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Is it the Bass, or the Player...

#41
pgolliher said:
It's the indian, not the arrow.
Click to expand...

Not exactly politically correct, but accurate.

A good player can make bad gear sound good.
A bad player can make good gear sound bad.

Trying to be a good player is the best investment in time you'll ever make, and that quality is the most portable asset you'll ever have.

Of course, emulating your favorite player's style and choice of gear can be rewarding when you do have moments when you actually come pretty close to copping their tone.
 
#44
So, because we the OP asked for percentages, I propose the following formula:

Sound = Tone * Performance

Looking for consensus, I will offer 40/60 (player/gear) for tone and 90/10 (player/gear) for performance as starting points. Multiplied together we get 3600 over 600, or 6 over 1.

6 to 1 based on the original number being ratios equates to 6 out of 7 in favor of the bass player versus the equipment.

Therefore, the answer to this thread is 85.7% in favor of the player.

Done
 
#46
GMSweet said:
I like Ed Friedland's demo of the ShuttleMax 12.0 for this. He grabs a number of different basses and runs through the same amp, same settings and basically the same line.

Check out this clip: Genz Benz Shuttle Max 12.0/Uber Bass 212 - YouTube

Matt
Click to expand...

I hear 7 diff sounding basses. A couple sound more simliar to one another. But no problem hearing that its diff basses playing the same thing.
 
#48
Just my 2 cents...

The player is always the craftsman and the rest of the signal chain are the tools he uses to hone his craft. The player chooses the notes, attack, style, plucking position, muting and the appropriate tools for the job.

The basses Ed picked show me different "tone universes" if you will. A P bass has an expected tone as does a Jazz as does a MM. Each one of those rings through to my ears in Ed's video.

As players, we need to pick the right tool for the job. Do we need the big hollow mids of a P bass? Grab the P or something with a neck pickup that can be soloed. Do we need a Jaco/Jazz burp? Grab a J bass or something with a bridge pickup that can be soloed and tweak the EQ. MM snarl and snap? More of a challenge to get to, but if you've got a wide aperture bridge pickup that you can favor and have a good EQ, you can get close.

I've spent the last year as a player working on creating as many different sounds out of a single bass as possible. In the process, I changed out the pickups and the preamp to give me more flexibility. I did this only after being able to distinguish what I was missing and now I can achieve a pretty wide variety of sounds by favoring neck vs. bridge, selecting different coils on the the MM pickup or by changing my technique or EQ.

Every player should know their instrument and equipment inside and out. What it can and can't do and what you can and can't do on it. The pros have done this over the years they've been playing. In the David Dyson clip posted by 'drpepper', David mentions the following that I think are important:
  • Change in attack from home playing to gig playing
  • Knowing which frequencies allow him to cut through
  • What tonal signature he was looking for when switching from MTD Basses
  • That if the backline provided a working SWR or Eden rig, he could get his sound
As the craftsman, he's picking his tools.

Bottom line for me... A competent player on a competent bass with competent equipment is going to be just fine, but even Marcus Miller playing a P bass through an SVT isn't going to sound like him playing a Jazz bass through his rig. The attack, notes, technique and attitude will be the same but the sonic signature will be different. Equipment matters, but it's up to the player to choose the right gear.

Matt
 
#49
Jim Carr said:
IMHO, tone and articulation are very much tied to player, but embouchure/breath/tongue is different from touch in many ways.

Not the least of these is that after a string has been set in motion, there is less expressive/musical control over it than when a wind instrument is sustaining a pitch--thus the player generally has even greater impact on a wind or bowed instrument--then there are singers! :D

Should this be in basses?
Click to expand...

You have all kinds of control, after the note is struck, with your fretting hand.
 
#52
darkstorm said:
I hear 7 diff sounding basses. A couple sound more simliar to one another. But no problem hearing that its diff basses playing the same thing.
Click to expand...

mongo2 said:
Exactly.
Click to expand...

But would you agree that if he'd wanted to, he could achieve a similar sound through all the basses with the use of different strings and electronics? Or get pretty close, at least?
 
#54
It's almost all the player and his ability to put the right settings on his amp or recording.

This isn't a bass, and the song is only like two notes, but the point i prove here is that I can get nearly the album sound done by a professional with $2000 guitars with an $80 bullet strat I got for $10... which isn't even made for .74 strings on a 25" scale. 100% stock and in total piss poor shape; the bridge and neck hardly stay on.

Meshuggah - Stengah (Bullet Strat Test) - YouTube

The video editing is another matter entirely. Haha.

Total gear cost:

$10 guitar, $8 strings, $80 recording interface.

Assuming you already have a cable, less than $100 is near the album tone.
 
#55
I disagree with the idea that a great player will be able to get great tone out of a junk instrument automatically. If the ax is bad enough it will effect their chops. But I'd agree with the OPs math that probably 85+% is the player. I always bought my kids good-better instruments to start on, so they wouldn't be struggling against the instrument as they tried to get their chops down. I play better on quality instruments through better gear - less of my brain's clock cycles are wasted on distractions. And then I can't lie to the guy in the mirror about why the chops aren't there.
 
#58
spade2you said:
It's always entertaining how much musicians want to believe it's not the instrument.
Click to expand...

Right. It's all in the fingers.
What are we? Artists or something?
Our instruments are for US not the music.
If we are comfy with "our" bass and "our" sound then that's enough.
What it is doesn't matter. Our fingers make up the difference.

We are musicians. When you hire us, we'll show up with our gear and our sound. You can like it or lump it. We'll try to do our best to have our sound not stick out too badly in your music, but hey, it's OUR fingers and OUR sound. Got it? I play what I play. And if you don't like it then go pound salt. Just look at those symphony dudes. Do they mortage their houses to buy a bass? Of course not. They KNOW "it's all in the fingers". Why spend a fortune when a nice plywood Chinese bass will do just fine? :smug:
 
#59
dmusic148 said:
Actually, yes, it would. The Fodera tone is just icing on the cake. It's about the player. A guy said to me once "Wow, your bass sounds great." So I put it down and asked "Thanks! How does it sound now?" Ya dig?
Click to expand...

Ok Mr Cool.....

Dude im not going to start slitting hairs herebut there is NO FREAKIN WAY a $200 squire can sound remotely tonally similar to a $10k fodera.
 
#60
I'm split. They say that tone is in the fingers...but to quote Adam Jones of TOOL while referencing his silverburst Les Paul(s), "They say it is the player, but bulls@!t, it is the guitar."

Some pieces of gear just pull riffs out of you, be it a new favorite axe, pedal, amp.
 

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