Quest for the perfect tone: Any way other than full rehearsals/playing out?

There is no perfect tone. You're wasting your time looking.

There is only the right tone for the song you're playing in the room you're playing it with the other instruments you're playing with on the day you're playing it.

Different song, different room, different orchestration, different day, different tone.

All you can do is make sure your bass is set up correctly and know all your equipment inside and out.

Be prepared to change every setting on every part of your rig to get the right sound for the next 5 minutes.

 

This thread reminds me of the last thread that I started in that it's a good question/idea, but it probably won't get discussed much. Now if it was another Squire thread...

I'll say use an amp that you can plug your ipod into and play along. Buy a cheap looper pedal. Make a loop of you playing along to music. Play back loop of yourself and listen. Adjust your Amps eq settings as you listen to yourself playing along (in the mix). This way you can adjust the amp with both hands free. Using this method I've found I like a bit more tube distortion in the mix than i would for my "bedroom tone". I'm also cutting the lows and highs and boosting mids. Without a backtrack this tone sounds like garbage to me, but with it, it works. Hope this helps...

 

You can set your tone on stage and get it as fat/crisp/deep/bright/punchy etc as you like.

Until you go out 30+ feet into the room, you have no actual idea what it sounds like
to the people you're playing for.

The tone "in your fingers" will never save you from a room that sucks and/or boosts frequencies.
If you play certain venues consistently you can get some baseline settings that'll work
for a start.

The only way to get anything close to that "bedroom" tone is to go out, evaluate, adjust and repeat
until an approximation is reached. Of course, all of that has to happen while the rest of the band is playing....

 

Every gig is a new chance to find/@#$ up your tone. This past Saturday I was playing on a patio up against a building, with a roof coming over us so that it was higher behind me than in front. The sound where I was playing was garbage, but sounded great out on the lawn. Unless you have a great FOH, all you can do is set it and work on it.

 

Maybe rename it 'quest for the perfect Squier tone ... that beats basses costing 10 times more!!!!'

Seriously, I control what I can. I can't control the size of the club, stage, audience; I can't control the acoustics, the sound man or exactly what it sounds like 30 feet from the stage. What I CAN control is what comes out of my amp and then I have to trust the sound man to reproduce that.

 

Oh cool, I am TB famous!

But seriously what took me to a much higher level in terms of achieving the best tone possible for me was spending tons of time in the studio and also having my own. I don't expect you to do that, but you would be amazed what you can hear with good mix headphones for around $150-200 and a decent interface like a Focusrite Scarlet, Presonus, etc. If you have a decent PC you can download a free DAW like Reaper or Traktion and you are all set.

Good mix headphones will teach you the true tone of your bass and also you will be able to experiment with tons of mixes so you can dial in a great tone before even hitting the stage.

In my experience a TON of subtle details are missed when only monitoring through speaker cabs or studio monitors. Those details are the secret to optimizing your tone and many players over boost their EQ or OD because they dial their tone in live at rehearsal through their rig. You should only need to finalize your tone then, and by that I mean, super small tweaks and mainly just adjusting your volume.

I run my entire rig (bass into a nano train with 5 effects I use sparingly) into a tube DI for all sessions and I use the same setup live. I have been doing facsimile of this for over 20 years now and have always gotten really nice praise for my tone from producers, FOH and engineers.

I may put up some older stuff for sale if anyone needs to get started. A Tech 21 BDDI is a great way to begin dialing up a killer tone live without spending $$$ on tubes.

 

I don't look for perfection in many things. Good enough is good enough.

It seems to me that this another example of the 80 - 20 rule.

20% of a good performance is the sound and 80% is the playing, i.e. get a good generic tone then slay 'em with your chops.

 

^^^^^
This...

Can't tell you how many times I've dialed in a personal likeable tone.....and then when playing with drums and/or music it all goes out the window.

So it's tweak, tweak, tweak the settings until it sounds right for that song.....
and then when the song is finished and you play the bass by itself unchanged you realize that's the tone you ditched in the first place....

 

I focus on being able to hear myself - on stage - that's it - my "tone" I've worked on a lot, comes out of my DI settings - the VT Deluxe to the FOH- I used to get my undies in a bunch about amps - but after playing hundreds of gigs and watching hundreds more - well nevermind

 

Your question all depends on your goals. My "perfect tone" comes from playing thru a GK 1001rbii and a GK 410. I have five basses that all sound great thru it and 5 past basses that all sounded good, and have borrowed quite a few basses that all sounded good. They all sound different they all sound good. I'd say that's as close to perfect as it will get. Get complimented on tone live and in studio from sound guys and other musicians. Can't complain.

 

practice the bass using the actual gear that you play out with: bass, amp and cabinet. that way you can practice learning how to tweak the settings on both your bass & amp quickly and confidently to get whatever sound is needed in any situation.

 

Volume, timing, and hitting correct notes with as few mistakes as possible is all I care about.

 

Okay, the way you play and attack a bass changes your tone. The amp you run through changes that tone. The compressor you run through changes that tone. The cab you run through changes that tone. What have I not metioned...oh yeah...the bass...
In reality the way you play can change the tone of a bass...to an extent. Then it's on down the signal chain but it all comes back to the instrument you are playing. Can you control it? Or does it constrict you?
Cheers, good luck.

 

AngelCrusher mentioned headphones and that was important for me. I think getting used to a more mid forward tone will help more than anything else.

If you like a bass heavy tone, you are going to be fighting the room all the time. Not saying it can't be done, obviously it can, but it will be harder.

If you like that scooped, SansAmp, style sound... you are also going to have more problems. Again, lots of people get it to work, but it is harder.

Basically, I think bass players can be their own worst enemies when it comes to tone. We want more bass... when less would actually work better. Just my 3 cents (2 cents US).

 

You can certainly and easily get a good impression of the relative sounds of your various pieces of gear just by doing an A-B comparison in a controlled environment (like your living room) and it'll tell you some of the things you need to know but, IME, you really can't get a true sense of what you're going to be dealing with until you're playing with a band at volume.

Now, as for recording - well, that's a whole other story.

 

One approach that might be somewhat helpful is to listen to isolated bass tracks from professional recordings and then compare them to how differently the bass sounds in the context of the total mix, due primarily to the frequency masking.

Isolated tracks generally tend to sound much more trebly and thin as compared to their sound in the total mix.

Obviously there are many more variables when playing live in various rooms, as have been mentioned above, but listening to isolated bass tracks may provide some perspective.

 

Squier threads are even more popular...as Yes fades farther into the 'history' of rock, not as many folks are as inspired by Chris Squire's brash, bright tone and paying...


Record gigs and rehearsals, listen back and she was needs to be adjusted - adjust from there - once you accept that alone tone and stage tone are different ponies..it becomes a more straightforward process (time, imho)

+1 to 'no perfect tone' - I think as a gigging player you need to get a good workable tone no matter what you face from room to room or backline to backline...

+1

 

As mentioned know your gear inside out but for my two different bands I know just as well what my band mates tones are like and how my tone sits with theirs. It's really about paying attention to what the band sounds like rather than just my tone.