Nathan East Live Video (tone)

Tone is in the fingers!

 

I don't really hear any effects on Nathan's bass. Herbie sounds like he's using an envelope filter on his stuff, and the amplified nylon string guitar has effects on it. But Nathan's sound is pretty straight-forward, and not much different from other live sound I've heard from him. While the "tone" isn't exactly in the fingers, East has always had a very consistent sound whether he was using Eden, Trace-Elliot, Yamaha, or TC amps, and with all of the different versions of the signature series Yamaha bass.

It's because he has a pretty well developed sense of what he wants to sound like so no matter what gear he uses, he goes for that sound. And a large part does come down to how he attacks the strings. That's not just fingers, thumb, slap, or pop. That's how hard he hits, where on the string he attacks it, what angle his finger come in, how much flesh versus callous gets involved, etc. And the fretting hand has some effect by determining whether he's up high on a fatter string or down on a skinnier string.

The key gear related bit is probably either the preamp in the bass ('though like I said, that sound is pretty consistent with his whole history) and/or the Avalon direct box he always uses.

John

 

It's Nathan first, then mix in a little Avalon U5.

 

That tells me tone is in the fingers