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How to get this tone... Esperanza Spalding

Timmy-Watts

Timmy-Watts

I like bass. And airplanes.
Nov 12, 2010
3,185
2,061
Cincinnati, Ohio
#1
I believe this is a Jaco replica. Maybe strung with Labella flats? Tone rolled back, mids on the amp dimed, pickup blend favoring the neck?

It sounds either like an amplified upright, or a P-bass. I love it. It's a far cry from what most Fretless players seem to go for.

Thoughts on getting this sound?

 
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#11
I was wondering about how to get precisely her tone on this show and found this thread. It's indeed a great tone which gets very close to a P-bass.

I don't think I'd like to have a fretless that could only achieve this sound, but on another song of the same gig she makes it sing a bit more. It seems to me that it'd be possible to get some mwah had she favored the bridge pickup, wouldn't it?



Apart from strings (and her fingers), anything important you guys think is needed to get there? Amp? Pickups?
 
#14
Timmy-Watts said:
I believe this is a Jaco replica. Maybe strung with Labella flats? Tone rolled back, mids on the amp dimed, pickup blend favoring the neck?

It sounds either like an amplified upright, or a P-bass. I love it. It's a far cry from what most Fretless players seem to go for.

Thoughts on getting this sound?

Click to expand...


From listening to this video, definitely flatwound strings and it sounds like more of the neck pickup than the bridge pickup.
 
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#15
zelig.audio said:
Apart from strings (and her fingers), anything important you guys think is needed to get there? Amp? Pickups?
Click to expand...

She's using a TC amp in that video, but at the time I think she was touring with an Aguilar rig, so maybe she was just using whatever was available at the festival. The Fender flats from that time were pretty thuddy and (in my opinion) didn't sound good for very long). They reformulated them so the ones you get now aren't the same as what she was using then.

I think the main key to her sound is that she's playing a fretless bass, but rarely accentuating the things that make it sound like a fretless. She's playing a custom five string fretless now, and I don't think her tone sounds any different than when she was playing the Fender.

I think the whole "tone is in your fingers" thing is nonsense, because people clearly get different sounds out of different basses, amps, and strings. But in this case, I think if you play a fretless with not-too-bright flat wounds, and play over the pickups like she does (rather than near the bridge, like Jaco, or near the neck, to accentuate the "mwah"), you're going to be 98% of the way there.
 
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