• TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
    Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
    Join free Log in
    Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.

Poll: Fretless tone

What is your preferred fretless tone ?

  • all dry, growly attack with little sustain

    Votes: 21 5.5%

  • mainly dry, growly attack with some mwah

    Votes: 115 30.0%

  • still some punch but emphasizing the mwah

    Votes: 115 30.0%

  • melodic singing [I]Mwaaaah[/I]

    Votes: 132 34.5%
  • Total voters
    383
OldogNewTrick

OldogNewTrick

Dec 28, 2004
1,816
1,237
Germany, EU
#1
hi all you fretless players out there:

What is your preferred tone and why ?
- all dry, growly attack with little sustain
- mainly dry, growly attack with some mwah
- still some punch but emphasizing the mwah
- melodic singing Mwaaaah

What is your favourite instrument to achieve your tone goal ?
Which factors influence an instrument to go from punchy to mwah ?
- bolt-on vs. neck thru
- action
- strings
- something else ?

Lot's of questions from a prospective fretless player, but I know, I can count on you guys ... :cool:
 
#3
honestly, i'm not sure how to interpret those options--but i'd describe my preferred instrument setup to be so that i can get a thumpy sound with one attack, a growly or burpy sound with some subtle eq and mwah with a different fingerstyle attack

my jazz is set up this way...i kind of like bolt-ons for the 'thump', although this is just my personal experience and i haven't played a whole lot of neck thru or set neck basses
 
#5
Words like punch, growl, and worst of all "mwah" get used quite a bit here, but I'd wager any 3 TB members would have 3-4 definitions of them; to keep things simple, I'll just say whichever one of those corresponds to Tony Franklin's tone. Bakithi Khumalo's tone on Graceland is awesome as well.

Like any tone, everything influences it. I don't get this tone myself - the music I've been playing lately works better with more lows and crisper highs, but there's a similar quality in the mids. One crucial thing: NO FLATWOUND STRINGS. Tony likes rounds, I've got compressors now but will try rounds when I need new strings. My fretless is a neck through, very very low action - I like a slight buzz, even across the neck at all positions.
 
#9
Always flats (D'Addario Chromes) on a short-scale w/ebony board.

For thump, I'm running through a Birdsong Bbox with the knob set to a setting that makes the tone dub-like, with a hint of some passive overdrive crunch on it - I run just the neck pickup (a single coil) solo or run both pickups full on. I pluck anywhere from over the fingerboard to just bridge-ward of the neck pickup. The end result is great for rock and acoustic stuff - Jack Casady with just a hint of fretlessness and slide to it.

For mwah (which I need/use rarely), I bypass the Bbox, solo the bridge pickup, and will frequently hit my phaser pedal too.
 
#11
I´m not sure what mwah means actually either, but I like some growl if I want it (I play upright also) and always use flatwounds. I don't like a lot of sustain unless I wrench it out of the bass and amp with my hands, I'm a bass player, not a guitar player. If you like a thin trebly sound use RW's, if you like a big sound with plenty of growl use FW's. I believe you will get more growl from FW's which is what all uprights use. I use an old fretless P bass and a couple of Rickenbacker FL's, one 4001 and one 4003. I like the big sound. I like those particular basses because you can get both an electric fretless bass sound and a decent upright sound out of them, depending on how you play them. If you do decide to use RW strings make sure the neck is prepared for them, new Fenders aren't and actually most fretless basses aren't even though they will come with them stock. Most people use two part epoxy or something like that, your neck surface will last forever with no buzzes or valleys.
 
#14
Um, yeah, I have no idea what any of those poll options mean (if indeed they really mean anything that we could form a consensus about).

What I do know is this: I tried for years to get an idealized fretless bass tone out of a variety of instruments (I'm on my 6th or 7th fretless bass now), striving for something that had the wooden organic quality of an upright but still had enough chest-pounding "punch" & "balls" to support a rock band, or enough "singing" clarity to do justice to a delicate melody. My latest bass, a Rob Allen MB-2, does this in spades -- in fact, it does it better than I ever imagined would be possible from any one instrument.

But having achieved that with any one instrument, I now also know this: if I had unlimited funds, I'd definitely own a couple more different sounding fretless basses. Because for everything the "perfect" bass achieves, there's always something useful and viable that it can't.

If I could press a magic button and have my Rob Allen instantly transform itself into a Pedulla Buzz, I'd be in heaven. I might only press that button one out of every ten times I played fretless, but it'd be Mwah-velous!
 
#19
thanks for all your input, some more useful than others....

As to the problem of describing sound with words - I apologize for my poor choice of words, but whatever words I could have used, the problem would remain.... so please dont hammer me on that too much.

wet and muddy chicken soup on a peanut sandwich
Click to expand...
hmm, sounds yummy :hmm:


I have been trying out a decent number of fretless basses for the last couple of months and I have noticed two opposing tonal goals. On the one hand the classic Jaco Fender burp (great tone description :D) and punch, on the other side the singers with endless sustain and mwaaah (cant think of a better word :smug:). Many basses fell somewhere inbetween these opposing poles, some more on the burp, others more on the mwah side.
At this stage I dont have yet a clear preference, hence my curiosity as to your preference !
 

Latest posts

Top Bottom
Back