BTW This is my 3rd parts bass. In all cases I filed the nut myself as well as levelled the frets. At this point, I can setup a bass I think. Have a luthier friend that has given me good training also.
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Slap Setup Questions - Jazz Bass
- Thread starter logdrum
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I can't speak for everyone but, for me, traditional slap and double thumping feel different enough to be two separate techniques. I even did a video about it. For myself, some recommendations for one style I may not recommend for the other, even for a specific Bass like a Jazz
Yep. Good video. Because if my preference for high action, that is why, I never warmed out to double thumbing, which is better with lower action and or light gauge. IMO of course
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Many of these will have different answers depending on taste, so I'll try to give as much insight as I can with my limited attention span.
1. Depends too much on the pickups. With finger style I want them as high as possible, but for slap it doesn't seem to matter much. It really depends on what the manufacturer would suggest you do with the pickups for the optimal signal output.
2. I tried some of the lightest and some of the heaviest. I'm now at a sort of light medium .045, .060, .080, .100. One thing I found out though is that you can usually get used to all different types of strings with slap. Takes me roughly a day to adjust with slap on a different gauge. So you should choose which strings are comfortable for other styles of playing, because sound can always be equalized with such little differences.
3. I always have it as low as possible, but I can play slap with a higher action just fine. There's less room for error with a higher action, because if you get caught with your finger, you might mess up a pluck, which wouldn't happen so easily with low action as it is considerably easier to get a consistent pluck on low action (string doesn't need to be pulled as far to smack against the frets).
4. On a jazz you get the best overall sound with both on full. You can of course adjust, but if you go one extreme or the other, you will find few people who really dig that sound. Though I personally love the neck pickup only for slap as well.
5. On a jazz bass I don't do much of that at all to get the desired sound. Potentially a bit of a mid scoop, but nothing drastic, and you need to have space in the song to scoop the Jazz bass even more than it naturally already is.
6. I mostly use a VT bass DI with my heaphones for home practice. I believe it emulates an 810 with the speaker emulation on. Though there's also the BITE button, which gives it a sound like you would activate a tweeter. The BITE is a bit much with a Jazz bass for me, so I only use the speaker emulation with some bass boosted in the EQ, and the character knob set to like a mix of a B15 and an SVT. On normal amps it's usually just a matter of very slight adjustments. A jazz bass already has a pretty strong character, so depending on the room you might add or remove low end, and might give it a bit more top end.
7. I love compressors set very aggressively. Very fast attack, and a relatively fast release. But I have to say again, depending on the mood or the song I'm playing, I might turn it off altogether.
8. Nah, it's fine.
9. As I said, a lot of my setup is actually based on how I like to play other styles besides slap. Even though I do play quite a bit of slap at times, I mostly set up my bass for finger style actually.
I won't change any settings during a song usually, unless it's like a huge shift where you add some sort of heavy filtering or distortion or such. Besides that, your timbre should probably be fitting for other styles as well, not only because if it sounds bad with slap, it will probably also sound bad with other styles.
10. I have a Sire V7 with a lot of EQ possibilities. I will set it and forget it (and most of the time have it turned off anyways). I wouldn't mind if the bass didn't have the EQ, as I never really needed it.
11. There is nothing more funky than a good envelope. You can go extreme quacking, but you can also set it more subtle and just enhance the attack of your lines to your liking. I would always recommend an envelope as a pedal, not only for slap. Potentially also an overdrive, but you need to be tasteful with it. It's difficult to make it work in my eyes (ears hah), but when it works, it really WORKS. Les Claypool is one of the few examples of slap with overdrive/distortion that I really really enjoy.
12. For me double thumb only works at all (and then really inconsistently) if I have a higher action, than I usually have. I don't particularly like the sound of it anyways. But I love the consistency of fast (triplets for example) thumping.
13. More important than the position of your hand, is the angle of your hand. I can play a 21 fret P-bass just as good as I can my 24 Warwick, or my 29 fret at home built bass. Of course it will be easier to pluck the string closer to the middle of it's length, but it's similar to how the action affects it. Closer to the bridge works fine, but you have less room to play sloppy as the tension will be higher. I prefer to slap with my thumb slightly over the fretboard, so I can smack the string right into the frets, but Larry Graham gets good results closer to the pickups. I would recommend going with whatever feels natural, or what your favorite players do haha
Bonus. I don't have an ideal. It depends on the song and I don't actually know a lot of slap players who primarily use a Jazz. Joe Dart did some cool stuff on a Jazz that really fit the vibes of those songs.
Marcus Miller would be an example of a sound that is too harsh for me (sorry to those who love his sound).
Pickup covers don't matter to me. They sometimes look nice, but since I don't usually play over the pickups, I wouldn't mind anyways.
I don't think the spacing differences between 60s and 70s Jazz basses is enough to ultimately make a difference. At least not for me in a mix.
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I'm going to take this to heart and give it a try because I play like a gorilla on blow when I try slapping along to something
Thank you so much for taking the time. Lots of good stuff there. I hope others find it useful too. I certainly do.
1) Pickups normal… I guess lower them if they’re already super high or something, but I don’t find that slapping actually makes the strings hit my pickups or anything
2) I use pretty normal strings, I may thicken the G on my 35” basses. If you need lighter strings, go ahead.. they can sound a little different, but only if you are comparing them AB and/or in the studio. Notable that Victor Wooten uses light and low action live, and thickens and raises it a bit to record (for better sound)
3) I use fairly high action for a low action guy, if ya know what I mean.. I don’t find that super low action sounds great or feels great, even on slap, and I don’t need to maximize my slapping setup so I stay with my little medium action.
4) passive is fine, and it’s hard to beat a jazz bass for a great slap sound. I love the jbass 50/50 slap sound, and I ALSO love the old school grunty neck pickup slap sound on a jazz or p.
5) I don’t like fender tone stacks. I like some baxandalls, but it’s all about how the frequencies are selected, as well as how they approach the mids. So ignoring all that, for slap I like to cut somewhere between 600-900hz, depending on the instrument. I like the cut narrow, and I like it not to touch 1.2k or higher. I like a little bump around 4k or the treble generally, and I like a bump around 80-100hz or the bass generally. It takes less treble boost than you think. You don’t want to over scoop the mids.. I’d rather leave them flat than to remove too much in the mids
6) yes tweet if you have it. I DO LOVE the sound of a small driver for the highs instead of a tweeter, but tweeter is fine.
7) a little compressor is nice.. I like it pretty subtle generally for slapping, in the ‘don’t notice it but miss it when it’s off’ range.. but I ALSO like the slurpy suck-sound over compressed sound for slap as an effect . My favorite compression for slap is slightly heavy with a late attack, but blended with lots of dry so the compression is just fattening and makes the attack bigger.
8) pickups schmickups, on a jazz bass you’re gonna be fine. Single coils do sound fantastic, but any decent hum canceling jazz pick up will sound fine, and the subtle muting of the high-end, they tend to afford is actually kind of nice.
9) versatility depends on gig.. sometimes I’ll have an EQ set to ‘slap mode’ so I can stomp to it.. sometimes I just set my general tone where it works for everything. I will say that an okay rule of thumb is ‘most good slap tones make good fingerstyle tones’ while the opposite is not guaranteed.
10) you had me at John East.
11) I forget what it’s called but there’s a mid-only eq that’s kinda popular, and it does great for a slappy scoop. An EQ generally is also useful.
12) I use a little both, but obviously the double thump is insanely useful.. but if you just wanna play carwash or whatever, then do whatever works and sounds good. I DO feel like the downstroke of the double thump sounds better than a big flea bounce, especially if you aren’t playing hard rock funk. Don’t even have to double thump, just do the downstroke instead of a bounce.
13) thumb over the fretboard. I do feel like less than 24 frets sounds better (ie further from bridge is better), but I’m not going to make decisions based on that, and EQ will mostly fix it.
bonus- stingrays sound awful
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Set your bass up to however you like it to feel. Then learn how to slap on it.
I know that sounds overly simple, but that’s really it.
I know that sounds overly simple, but that’s really it.
what can I say, I’m not a fan. I’ve tried and tried over 20+ years.. I don’t like how they feel, I don’t like how they sound or respond, I don’t like the preamp, I don’t like how other people sound on them, I don’t like their slap sound.. none of it.
What’s weird is that I like MM pickups in other positions and paired with other pickups, and I like other pickups in that position, but a solo MM in the stingray sweet spot? Hard pass.
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There’s no best bass. That’s fair.
But a Ray feels like a P bass. And looks the same except pickup and 3-1 keys.
It’s totally cool if it’s not your thing but I think a lot of people on TB would be surprised how many “P Bass” hits were recorded with Stingrays.
Well. Again, I think there is a misconception that I am clueless about slap - it's not my default mode, can serve some songs or possibly provide some excitement. Will post a sound cloud sound byte after TG.
I think I explained what I would like to learn more about very specific question - passive jazz bass single-coil. Would like to know how folks do their setup and approach tips . I mostly had fretless then upright in the beginning of career, played latin music and jazz. And always had active mostly active. I have seen Flecktones 2 - 3 times and Marcus and when Benny played with Miles Davis. Aside from learning from the band leaders - my first and probably only self-help latin bass boo + video is by Lincoln Goines and he has slap examples. I even have the Johnson VHS, but I probably just watched it once.
This is talkbass. We care about minutiae. I rarely start threads, but I think or way over think when I start one.
I actually recommended that as it seems you're putting a bass together from parts, and IF you aren't fluent in setting up your own instruments, sometimes random parts can be a headache. If this 'ain't your first rodeo', then have at it.
From experience, for me it works better if I have a solid starting point and then prefer to work out or tweak from there to get it just like I want it. Then I see if I need to change anything.
That's how I approach these things, but realize everyone else doesn't. For me, I prefer to work down the list of 'what if I . . . ' one at a time.
Best of Luck,
JW
From experience, for me it works better if I have a solid starting point and then prefer to work out or tweak from there to get it just like I want it. Then I see if I need to change anything.
That's how I approach these things, but realize everyone else doesn't. For me, I prefer to work down the list of 'what if I . . . ' one at a time.
Best of Luck,
JW
- My main Jazz is a Mike Lull M5V. '60s position single coils that I think work great for slap (but having never owned a Jazz with '70s position pickups I can't really compare). The pickups are set (more or less) according to Roger Sadowsky's recommendations.
- I prefer light gauge strings for slap. DR Hi-Beams or Pure Blues, 40-120. Fairly low action but not so low that the strings choke out (although, to be honest, the action could be a little higher on my bass to facilitate clean slapping higher up the neck).
- Pickups are both fully open. I have a Sadowsky preamp and set the passive tone control at around 20% open with the bass boosted around 15% and the highs boosted between 30 and 40% (depending on how dead my strings sound).
- I prefer modern sounding amps and cabinets. For a me a Mesa D-800+ paired with a Bergantino 210 or 410 cabinet (with the tweeter at noon) sounds great for slap.
- Compression only if FOH is adding it. Otherwise I'm not really a fan (talking about playing live, not mixing - which is something totally different).
- If playing my passive Fender Jazz ('62 re-issue) I prefer to have some slight boost in the bass and treble courtesy of an Xotic Bass RC Booster. It just fattens up the tone that little bit and imparts a nice sparkle to the highs.
- The only setting I alter for slap is the addition of some highs (I will already have the bass boosted). The majority of my playing is pizz but when I do slap I want the sound to be there without having to fiddle around.
- I don't double thumb. It just isn't necessary for the kind of playing I do. My goal is to be in the pocket and consistent. I've recently gone back to practicing slap because I was getting pretty rusty (having not used it much on gigs in the past several years). My ideal slap sound would be somewhere between Marcus Miller and Mark King. My thumb connects with the string between the last two frets of whatever bass I'm playing (I tend to prefer 21 or 20 frets for slap - though it really depends on the bass). Thumb pointing slightly up (Marcus Miller as opposed to Flea) and I play through the string unless I'm playing a faster, 16th note type of line (in more of a Mark King style), in which case I bounce my thumb off the string. Lots of left hand muted "slaps" (again, very Mark King).
