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Marcus Miller's tone....secret revealed?
- Thread starter apcbassist
- Start date
narud said:who cares about whether amps could produce the sound or not. people record direct. have been for ages. when i plug in a my 74 or my 80 jazz into my amp and turn up the bass and treble.....guess what happens.no bart pre needed.
heres sekou bunch on a late 70's jazz
Tom Browne - Thighs High - YouTube
sounds familiar?
Hahaha ok this will have to my last time with you, you really should do your homework! First a 77 Fender Jazz with a Bart preamp is not going sound the same a a stock Jazz! Second the song you suggested I listen ( thighs high ) was on the album " Magic " and cam out in 1981! I remember this because I had been in the Army four years and had just move to my second duty station that year, and that is when and where I brought the album!
homework? i own old fenders. i know what they sound like. i have bart pres. i know what they sound like too
narud said:homework? i own old fenders. i know what they sound like. i have bart pres. i know what they sound like too
So are you saying that Jazz with a Bart preamp will sound the same as a stock Jazz? I wouldn't think so but I don't own a Jazz, but I did own a 77 P-bass that I put Bart pickups in and it didn't sound the same as a P with stock pickups!! I'm not trying to get into a pissing contest, but If you are saying it would sound the same why change anything! Just asking!
turning up the bass and treble on the amp sufficiently achieved enough of the same vibe that i pulled the pre. ive put pres in my my old jazzes, run them with outboard pres thinking id need them but i was a dope and wanted to leave the amp flat like that was better or something. now putting bart pickups in the bass would sound very different.
my current road dog bass is a late 70's body with a maple board 83 mij squire neck. ive got a 2 band stingray preamp in it only because the bass is such a mutt i wanted to do an active bass. its not crucial to the tone though. it is fun to mess around with.
My stock '78 jazz sounds like Marcus Miller's '77 bass! By the way, I don't slap at all. 
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3rd from the left ^ ^, it weighs 11.5lbs!
[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]
3rd from the left ^ ^, it weighs 11.5lbs!
Yeah but the guy's timing was out slightly...that's cos he wasn't wearing the hat.
Not even close. Did you forget Luther Vandross? The masses knew that sound from then on. And bassists, at least in the circles I ran in, knew him before that.
IMO Luther was a huge component of Marcus' long career. He did way more than just play bass on those dates. Other hired guns didn't fare so well.
Look at the first Brothers Johnson album... that's what LJ started with, a Fender P bass. And people noticed long before he got a Musicman. Granted the MM might've been what people who weren't hip to him and all of the early session work he did knew. Pretty sure that wasn't a MM on the Earl Klugh sessions. Or Herbie Hancock. Etc.
But mixing console playbacks and home stereos did.
On Graham: That's why I mentioned him when you left him out
Stanley hit in the fairly early 70's and once many bassists heard his sound, which I was getting pretty close to when I played my bass through my parents' stereo
D), attempts were made to get that sound live. Funny thing, a tweeter became a requirement when people assumed it was the only way to get any top end on a bass. Kind of like the mindset that 35" was mandatory for a good low B. I recently played through an old original Kustom 100 rig and it was surprising how it sounded with slap... not what most would likely suspect.BTW I still prefer more percussive thumping and popping these days. It can really hold up in the mix.
There are still plenty of folks talking about the 70's being the darkest period, etc. for Fender basswise. I heard some of them IRL back then, tried the basses and ignored the talk. I learned a long time ago to take opinions with a grain of salt, lest I end up not experiencing things others simply couldn't get to work for themself.
We clearly didn't have the same sonic goals so who cared about what they were hung up on?
I'd hope that would depend on who's playing. It's entirely possible to to get the sound of playing hard with a low setup while only playing relatively hard. That's something that still seems to elude most people.
It does take practice to get to that point so that's likely the problem. Most people want things you can just pick the instrument and do.
Yep. He had one of the funniest album credits I've ever seen on Lenny's first solo project: "Weird bass: Marcus Miller". Granted he wasn't really doing anything other than goofing around, sliding on some of his strings.
There were other known bassists on the project but hey, Marcus had a credit too
. He was also on Chaka Khan's "Naughty" alongside Anthony Jackson... pretty good company.I can't use light strings as I need more versatility to pull of Motown R&B, classic funk and other styles where you need a beefier sound and the low end suffers with light strings. But I do think anyone with a brain and time could learn to slap on heavier strings. DR Hi Beams (or even Lo Riders) medium size is a good compromise.
OTOH I've actually started moving back to a .040 to .120 set for most of my fives, from using .045 for the last few years. Most of my gigging basses have pretty high ramps and pickups and all have low but not super low action. I do a ton of the music you mentioned and the beef, punch and low end is pretty amazing. I can hit the strings as hard as I want, it's just a matter of controlling a much smaller arc. I keep my volume control up and the gain on my amp to allow for lots of headroom at my disposal. I get a hard fret sound only when I want to. It's easily avoided.
So it can be done. Not that anyone has to do it this way.
Does anyone know what kind of pickup height Marcus uses? (ie: how far from the strings measured vertically when fretting at the last fret)
OTOH I've actually started moving back to a .040 to .120 set for most of my fives, from using .045 for the last few years. Most of my gigging basses have pretty high ramps and pickups and all have low but not super low action. I do a ton of the music you mentioned and the beef, punch and low end is pretty amazing. I can hit the strings as hard as I want, it's just a matter of controlling a much smaller arc. I keep my volume control up and the gain on my amp to allow for lots of headroom at my disposal. I get a hard fret sound only when I want to. It's easily avoided.
So it can be done. Not that anyone has to do it this way.
This could indeed be true of 5-stringers but I'm an old-timer 4-stringer funk player where four is enough for me. So having thinner strings thins out the sound even if boosting left and right.
Homework? I'll leave that one alone.
The boost only Bart preamp was pretty neutral. Here's are a couple of things that many folks (no, I'm not saying you) don't get...
Marcus did the onboard preamp for portability, not because that was the only way you could get that sound. Because it wasn't.
And... if you have a reasonably neutral onboard preamp with two bands of equalization, it really wasn't any different than having an amp with two similarly placed bands of EQ.
People who don't know better swear my bone stock 78 Jazz has a preamp in it whenever I bring it out. Almost without fail. Because they don't understand that my bass sounds like a stereotypical Ash/Maple 70's Jazz. Bottom line, you can boost bass or treble at the amp or a bass and get the same results. I typically don't boost either and just turn whatever amp I'm using up to a suffiecient volume.
And mine doesn't have a BadAss II bridge so it sounds even more aggressive than with it.
My 68 Jazz sounds nothing like it.
- Aug 16, 2003
- 1,130
- 24
- Disclosures
- Endorsing Artist;Essential sound products,Dunlop, Ergo Instruments
Brad's correct,I started playing in '79-'80 and one of the first distinctive bass tones I could Identify was Marcus Miller on Luther Vandross and David Sanborn records way before Tutu came out.
Sekou Bunch and Marcus came up together in NYC,I have always thought of that sound as the NYC funk/R&B sound (Tom Barney is another guy who has that vibe)
Through my friendship with Doug Epting who was Marcus's backline tech for many years I and a few others had a chance to briefly play Marcus's '77 after a show in Chicago around 2003. Felt great, well set up,action wasn't as low as I thought it would be and it sounded like me playing a '70's jazz bass with a pre-amp.
Sekou Bunch and Marcus came up together in NYC,I have always thought of that sound as the NYC funk/R&B sound (Tom Barney is another guy who has that vibe)
Through my friendship with Doug Epting who was Marcus's backline tech for many years I and a few others had a chance to briefly play Marcus's '77 after a show in Chicago around 2003. Felt great, well set up,action wasn't as low as I thought it would be and it sounded like me playing a '70's jazz bass with a pre-amp.
