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Steve Harris Compression

J03YW

J03YW

Nov 23, 2012
447
15
USA
#1
What kind of compressor could get me close to Steve Harris's tone? Backstory: Steve uses heavy compression and lightly brushes his (rather heavy) flatwound strings and gets a real clicky and bright tone. Please don't recommend crazy expensive stuff, please!

EDIT: Forgot to mention that my TCE BG250 comes in the mail tomorrow, could the spectracomp get close?
 
#2
J03YW said:
What kind of compressor could get me close to Steve Harris's tone? Backstory: Steve uses heavy compression and lightly brushes his (rather heavy) flatwound strings and gets a real clicky and bright tone. Please don't recommend crazy expensive stuff, please!

EDIT: Forgot to mention that my TCE BG250 comes in the mail tomorrow, could the spectracomp get close?
Click to expand...

With that setup, don't expect a Harris tone out of the box. I would know, as I have the BG500 combo. The compressor is dynamic but not as dynamic as several thousand dollar tube studio compressors (as per Steve's setup).

Little of his tone is in his compression. It's mostly in his feathery touch and modified precision bass. The rest is a little amp grit, compression, and pushing 12s and 18s.

You could get a Harris-esque tone with treble up, mids flat (or a tad cut), bass flat, tube tone a tad, and tweeter tone up a bit.
 
#3
JetBlackJazz said:
With that setup, don't expect a Harris tone out of the box. I would know, as I have the BG500 combo. The compressor is dynamic but not as dynamic as several thousand dollar tube studio compressors (as per Steve's setup).

Little of his tone is in his compression. It's mostly in his feathery touch and modified precision bass. The rest is a little amp grit, compression, and pushing 12s and 18s.

You could get a Harris-esque tone with treble up, mids flat (or a tad cut), bass flat, tube tone a tad, and tweeter tone up a bit.
Click to expand...

Thanks for saving me a little money there.
 
#4
J03YW said:
Steve uses heavy compression
Click to expand...

You sir, must have not listened to any of his isolated tracks. The only compression you hear is done by the producer at 0:39-0:50 (of this song The Trooper) Im just using this song as an example. Listen to others....i dont hear light compression....never mind heavy

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Mind you i haven't listened to EVERY one,,,,but ones i have...they all sound like this (to me)
 
#7
The thing to remember is when high quality studio gear is used to do lots of compression, it doesn't necessarily need to sound very compressed at all if the driver knows whats he's doing.
 
#8
Toolmybass said:
You sir, must have not listened to any of his isolated tracks. The only compression you hear is done by the producer at 0:39-0:50 (of this song The Trooper) Im just using this song as an example. Listen to others....i dont hear light compression....never mind heavy

Invalid Link Removed

Mind you i haven't listened to EVERY one,,,,but ones i have...they all sound like this (to me)
Click to expand...

This sounds very compressed to my ears. Maybe its the nature of youtube.
 
#9
bassie12 said:
The thing to remember is when high quality studio gear is used to do lots of compression, it doesn't necessarily need to sound very compressed at all if the driver knows whats he's doing.
Click to expand...

+1
That's the thing exactly: a good compressor, used properly, results in a very articulate "uncompressed" perception of the sound. Most people's ideas of what compression sounds like is from abuse, and from comps that are not very good.

Harris not only uses an old 160, he keeps a spare in the rack as backup--so I'm guessing he thinks it's an important part of his sound.

Just in case anyone wonders, the current and recent models of dbx 160 are a completely different circuit than the one Harris uses (commonly called the 160 "VU").
 
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#11
The Harris tone is from the heavy flatwound strings that are very high tension. The clicky aspect of the tone is from the action being set so low. The Harris tribute bass (I own one) has a big fat neck and a Badass 2 bridge to cope with the high tension strings.

If you aren't playing with flatwounds that are that low and 'stiff' you are going to struggle to get close to his tone.

I think compression is a bit of a red herring in all of this.
 
#13
bongomania said:
+1
That's the thing exactly: a good compressor, used properly, results in a very articulate "uncompressed" perception of the sound. Most people's ideas of what compression sounds like is from abuse, and from comps that are not very good.

Harris not only uses an old 160, he keeps a spare in the rack as backup--so I'm guessing he thinks it's an important part of his sound.

Just in case anyone wonders, the current and recent models of dbx 160 are a completely different circuit than the one Harris uses (commonly called the 160 "VU").
Click to expand...

listen to this man he knows! thanks Bongomania for all your help in the past. rtslinger
 
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#16
This might be a better example:

Anyone who tells you there is no audible compression going on there doesn't know what a 160 sounds like.

The 166 can get you in to the ball park for cheaper. If you are using one of the new ones with the attack/release knobs turn them off(set to auto). High ratio, set the the threshold so you can control the amount of 'smoosh' in the attack with your playing style.
 

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