? Poppycock! I have gotten something similar by rolling half the treble off my bass and using a VT Bass pedal with the drive halfway up, but if you want to do it the hard way, get an all-tube bass amp, roll off some treble, and turn it way up.
 
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#31
MutronIII said:
I'd much rather have Billy Cox's tone.
Click to expand...

+100

Its crazy how different they sound live, and both of them used Jazz basses.

Watching that clip I posted earlier it really does sound like the speakers are running flat out. He must have had to replace them pretty frequently. I guess you could go and buy a 10 watt guitar practice amp and an eq pedal and boost all the low frequencies and then put the volume control up on the amp until the speakers compress into oblivion.
 
#33
Another little detail: Noel Redding used the neck pickup, only.
Here are two more examples.

Jamming in the studio:


I love his sound at Monterey. When he enters after Hendrix's intro, it sounds like a Boeing 747 is landing on the stage.
 
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#35
Jim Carr said:
Don't sweat the amp, as long as you can get loud enough. I assume you want something like the tone(s) you can hear on the Are You Experienced and Axis Bold As Love albums.

The main ingredients are a 60's Fender Jazz, a stiff pick, and either Fender Medium Flats or RotoSound rounds. Keep both pickup pots open full, but roll the bass's treble pot off about 80%.

Check youtube videos to see where Reading typically placed his picking hand.

Then, adjust the volume and EQ of your amp to nail his sound.
Click to expand...


+1. I think any modern tube amp that can be overdriven or even a solid state amp with a tube preamp OD circuit could approach that sound. I just started using a Lakland JO5 with Fralin PUPs and roundwounds through a Genz Benz Shuttle 6.0 with two 112 cabs. Running the tube preamp hot gives me a nice fat sound very much like this.
 
#36
It's funny how folks praise one cat for his mud fart tone and cut on another for his mud fart tone. Marc Brewer Grand Funk, the dude in Jamiroquoi, Jack Bruce, and Felix Pappalardi, big mud.

You know sometimes what sounds muddy alone sits clear in the mix. Again I have those live Hendrix albums and a Marshall stack is easily capable of distortion. Live at Albert Hall I hear toasted worn out speakers. I mentioned Jack Casady. On Voodoo Child you hear his nice bass tone but at the end when they are finished he plays a lick, you hear serious mud.

Then go to Voodoo Child Slight Return and you hear clear bass tone no mud and that was live in the studio.

I've owned those Sunns. I liked them for their clear full bass tone. Many of my contemporaries got that full on bass fart out of them all the time.
 
#39
I came right after that era, but remember the technology into the 70s.


that's all they had back then.. until alembic came out with the F2B and coupled it to a Macintosh amp.

Im sure if they had the stuff we have today they wouldn't have been so distorted and muddy.. I kind of dig that fuzz sound at times... I have not used it but i would like to find a situation to use it.. nothing i do requires it....



but because all they had was that gear it created a trend and a sound that folks still want to emulate today.. I wonder what it will be 40 years form now, with folks want to emulate our tones?
 

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