That big fat smooth tone Paul McCartney produced with the Beatles. It remains the benchmark for me.
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So, like, what is 'vintage tone' REALLY?
- Thread starter NeonVomit
- Start date
When Leo Fender was developing the electric bass, he was trying to come up with an alternative to the upright bass which in those days was having a hard time keeping up volume wise with his electric guitars. So when I think of vintage tone I think of something more upright like. I think this tone is more than just rolling off the high end. A lot of it depends on how you play. If you listen to Jamerson's isolated tracks there's a lot of top in his tone but a lot of it has to do with how he played. His action was really high and he treated the electric bass like an upright bass.
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Vintage tone is more than just gear. A lot of it comes from the microphones and tape that were used in those old recordings. Amps from back then sound very clear when recorded with modern microphones.
This little amp is a tone monster!
1959 Supro 1615T 15" Jensen speaker combo amp.
Initially used for my father's accordion, but it was my 1st amp that my father gave in the 1970s.
I played my brand new 1978 Rickenbacker 4001 through that 1959 Supro;
1959 Supro 1615T 15" Jensen speaker combo amp.
Initially used for my father's accordion, but it was my 1st amp that my father gave in the 1970s.
I played my brand new 1978 Rickenbacker 4001 through that 1959 Supro;
- Jan 26, 2014
- 1,525
- 1,946
- Disclosures
- I teach lessons and perform live music in and around San Diego CA. Sometimes I even make money doing it!
I like the way you’re thinking. Vintage gear can certainly get you there the easy way, but it’s almost always attainable with modern gear too.
To get a little deeper, I’d say in contrast to “modern tone,” vintage bass tone lacks crisp transients, has a drastic decay after a thuddy attack, and usually has an elevated degree of harmonic distortion in the bass guitar band. Very broadly, think hill eq curve for vintage, vs. smile curve for modern. All of this can be obtained with most modern instruments and amps, with maybe a pedal or 2 thrown in.
some of my hints: yes, roll off highs as necessary. Also lows if your amp/cab/interface are resonant below 150hz or so.
Have a tweeter on your cab? Switch it off or unplug it.
Mic cabs when you record (as opposed to only going direct), and experiment with distance from the cone and different mic angles to add a little air and natural “distance” to the sound. This can of course be faked too with plugins and/or reamping, but my preferred method is to record as close the sound I want to hear in the final mix from the getgo.
Use a foam or cloth mute under your strings to quicken decay and deaden transients.
For vintage thickness, an overdrive pedal can work, my favorite is the trutone Route 66, used subtly. I think the Ampeg scrambler on some of their amps works great for this too, they make a pedal version which I haven’t tried.
A p bass with flats and a B-15 flip top can get you there too, but yes, I am in agreement that most any modern rig can be made to sound “vintage.”
It's a passive bass plugged straight into an amp. Thats what people did they didn't have bass effects. That being said how a guy got his sound was by using different amps and multiple amps. The sixties saw a whole evolution of amplification from low wattage to 100 watt tube amps then 200 watt tube amps to the Acoustic 360 and the Ampeg SVT. Then in the early seventies Solid State further developed with Sunn and Acoustic. Think of John Entwhistle using multiple amps and different cabinets in an almost Bi amp setup.
I'd say it whatever you THINK it is.
Recording was a far different process (of course, analog, mono, and often tube boards !), basses and amps were far less complex back in the day (as essentially it was all being invented little by little), strings were almost an afterthought, and the people and the world this 'vintage' comes from no longer exists. Hell, not a lot of cats use picks like so many did back then.
Most guys thought they were supposed to sound upright-ish, and many had picked up this eeeee-lek-trick bass with some resentment, as it wasn't a 'real (i.e., upright) bass'.
For me, 'vintage' is conjured by those players back then, as it's hard for me separate Jamerson or Carol Kaye or Joe Osborne (and so many others) performances from that tone. Players like that came from Jazz, were not 'raised on rock and roll', and that's why performances by session players from the 50's and 60's just stand out to me, they were amazingly good in unexpected ways, and wrote a book we're still reading.
Recording was a far different process (of course, analog, mono, and often tube boards !), basses and amps were far less complex back in the day (as essentially it was all being invented little by little), strings were almost an afterthought, and the people and the world this 'vintage' comes from no longer exists. Hell, not a lot of cats use picks like so many did back then.
Most guys thought they were supposed to sound upright-ish, and many had picked up this eeeee-lek-trick bass with some resentment, as it wasn't a 'real (i.e., upright) bass'.
For me, 'vintage' is conjured by those players back then, as it's hard for me separate Jamerson or Carol Kaye or Joe Osborne (and so many others) performances from that tone. Players like that came from Jazz, were not 'raised on rock and roll', and that's why performances by session players from the 50's and 60's just stand out to me, they were amazingly good in unexpected ways, and wrote a book we're still reading.
Primarily Fender bass (Jazz or P-bass), flatwound strings because that's what they had in the 60's, and a tube amp. The sound is always warm and when it gets loud it sounds like the notes are going to break. It's that overdrive thing versus dirty distortion. Speakers were typically 2x12 or 2x15. Around 1970 you started to see a number of Solid State amps show up and they sounded different that the all-tube amps but the speakers were still either 12's, 15's, or folded horn 18's. Think big and woolly and no where near as crisp sounding as we get now.
My first "Vintage Sound" rig was my 1965 Jazz that I bought in 1966 and my 1966 Fender Bassman (50-watt all-tube) amp that I bought in 1966. It had a warm round sound until I tried to push it past #7 on the dial at which point the speakers would start to fart - ended up replacing 3-speakers when I had that amp. Sunn amps, Dual Showman amps, and some Marshall bass amps went into overdrive before the speakers would crap out on them, but not my Bassman.
My second "Vintage Sound" still came from my 1965 Jazz bass but I traded in my '66 Bassman in late 1971 for a Standel amp. It was a solid state amp but used two 15" speakers. It was a great amp and pretty unusual. It was a piggy-back MCIIb/SAM30b amp. The head was super light because it was just a preamp. It had a powered speaker cab with two CTS 15" speakers in it. It was a 200-wat amp and each speaker was powered by its own 100-watt amp.
It used a bass reflex design that channeled the sound coming out the back of the speaker around to the side and out 4 circular ports mounted vertically next to the speakers. You could not get this amp to distort at all, and it could get ungodly loud. Indoors I typically played it at #3 (9 o'clock) on the dial but outdoors without any surfaces to bounce off of I could run it up to #5 (12 o'clock). Played on place where I had to play it on #2 which is about 8 o'clock. The sound from this amp was much louder out on the dance floor, which sometimes made it hard hear on stage. Never played a single place that had monitors for us to useand our PA was "vocals only" and pointed out to the audience.
The salesman bragged I could turn it all the way up and hit a low E and it wouldn't distort, so I tried it right there in the store. It shook all the walls in that "Bass basement" but didn't distort one bit. It wasn't a muddy sound at all but had a big and full sound. Didn't have the crisp definition that you get from the much faster transients of 10" speakers but if I still had it, I would use it. Unfortunately my Standel amp, my '65 Jazz, and my two Shure mics were all stolen in 1976 when our house was burglarized.
Here's a shot of me playing my '65 Jazz and you can see part of my Standel amp behind me next to the guitarist's Vox Super Beatle amp. I was in a touring nightclub group and this shot is (I believe) from early 1972. Had to be 1972 because I have the Fender Black Tapewound strings on it in this pic. Gigging was a bit different back then. We played 4-hours a night, 5-nights a week, 50-weeks a year, and I did that for 3-years. We typically played for 2-weeks at each venue before traveling to the next gig. Was a great time to be a touring musician!
I like this thread! I get what I think of as great “old school” tone with a fretless SG bass, a Jerry jones with either flats or dead rounds, or a mustang with flats through either my 100 watt verellen meatsmoke or my mid 70s Ampeg V4 through an Avatar b212. If I want to brighten it up and go for more of a grindy Chris squire sound I boost the mids more and maybe add a bit of a clean boost. A klon clone will do nicely.
A guitar tech on YouTube says that 'warm vintage tone' is a gimmick. Bear in mind that most of us have never heard any so-called vintage instruments from those times; we have heard only the recordings, and they are lower quality the further back they are.
Vintage tone is listening to any old piece of gear with a couple of baby boomers complaining about how everything was absolutely better in the old days*. The more the old piece of gear is beaten up, unusable or unserviceable and the louder are the complains, the better
*the old days could be the 50s, 60s or 70s but NEVER anything after 1979
*the old days could be the 50s, 60s or 70s but NEVER anything after 1979
I was fortunate enough to follow that same vein of profession. We were a professional touring band all over the US and Canada. Worked a lot of 'front 3's' and 'back 3's.' Only us old timers know what that meant. It meant a lot of hassle if they were back to back. We stayed in nice hotels, had tabs and free dinners. I'd say they were the golden years of my youth. Those of us who lived it were blessed to have experienced it. This was also during the 70's and 80's, until I met Mrs. Right the end of the 80's and retired my beat up black traveling trunk.
You can only get it from an instrument that has been heavily discoloured by tobacco smoke.
IMO to get it maxed today on a current bass would often require some internal vintification to mirror the wiring old basses had, cap values, etc., things I don't know much of what I'm talking about but suspect it's true. throw on some dead flats into an old amp and dial in the preferred tones.
in post-ancient times I started off with either a 50W Magnatone MP-5 or Guild Thunderbass head into 2 Altec Voice Of The Theater cabs loaded with prerequisite 15'' JBL D140Fs then pumped my '65 Fender BASS V w/Fender flats thru that simple setup = tone envy of the Gods. still have everything but the VOTs nearby and my pretzeled spine says thank you. miss seeing the smiling faces vintage tone brings.
with educated luck you can kinda match that in a smaller setting with modern era equipment.
in post-ancient times I started off with either a 50W Magnatone MP-5 or Guild Thunderbass head into 2 Altec Voice Of The Theater cabs loaded with prerequisite 15'' JBL D140Fs then pumped my '65 Fender BASS V w/Fender flats thru that simple setup = tone envy of the Gods. still have everything but the VOTs nearby and my pretzeled spine says thank you. miss seeing the smiling faces vintage tone brings.
with educated luck you can kinda match that in a smaller setting with modern era equipment.
What you said, no rocket science. Any rig can do it (except for those of us with golden ears maybe)
this is a really good point that i think sometimes gets lost - most discussion of vintage tones involves rolling off the top end, but a lot of those older bass sounds would have been really not very “bassy” at all by today’s standards!
Vintage Tone is different things to different people: For me, its a P-Bass with rounds, played with a pick, through an SVT...For others, its Jamerson....for others, its something else
