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Playing your bass unplugged
- Thread starter brianrost
- Start date
Playing unplugged is interesting because you hear a lot of things. I really think if you can play cleanly when unplugged you will have a clean sound when plugged in. If you feel like this is causing you to play harder than necessary, just be aware of it, and alternate between the two regularly if you want to benefit from it.
D
Deleted member 165050
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Or concrete
Don't those people know how bad concrete is for the environment? Just get yourself and the body mould down to the nearest active volcano and use the free magma. Actually that could become an industry for Iceland, volcanic guitars and basses...
Exactly. I'd rather save that for when it's dead-quiet like at a library.
I respectfully disagree with this. Unless you have the ears of a dog or better, you have to pluck or pick in a more heavy manner to hear notes played on a solid body, unamplified bass. If you repeatedly do this, you are training yourself to have a heavier touch. This is basic learning theory. You may think you are different, but that's just anecdotal and not an impartial observation. It also defies logic.
The repetition, like grooving a tennis or golf stroke, literally changes the brain so that it can be repeated effortlessly and accurately, almost without conscious thought. This is why we practice, right? Within the brain, new connections are made between and among the various parts of the brain responsible for hearing, seeing, muscle movement and other areas related to playing bass. This is how we learn and become better players: with repetition, these connections become strong and the messages sent from one area of the brain to another become faster. This includes brain connections relating to the position and movement of the hands and fingers along the fretboard and the plucking or picking of strings -- including how heavy or light these (the plucking or picking) are made. The above argument says I can practice getting everything about my playing where I want it, but I can consciously override one aspect of it. Sorry, the brain just doesn't work that way. What you practice is what you develop. To hear notes on an unamped bass, the touch has to be heavier. If this is how you practice, then you will have a heavy touch.
I couldn't disagree more. I only rehearse unplugged. When I was young, my parents worked nights. If I woke them during the day? No one was happy. Playing thru an amp was not possible. But I played hours a day, regardless.
Massive ear training benefits. Makes you flex your listening muscles to the extreme. I learn and rehearse tunes this way to this day. I pickup my bass for fun or work in any house, at any time, during a day or night and no roommates, wives, kids or neighbors ever get disturbed.
And, as most pros know, dynamics are a rudimentary part of both getting, and keeping, positions in bands or recording. Despite my 35 year habit of playing unplugged 90 percent of the time, my hands are mine. I control them. I play soft. I play hard. Anytime I like. And I gig consistently. That wouldn't happen if I weren't dutifully aware, and in control, of every facet and aspect of my playing, whether I am plugged in or not.
As far as buying a bass guitar for its unplugged response? Absolutely I consider that. After decades of playing, unplugged, there are facets of a bass' response and tone, two independent factors, that I can tell right away, long before I plug a bass guitar in to an amp. Deadspots. Sustain. Transfer of string vibration to the body, neck, headstock. When I buy a bass, I want it's plugged in tone to resemble its acoustic response. I don't want electronics making up for weaknesses in woods (spalt and burled tops, for example, are a whole lotta filler without much straight grain. Terrible woods to provide the response I seek in an instrument).
Regardless of one's beliefs, I go with what I hear. Unplugged. My bass guitars sound exactly the same unplugged as plugged in. It is what I look for. The physical benefits; strength of hearing, strength of hands, as in, I don't tire after 8hrs on an outdoor stage with multiple acts in 105 degree heat or 20 degree cold (both done lots), and just the fact I know my instrument. Inside and out. I can play gigs with no monitors, no in ears, no amp. Easily. With no fear of losing "My Sound". I can feel everything without need to worry. Rattles, buzzes, are apparent. More easily isolated. Too many benefits to rehearsing, practicing, unplugged, for me. Up to, and including, not upsetting my parents', neighbors', kids', wives', sleep. I'm better, by far, for having played unplugged.
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Yet unfortunately you are making quite a few assumptions and your theoretical construct directly contradicts my personal experience of playing for decades this way. Oh well. You are literally assuming your conclusion and then using logic to justify it “you must play harder, therefore you do.” But yet I don’t. If there is any ambient noise I use contact between the bass and a wall or my body to create sympathetic vibrations. I am never struggling to hear and therefore I never play harder. Also maybe I can hear better than you, dunno.
@75Ric just curious, have you ever used your head as a resonator in this way? If you had you would know what I’m talking about is absolutely true. No dog ears or heavy hand necessary. And my posture is fine, but that might be the yoga.
My current short scale BG doesn't sound like much unplugged, so there is really not much point in messing around with it without headphones. My old Warwick sounded incredible unplugged, but I now realize I should have been practicing with heasphones more back then. I got an ABG now with flats similar to my main, but in a piccolo tuning, I find it helpful to shed fast lines on that thing a little bit because I can really hear whether I am accurately coordinating my two hands on every note on the acoustic. It is sometimes hard to tell if you are flubbing a note or two in a run when you're plugged in, but on the acoustic it's obvious when you're not properly sounding each and every note.
Hi Ed!
I intended it to be about how much the liveliness of the sound that you noted was obvious even when unamplified. I forgot to plug in the popcorn machine, though
BTW, I was definitely impressed by the clarity of the chords. I've never had a Fender that could do that, but my Steinbergers can. Is this your new gigging J?
Looking forward to your M.V. P-bass review. You know me, two pickups is just too confusing
Hi Ed!
I intended it to be about how much the liveliness of the sound that you noted was obvious even when unamplified. I forgot to plug in the popcorn machine, though
BTW, I was definitely impressed by the clarity of the chords. I've never had a Fender that could do that, but my Steinbergers can. Is this your new gigging J?
Looking forward to your M.V. P-bass review. You know me, two pickups is just too confusing
Yeah Brian, you've always been a trouble maker!
Well, yes... YOU understood the point. But you know, I was thinking maybe I should do the entire MVP-4-62 demo unplugged! Kidding of course, but I BET I could mic the instrument and process it with compression and eq and make it sound great.These are super lively basses, and yes, anyone that's ever played a lively bass knows they have a quality that other basses don't. I won't say it's BETTER, or even try to be scientific about it - it's voodoo, it's koolaid, it's subjective woo-woo, unquantifiable magic. Engineers don't get that.
Ed;
We Engineers/Luthiers do get this. It may be an electric bass, but the pickup and electronics are only one part of how it creates its sound. We understand how the frame of a bass vibrates, and how that vibration affects the sound on the strings, through the pickup, and out to the amp. We deliberately work with different structural designs, woods, and internal reinforcements to adjust the overall sound of our basses. The mechanical side is not voodoo or unquantifiable magic. How it works is basic physics and engineering. It's not a mystery to us.
Working with the frame of a bass is a tricky problem, because there are many, many variables involved. So it's really difficult to accurately predict the sound by normal engineering calculation methods. We aren't big companies with giant R & D budgets. We aren't going waste our time doing a laboratory test and writing a paper to prove that every single design element we come up with works. We develop our designs by experimentation; lots of building basses and testing and keeping notes. We know what works and doesn't work and how it works by hearing it with our own ears in our shops. Our proof is handing players a finished bass and getting their opinion of how it sounds. That is the real test of our work.
Now, it's the nature of the musical instrument business that there's no absolute definition of what is the "best" sound. Basses are played in different ways, and musicians have different techniques and tastes. You players aren't interested in a chart of numbers. You'll have your own opinion on whether this bass sounds better than that bass. So we're always playing a guessing game with you, making the bass to what we think sounds good, and then seeing if you like it.
For about ten years, I've been writing here on TalkBass, trying my best to explain the science and engineering behind all this Tone From The Frame stuff. I've openly shown and explained most of my structural tricks that I've developed, and how I use them in my basses. Most other builders are somewhat secretive about their techniques. I'm not. I want to help other Luthiers make better basses and improve the state of the art.
But here we are. You can see from this thread that the majority of TalkBass posters still think that anything about creating tone from the frame of an electric bass is mystical hooey. They buy into that old idea that an electric bass is nothing but a pretty slab of wood with strings and pickups. Even though there's evidence all around them that it isn't true. And they ridicule us Luthiers as idiots or shysters. It's very frustrating. I don't know what else to explain, that I haven't already.
Back to the subject of this thread: Playing an electric bass unplugged is not the full answer of how it will sound through an amp, or whether you'll like it. The pickup system does play a big part in the amplified sound. But playing unplugged will tell you how it works mechanically. Not so much how it sounds unplugged, but how it vibrates in your hands. How much it vibrates and in what frequency ranges it vibrates. If you pay attention to that, it will give you a good idea what the bass will sound like when you apply a pickup and amp to it.
I'm not actually a believer on this one. I've personally found very little correspondence between how a solid body sounds unplugged and how it sounds plugged in.
The main cases that killed my faith in this were my Carvin Bunny Brunels. I had a 4 and a 6 string, both fretlesses. I remember when they came in and I played them for the first time without an amp. I was shocked at how they sounded. Especially the 4 string, it sounded like slapping a ruler on a tree trunk: totally dead, placky placky, almost like the whole thing was made out of plastic with no "tone". Just these dead sounding tones.
But plugged in, they had this amazing, fat, velvety milk chocolate tone, like, well, Bunny Brunel's tone. Absolutely totally unlike what I expected from listening to them unplugged.
Over the years since then, I've noticed the same thing with other instruments. I really couldn't gauge the plugged in tone based on the unplugged tone. If I really listen to both honestly and try not to be biased by how I expect them to sound, the two just don't match up.
As for G&L's, he's right about how the whole instrument vibrates when you play it. My CLF L2000 has a very distinct vibration all over, but especially in the neck through my fretting thumb, on almost all the notes on it.
My Fenders, OTOH, (Tony Franklin and Jaco jazz bass), feel more "dead" in the hand. Especially my Tony Franklins, which have virtually no vibration in the neck (and hardly any dead spots due to all the weight on the headstocks).
But both my Fenders and my L2000 sound great, with each of their respective plugged in tones having no detectable correspondence with the unplugged tones.
So I just don't maintain a belief in the idea that solid bodies are first and foremost acoustic instruments. I just don't hear that on my basses. So I always go by the plugged in tone when assessing a bass and never by the not-plugged-in sound....
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