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Metal Style Bass

#21
80's metal was all about pointy headstocks to me. But the P bass was where it came from in my opinion. 90's were all over the place and now it's another new era with different tunings.

I think today with all the great builders it's wide open. Not one bass builder owns the market. Spectors do seem to be very popular.


:bassist:
Rob
 
#22
Earwigger said:
If you're playing Sabbath yes. Anything more modern and I think you'll find a P-bass lacking. It's a muddy, awkward tone for metal. You need something powerful and defined to get above 2 guitars.

G&L 2500 or a Warwick. Or Spector. Those are my suggestions.
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I somewhat disagree AND agree.

For thrash and grind type metals, I'm not sure I'd dig the sound of a P-bass in the mix. But for certain types of metals - it's just what I want to hear, esp with some overdrive (see Thrice - The Artist in the Ambulance).
 
#24
Ibanez SRX arent a bad inexpensive bass for metal. I was fooling around with one at GC one day with a Sansamp BDDI and got some sweet tone out of it.

I dont know if I'd use my Cirrus for thrash/power metal. It sounds too good.
 
#25
Solarmist said:
ESP, Ibanez, and Peavey look, and sound the part to me IMO
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90% of my fav hardk0re / metal bands play ESP or ibanez... youd think there would be some reasoning behind that! :)

and fwiw I love the tones the bass in all those bands have so must be onto a good thing,...

(cant think of heaps off the top of my head? all that remains, steve digorgio, just look at the web pages and check out the artists i guess!)
 
#29
didn't realise the entire roster of ibanez,...

carol kaye (not metal but still cool!)
offspring
bring me the horizon
five finger death punch
36 crazyfists
shadows fall
slipknot
korn
lordi
divine heresy
as I lay dying
killswitch engage
august burns red
arch enemy
lacuna coil

etc etc etc

I think thats awesome hehe
 
#32
Any modern-ish bass. For the styles you mention Spector and Warwick would work. I'd use anything I want to be honest. If I had the money I'd get an expensive custom bass and still play it in metal. It's how I want to sound and it's my band. I don't HAVE to use Spector ,or Warwick.
 
#35
Earwigger said:
If you're playing Sabbath yes. Anything more modern and I think you'll find a P-bass lacking. It's a muddy, awkward tone for metal. You need something powerful and defined to get above 2 guitars.
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Yeah, there's no way a band like Iron Maiden could have possibly had a Precision Bass in the mix with two or even THREE great guitar players. Way too muddy and awkward a tone for that kind of music.
 

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