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Precision Bass At Last Nights Concert

#21
57pbass said:
Is there a secret to this ?
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I think it's a valid question, and the secret is generally good FOH - I've heard plenty of muddy, indistinct bass tone at shows, and the person at the mixing board is generally who has the most control of that.

IMO - bass is the hardest instrument to mix live, so it's the first instrument to sound bad.

Saturday was an interesting example - I went to a punk show at Lincoln Hall in downtown Chicago.

The opener was a band called Die Spitz and their bassist was playing a weird, pointy PJ bass into an early 70s Peavey Century amp head and the headliner's Ampeg 810.
Her bass sounded distinct and gnarly (I'm a big fan of that model of Peavey Century) with a fuzzy rasp on top that helped define it in the mix.

The headliner was OFF! a punk "supergroup".
The bassist, Autry Fulbright II, formerly of "...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead" was playing a P-bass into an SVT. I was standing close enough that I could see his hands clearly and the man has some chops!
But all that effort just wasn't transmitted - all I heard out front was a loose rumble.

The indistinct bass was highlighted further because the drummer in OFF is a freaking monster named Justin Brown (Thundercat, Esperanza Spaulding, etc).

Not sure why the sound engineer was able to pull a workable tone out of Die Spitz oddball gear, but not Autry's P-Bass and SVT...
 
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#22
My go-to right now is a Jaguar 32" bass with T.I. short scale Jazz Flats. They fit and are extra tight. The result is a less boomy more clear sound that is amazing. The first time I played out with it, the sound guy told me - "Wow - you can actually hear the bass!" I play it mostly on the P pickup.
 
#23
There are no magical EQ settings. EQ is not a magical tone-maker. It can only make certain freq bands of the tone that the bass makes louder or quieter. I feel like a lot of times people spend a lot of time tone-hunting and turning knobs and dials only to make things worse. Tone is subjective. Tone is relative. The only way to know if certain EQ settings are gonna work in the mix in a certain room is to set it in that room, in that mix. If they're a good enough band to be playing that venue, the bassist probably has their amp set up to whatever settings work in the context of that band from experience. But...

Looking at pics of the venue, my educated guess is they bass went direct (either before the amp aka before the EQ, or out of the amp's DI), the PA is properly set up and tuned for the room, the sound engineer is either the house engineer who knows the room, or the band's engineer who's pro enough to listen to a room and adjust, and the amp on stage was just loud enough to be heard on stage, letting the tuned Mains & Center Fill do the work of being loud.
 
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#24
groovaholic said:
The bassist, Autry Fulbright II, formerly of "...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead" was playing a P-bass into an SVT. I was standing close enough that I could see his hands clearly and the man has some chops!
But all that effort just wasn't transmitted - all I heard out front was a loose rumble.
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Perhaps it's more about where you were standing. Especially if you were close enough to get in that zone where you're hearing lots of the stage amp and the FOH sound in a bad spot. Possible he was too loud onstage too, mucking up the FOH sound. I have played plenty of punk shows on big stages and yeah, lots of these bands still like to crank it onstage (I mean, loud is fun after all.....)
 
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#26
N Scott Shaw said:
I think a lot of people boost the bass so high that it masks the mids on a P. I use rounds and finger pick. You also need to find that sweet spot, which, for me is right behind the pickups towards the bridge.
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Good advice. A good bass guitar tone in the mix is very much about the mids. Boosting the lows too much is one of the most common mistakes I see. Of course, for SOME genres of music a bit of low boost can be necessary but most often it's not when the starting point is a passive P-bass.

As for the sweetspot you're referring too, this will depend very much on personal taste and playing style. For me, with a passive P-bass, the sweetspot is more like a range of sweetspots, depending on the tone I need for a particular song, or a part of a song. Generally I stay within the area between the end of the fretboard and the "front" of the pickup. For more mid bite I would move to the area you're referring too but I rarely need this for MY style of playing.

The choice of strings will matter too of course. In fact, it can make a HUGE difference.
 
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#28
Deleted member 271037 said:
Good advice. A good bass guitar tone in the mix is very much about the mids. Boosting the lows too much is one of the most common mistakes I see. Of course, for SOME genres of music a bit of low boost can be necessary but most often it's not when the starting point is a passive P-bass.
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Yep--that's why just using the tone knob on a passive P for your EQ'ing is so foolproof. You can dime it, roll it all the way off, and everything in between and you still have that fundamental, focused midrange sound going to FOH. They can nudge up some extra lows out there if needed, but you can't determine that from onstage. It's almost too easy. You have to actually try to f it up.
 
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#39
pbass2 said:
You certainly weren't hearing the bass rig on it's own out front. My assumption would be you were hearing DI'd bass, maybe a mic as well on the cab, but in any event you're hearing the FOH bass sound, not the stage sound.
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Yup, this is the explanation all day and all night long. You need to work with the soundman if you are mud.
You and the audience isn't hearing the amp, you're hearing the FOH.
 

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