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Rick Danko
- Thread starter Devon Bustard
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- rick
Stingray is not the tone you are after. They would not be in your budget either. The P-Bass with flats will get you there. Later on when you play other styles, the P-Bass will be there for you too. It is the most flexible, simple, perfect-sounding tone in the mix, IMHO.
Agreed. Stingrays are great, but not a good choice if your looking for a vintage sound like Mr. Danko.
That being said, choice of equipment is FAR less important than the feel...Mr. Danko was a very soulful and tasteful musician. Getting into the right mindset (and practice) will be the key. It's really going to be more of an intellectual exercise.
Best of luck to you!
I remain,
Your Obedient Servant,
The Terror.
Rick played fiddle and their producer played tuba on rag momma rag
Suppose I may as well update this old thread. I went and bought a 50’s Mexican P Bass from Fender. Great sound and right now I am in the act of buying a fender Stage 800.
I mean, anything is possible, just not plausible. But yeah, can't say I've heard of one.
Jim Carr
Dr. Jim
- Jan 21, 2006
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IMHO, Danko's lines are what matter, and they helped create an expressive world. His bass tone doesn't really make an impact anywhere near as much as the musicality of those artistic bass lines. I wish he and The Band were still with us. 
Rick made two interesting comments in a Bass Player interview late in his career: "I don't play bass, I fill space" and, more intriguing, that he plays on top of the music. Never heard that from anyone else. We naturally think of playing/driving the band from the bottom. I can testify that using the visualization of playing above not below--NOT meaning to play lightly or wimpy--quickly puts me in a better place in the mix, with less effort and more tasteful parts. Check it out!
IMMusicRulz
Commercial User
Thats a good point, it takes two to tango.
Ricks style was unique for sure, I saw a vid of Levon, Rick, and Garth post band days doing Cripple creek with a couple other players, greasy funk , so cool, so solid
Ricks style was unique for sure, I saw a vid of Levon, Rick, and Garth post band days doing Cripple creek with a couple other players, greasy funk , so cool, so solid
If you saw Rick play in the 90's, then you saw the bass that I built for him. It was an undersized, chambered Fender-style body, with Alembic J pickups, and roundwounds. Koa top, maple neck, ebony board, frets. He still sounded like Rick of course. He mentioned the bass in a Bass Player Mag interview in the early 90's. He called the pickups "Olympic". Not a gear head AT ALL.
I ran into him at the Tinker Street Cafe in Woodstock in early 1991, at a gig I was playing. He was in the audience. The owner of the cafe knew my basses were crazy-light-weight, and told me that Rick had been in a car accident, and was really down on playing his Gibson Ripper, which was basically a heavy maple coffee table top with strings. He grew to hate the weight. I had already met Rick prior, but he didn't remember lol. My bass weighed maybe 6.5 lbs. I bet the Ripper cleared 10. He held it in his hands for maybe three seconds, and said "make me one". I asked him what kind of strings he wanted, and he said "whatever you are using". I'm sure they were rounds of some kind. This reminds me of the time my band opened for The Band at The Lone Star in NYC (where I lived at the time). Up in the dressing room were the roadies, and his famous Ampeg on a guitar stand. That bass had been modded with a Fender P pickup btw, don't ever expect a stock Ampeg to sound like that bass, it just won't. Anyway, I asked the roadies about it. The only statement I remember was that one time they had changed the strings on it, and Rick got pissed and made them put the old ones back on. Not a gear head.
A couple of weeks after I started the bass, he called me and told me that Roger Waters had asked him to go play at the Berlin Wall with him, and he needed the bass TOMORROW. I stayed up all night and finished it. In many ways this bass was a bit of a return to his Fender J days, as it had the same basic pickup scheme.
The early Band albums are a Fender Jazz bass. There's a video on youtube of them playing King Harvest in rehearsal. Flats, frets, no pick. When I was younger, I naturally assumed it was the fretless Ampeg. Nope! Sounded like Rick, as always.
So forget about trying to buy "Danko gear". The first three Jefferson Airplane albums are a Jazz bass (yes that includes White Rabbit). Does that sound like Danko? People still debate which Beatle songs are played on what are vastly different basses (I promise you that Dear Prudence is a J). They all sound like Paul. In 1969-1971, Phil Lesh played a Gibson EB-0 with two Guild pickups on it, often without a pick, and then the next year he played a Guild Starfire, with a rack-mount EQ built into it. And with a pick. He still sounded like Phil.
My advice is forget all this talk about gear (yeah I just said that on talkbass), and work on the music. The rest will come. That's all any of your idols did.
I ran into him at the Tinker Street Cafe in Woodstock in early 1991, at a gig I was playing. He was in the audience. The owner of the cafe knew my basses were crazy-light-weight, and told me that Rick had been in a car accident, and was really down on playing his Gibson Ripper, which was basically a heavy maple coffee table top with strings. He grew to hate the weight. I had already met Rick prior, but he didn't remember lol. My bass weighed maybe 6.5 lbs. I bet the Ripper cleared 10. He held it in his hands for maybe three seconds, and said "make me one". I asked him what kind of strings he wanted, and he said "whatever you are using". I'm sure they were rounds of some kind. This reminds me of the time my band opened for The Band at The Lone Star in NYC (where I lived at the time). Up in the dressing room were the roadies, and his famous Ampeg on a guitar stand. That bass had been modded with a Fender P pickup btw, don't ever expect a stock Ampeg to sound like that bass, it just won't. Anyway, I asked the roadies about it. The only statement I remember was that one time they had changed the strings on it, and Rick got pissed and made them put the old ones back on. Not a gear head.
A couple of weeks after I started the bass, he called me and told me that Roger Waters had asked him to go play at the Berlin Wall with him, and he needed the bass TOMORROW. I stayed up all night and finished it. In many ways this bass was a bit of a return to his Fender J days, as it had the same basic pickup scheme.
The early Band albums are a Fender Jazz bass. There's a video on youtube of them playing King Harvest in rehearsal. Flats, frets, no pick. When I was younger, I naturally assumed it was the fretless Ampeg. Nope! Sounded like Rick, as always.
So forget about trying to buy "Danko gear". The first three Jefferson Airplane albums are a Jazz bass (yes that includes White Rabbit). Does that sound like Danko? People still debate which Beatle songs are played on what are vastly different basses (I promise you that Dear Prudence is a J). They all sound like Paul. In 1969-1971, Phil Lesh played a Gibson EB-0 with two Guild pickups on it, often without a pick, and then the next year he played a Guild Starfire, with a rack-mount EQ built into it. And with a pick. He still sounded like Phil.
My advice is forget all this talk about gear (yeah I just said that on talkbass), and work on the music. The rest will come. That's all any of your idols did.
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If you saw Rick play in the 90's, then you saw the bass that I built for him. It was an undersized, chambered Fender-style body, with Alembic J pickups, and roundwounds. Koa top, maple neck, ebony board, frets.
Here’s Rick with that bass!
In that Bass Player story it said he was using D’Addario nickel roundwounds 50-105. A change from his usual flatwounds.
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Yep, that's it. The strings sound right. I always built two at a time, as an efficiency move. The twin of this bass is owned by a friend in nyc. Strangely, that other one is fretless lol. You can see in the pic that the neck bolts onto maple. I used a maple block running down the entire center of the body. I called it a "bolt-on neck thru". Mahogany wings, and a two piece koa top and two piece koa back. Why use two pieces of wood when seven will do? The wings are hollow, so it's a chambered body like an Alembic. I had been buying pickups and electronics from Ron and Susan since the early eighties. I always loved the way Alembics sounded, but didn't get on with the necks and general ergonomics. So this was my Fenderized version. The body is shaped more or less like a strat, but with an elongated upper horn. That allowed me to place the strap button in the same place as a Fender bass. Otherwise there would have been undue neck dive. I built and sold lots of them. Rick was my most famous user, as most of them just went to local nyc players who were tired of the wear and tear of long gigs.
Playing that Seinfeld jingle will be mandatory audition requirement.Hey, folks -- slap bass is the music of the future. Regardless if it's played well or poor, it's simply going to be the way the electric bass is heard in every tune, in every form of music.
So it's a good thing there's an army of future bassists ready for this change! Man, they're gonna be rich and famous with that valuable skill!
IMMusicRulz
Commercial User
Doug Fieger Of The Knack actually listed The Band as one of his favorite music groups, and said that he owned a Fender Bass VI, a Fender Jazz Bass, an Ampeg Bass and a few Ampeg and Fender Bassman Amps just to prove how influential Rick Danko was to him. He also owned a few Fender Stratocaster and Fender Telecaster guitars, and a Martin D28, but that’s another story. Only difference about that Ampeg, however, is that the Ampeg Bass that Doug Fieger owned was a fretted one.
