Jeff Berlin's tone on Bill Bruford recording

[EricOnTheBass]

I'm not terribly familiar with Jeff Berlin's work (yet), but I just heard the song "Joe Frazier" from Bill Buford's band, and man, I love that tone. How can I get that tone, besides just being super awesome? Is that mainly just bridge pickup and playing close to the bridge? I've tried that before with my bass, and gets closer to this sound, but when I do it it's nowhere near as fat and nasty.

 

[Chrisk-K]

I want to know, too. That Bruford album is a tour de force of musicality.

 

[Bass_Thumper]

Joe Frazier is a great tune for sure and I love Jeff Berlin's tone. I believe you're on the right path with using mainly the bridge pup. He also is into passive electronics and his signature amp is a 1x15 combo with no tweeter. I have no idea what he was using back in the 70s and 80s but I can get a fairly good Berlin tone focusing more on the bridge pup with my bass's treble cut a hair and the bass and mids boosted a bit. That's with a Lakland 55-01 --> Sonic Stomp --> Mark Bass Jeff Berlin combo. Amp eq is flat (noon) with VLE on 7:00 and VPF all the way off. I'm sure most of it's in his hands but this has been a good starting point for me.

 

[Roy Vogt]

Jeff was using a P-Bass with 2 Bartolini soap bar pickups and a Leo Quan Badass Bass II bridge. Any of his Signature Basses from Peavey (the Palladium) and Dean should get you close. For a time he was using SVTs and cabinets by EU Wurlitzer with 15" speakers with Bruford. He favors the bridge pickup and until recently used Carl Thompson strings.
I agree, he sounds great!

 

[EricOnTheBass]

Thanks Bass Thumper, I will give your settings a try.

Off-topic: How do you like that 55-01? I've been eyeing a couple of used ones.

 

[EricOnTheBass]

Jeff was using a P-Bass with 2 Bartolini soap bar pickups and a Leo Quan Badass Bass II bridge. Any of his Signature Basses from Peavey (the Palladium) and Dean should get you close. For a time he was using SVTs and cabinets by EU Wurlitzer with 15" speakers with Bruford. He favors the bridge pickup and until recently used Carl Thompson strings.
I agree, he sounds great!

Good info!

 

[Chrisk-K]

Jeff was using a P-Bass with 2 Bartolini soap bar pickups and a Leo Quan Badass Bass II bridge. Any of his Signature Basses from Peavey (the Palladium) and Dean should get you close. For a time he was using SVTs and cabinets by EU Wurlitzer with 15" speakers with Bruford. He favors the bridge pickup and until recently used Carl Thompson strings. I agree, he sounds great!

He also handled lead vocals on that album!

 

[Chrisk-K]

Here's a killer version of Sahara of Snow that I just found. I can't believe this performance was videotaped. Here Jeff uses a J but it sounds like a P on the album.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4cTA6D6Jk8

 

[Tampabass]

& Jeff has always favored chorus efx. I don't recall which brands/models he uses.

 

[jerry]

I remember when those albums came out, scary!! There is a old VHS Berlin instructional video where he talks about his gear that is probably closer to the time-frame of those Bruford albums. I don't know if the clips ever made it to you-tube yet.

 

[Roy Vogt]

That Youtube clip is from a DVD shot at a college in the UK. You can find it on Amazon and there are several clips on Youtube.

 

[Pacman]

Jeff was using a P-Bass with 2 Bartolini soap bar pickups and a Leo Quan Badass Bass II bridge. Any of his Signature Basses from Peavey (the Palladium) and Dean should get you close. For a time he was using SVTs and cabinets by EU Wurlitzer with 15" speakers with Bruford. He favors the bridge pickup and until recently used Carl Thompson strings.
I agree, he sounds great!

To be completely accurate (according to his video), they were Hi-A pickups (which became Bartolini later. And only the bridge pickup was functional.

His chorus is TC Electronics.

 

[Tom Howland]

Jeff was using a P-Bass with 2 Bartolini soap bar pickups and a Leo Quan Badass Bass II bridge. Any of his Signature Basses from Peavey (the Palladium) and Dean should get you close. For a time he was using SVTs and cabinets by EU Wurlitzer with 15" speakers with Bruford. He favors the bridge pickup and until recently used Carl Thompson strings.
I agree, he sounds great!

Wow, a trip down memory lane.
I had a 2x15 EU Wurlitzer cab. They were great cabs.
I lived in Boston at this time.
Jeff is a monster player. (Great tone)

 

[Roy Vogt]

To be completely accurate (according to his video), they were Hi-A pickups (which became Bartolini later. And only the bridge pickup was functional.

His chorus is TC Electronics.

True, especially the neck pickup. The bridge shorted out and Bill Bartolini took the original schematic for Jeff's Hi-A pickup and rewound it, according to Jeff in interviews and his Hotlicks video. In that video he reveals that the neck pup is disconnected.

 

[Jerry Ziarko]

I'm a huge Bruford fan, and saw that tour from the front row. The band absolutely smoked. Believe it or not, I don't remember what kind of bass Berlin played???
As a side note a few years ago, BB played here in a small intimate setting. He had a fill in bass player who got the charts a few hrs. earlier. It turned out the fill in was Mike Pope, and it sounded like he had been with BB for years. Sadly, BB no longer plays live.

 

[jerry]

I'm a huge Bruford fan, and saw that tour from the front row. The band absolutely smoked. Believe it or not, I don't remember what kind of bass Berlin played???
As a side note a few years ago, BB played here in a small intimate setting. He had a fill in bass player who got the charts a few hrs. earlier. It turned out the fill in was Mike Pope, and it sounded like he had been with BB for years. Sadly, BB no longer plays live.

I saw them too in the late 70's, I remember he played like a J-style bass, but that's about it.

 

[zombywoof5050]

I remember at some time back in the day that he said he was using an Alembic F-2B preamp with Crown DC300A power amps and four single 15" cabs. When I saw him with Bruford in 1980, he had the four cabs all on the floor projecting outwards in a curved arc.

 

[Roy Vogt]

I remember at some time back in the day that he said he was using an Alembic F-2B preamp with Crown DC300A power amps and four single 15" cabs. When I saw him with Bruford in 1980, he had the four cabs all on the floor projecting outwards in a curved arc.

Those were the 1x15" EU Wurlitzer cabinets. I remember that rig-he talked about it in the June 1980 Guitar Player interview. He was using that sort of rig (all Yamaha this time) in the Hot Licks video.

 

[Hoover]

Jeff was using a P-Bass with 2 Bartolini soap bar pickups and a Leo Quan Badass Bass II bridge.

Here Jeff uses a J but it sounds like a P on the album.

To be completely obsessive: At the time of the Bruford gig Jeff had both a Precision and a Jazz (Precision had a natural/blonde finish, Jazz was black)...but both of those basses had identical Bartolini/Hi-A soap bar pickups, Leo Quan Badass bridges, and custom-made Glen Quan (Leo's brother) electronics. So it's sort of moot whether he played the P or the J, since there was almost nothing P-like or J-like left intact. My understanding is that he used both basses on all four Bruford albums.

(More trivia: By the mid 1980s he'd apparently replaced the Fender neck on one of those (the P, I think) with a custom-made Mike Tobias neck.)

 

[Roy Vogt]

To be completely obsessive: At the time of the Bruford gig Jeff had both a Precision and a Jazz (Precision had a natural/blonde finish, Jazz was black)...but both of those basses had identical Bartolini/Hi-A soap bar pickups, Leo Quan Badass bridges, and custom-made Glen Quan (Leo's brother) electronics. So it's sort of moot whether he played the P or the J, since there was almost nothing P-like or J-like left intact. My understanding is that he used both basses on all four Bruford albums.

(More trivia: By the mid 1980s he'd apparently replaced the Fender neck on one of those (the P, I think) with a custom-made Mike Tobias neck.)

Right on all counts! Mike did make that replacement neck for the P bass and he played the black Jazz Bass with Bruford as well.