D
this is also a big factor for me. I have eczema on my fingers and they haaaaaate rounds. The problem is a lot less on flats. Also, I played only double bass for years and that will for always be the sound. I hate clanky.
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Stoner/Doom Bassists Thread, Part 90: Maxed Out
- Thread starter Korladis
- Start date
I did! I'm hoping one of these days to get back together with those guys. Having a kid messed up our momentum, and now, all of our schedules are different. We gotta find a way to make it work, though!
I'm sure part of it helped that we all play more than one instrument. The "lead" guitarist actually started on bass, so he wants bass to sound good too. I often played guitar for a few songs, and wanted both to sound great. And the third guy also played drums. We all wanted to make sure it all worked for us. And none of us has much of an ego. It was a great hang, too! We were all metalheads that listen to anything heavy. Our songs went from thrash, to death, to doom, to weird rock-y instrumentals. But it was all fun, which is what matters.
In all seriousness, that sounds like a great situation and I hope you're able to get it up and running again.
Glad to find I’m in good company here.
It's worth mentioning if you're playing fingerstyle where you pluck has a huge influence on the sound. If you're up by the neck like Al/Sleep or the guy from Church of Misery you're going to sound very different from someone playing by the bridge or over the pickups. You can get totally different sounds with any string based off your placement.
I usually try to find the sweet spot in the low mids and boost that and adjust the rest for taste. Personally I don't care much for how most modern metal is mixed on guitar or bass either.
True! I usually anchor my thumb on the neck pickup. Every once in a great while, the bridge pickup.
Musket clone arrived today. It is the easiest fuzz I've ever dialed in. Not that it doesn't have range, but man, it just sounds great at so many settings. Not sure if I prefer it to my Swollen Pickle, but they're both pretty amazing. In my recent Pickle/Pharaoh comparisons I found myself wondering if there was some sort of middle ground between the two because I loved them both but they had their own idiosyncrasies too. I feel that the Musket is in that middle ground. It's got the compression of the Pickle and the natural low end of the Pharaoh.
The Pharaoh still has the most natural low end, and sounds most natural overall. For now, I think the Swollen Pickle sounds a bit more natural than the Musket, but I've had countless hours of tweaking the Pickle to find those settings. The Musket has been maybe half an hour. Either way, I think I'm done looking for muffs. These three should cover anything I'd need.
The Pharaoh still has the most natural low end, and sounds most natural overall. For now, I think the Swollen Pickle sounds a bit more natural than the Musket, but I've had countless hours of tweaking the Pickle to find those settings. The Musket has been maybe half an hour. Either way, I think I'm done looking for muffs. These three should cover anything I'd need.
Hey there Doomerinos! This isn't exactly doom, but it's at least doom adjacent and it's pretty darn good:
That delving. record is damn good, I agree. That’s Nick DiSalvo from Elder’s solo project. Likewise, it’s been in my rotation for the past 3 months or so.
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I completely second this…Orange Goblin f-ing rules in my book…
My favorite album by them is Back From The Abyss (probably doesn’t hurt that The Devil’s Whip sounds an awful lot like a Motörhead song)…
Thanks! \m/
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Thanks for posting this bc I was curious about how it would fit into a Thrash Metal setting…
For Doom/Stoner Metal I actually think flats would work pretty well bc often times you’re trying to create a giant wall of fuzz/distortion so being articulate probably matters a lot less…
Granted I have nothing “against” rounds, but the idea that rounds work “better” seems to be a really prevailing urban legend (for lack of a better euphemism)…
Thanks! \m/
Here’s how it sounds in a final mix:
I know I’ve posted this a few times before in this thread, so apologies to anyone who’s sick of it.
Indeed. I snagged the vinyl direct from Stickman when they released it, and I'm glad I did. It's definitely my AOTY. There are a few months left, but I don't see anything dethroning it. Sonically it's kind of the perfect meld of sounds for what I've been digging on lately. Doesn't hurt that Elder is easily rooted in my top 3, if not my #1, but it's definitely not an Elder album, either. Anyway - killer record all the way through.
————————————————Modern forms of metal seem to mostly have the bass be present in low bass frequencies along with the clanky highs you can get from roundwounds, just following the guitar to fatten the sound. Going by Flea's philosophy, i.e. the bass is just there to make the guitar sound good, it works (even if Flea is in another genre). But I find this approach lacklustre. I think a lot of bassists do. It's like having the bass just be glue holding other parts together -- most commonly we talk about bass being the link between rhythm and melody.
I'm a selfish megalomaniac and I want the bass to be the centrepiece to build the rest of the song around rather than a necessitated afterthought. So I prefer flats with their rich mids. I still have enough bass and treble to have a sound that doesn't sound deliberately muted. Which is not to say I have that same high-end clank. And yeah, this style won't sit as well with a modern metal guitar sound, they're not made for each other. Changing the bass sound requires changing the guitar sound, and I'd wager writing style too, because you're shifting who's responsible for which frequency ranges too. Prevalence of rhythm guitars may be a contributing factor to this shift. The rhythm role is filled by the bass in bands such as Iron Maiden and Sleep, but if you'd add a rhythm guitarist to those bands (yes, that means a third guitarist in Iron Maiden's case) you'd have to drastically change the bass sound to fit it in, and with that you wouldn't have the same mids presence that enables the bass to be the melodic driving force, restricting you to bass frequencies and what little clankery you can get your roundwound-calloused fingers on.
I'd imagine the "loudness wars" has pushed producers to shift their methodology too, contributing to the change of bass style through the years, but I'm not knowledgeable enough to speak much on that front.
That doesn’t make you a selfish megalomaniac IMO…It means you want to contribute and show your artistic creativity…
Imagine how those first 3 Metallica albums would’ve sounded if Cliff was content with just sitting back and playing an uninspiring bass line…
I’m guessing those albums probably wouldn’t be anywhere near as great if they were…(We certainly wouldn’t have that awesome Bass Solo Take One from Anesthesia (Pulling Teeth)…
Funny you mention that about Maiden bc I liked them a lot before I started playing bass, but after I tried a couple of their songs on bass I can’t seem to stop listening to them bc you can easily hear the bass in their mix…
LOVE that driving bass line sound especially on The Trooper and Stranger In A Strange Land…Those rhythm gallops are a ton of fun to play if you hit them just right…
To your other point about Metal sub genres…
I’m thinking that 90s Metal didn’t really help this myth any bc most Groove/Industrial/Nu Metal bands got into a pattern where bands became kind of obsessed with down tuning…
I mean - Drop D sounds great and more “menacing” than standard tuning, but I was looking at a Korn song one day a few months back that was tuned to A…That’s a bit…Um…Excessive in that regard IMO…The end of that bass solo at the beginning of Got The Life right before the lyrics start almost becomes inaudible it’s so low…
By extension to my previous point about down tuning during that time period- I feel like a lot of people who were inspired to play those songs were determined to find a cheap Ibanez and just down tune it as far as possible…
While that’s good up to a certain point, I would argue thst song structure and the overall atmosphere of the song matter too…
Hell, look at the first couple of Black Sabbath records and a lot of Thrash Metal bands in the 80s…A lot of those songs are in standard tuning, but that doesn’t mean they can’t sound “evil” or menacing…
As for the loudness wars…UGH…
That one still bothers me bc again I feel like that’s good up to a certain point and then you lose a lot of dynamics…I mean…Maybe I’m just an angry old man here when I say this, but I feel a lot of 90s albums sounded really great sonically but as you get into the 2000s I feel like it became popular to just try to make things as loud as possible without any sort of attention to balance…
Even my favorite band did that one bc I’m guessing Death Magnetic would have sounded a LOT better if it didn’t sound so compressed (for lack of a better word)…I would’ve loved it if the production on that album has sounded more like the Black Album/Load/ReLoad/or Garage Inc…Those albums all kind of “do it” for me is wise…
Production wise I always thought Metallica’s 90s albums sounded the best bc they had such a monster sound but you could still hear all the instruments so it sounded better when it’s being played at 11 to make some ear drums bleed…(Hey look at that-Two Spinal Tap references in one sentence…I should’ve mentioned The Black Album in that sentence to go for the hat trick…Nigel Tuffnel would be SUPER disappointed with me for spacing out on that one…
Thanks! \m/
New Monolord is quite fantastic. Early impression is that it just might be the best they've done.
If you want the bass to shine just do what I did and get rid of he guitars altogether. Lol.
Tried to practice last night, but drummer got fornicated by work and couldn't make it.
Decided to use the Peavey Standard for a go. I like the Marshall [Mosfet lead 100] a lot better. Less muffled.
Pedalboard pic. Not pictured is the Dunlop Bass Wah which i put on the floor next to the board. Plain box is the Univox Superfuzz clone.
If you want the bass to shine just do what I did and get rid of he guitars altogether. Lol.
Tried to practice last night, but drummer got fornicated by work and couldn't make it.
Decided to use the Peavey Standard for a go. I like the Marshall [Mosfet lead 100] a lot better. Less muffled.
Pedalboard pic. Not pictured is the Dunlop Bass Wah which i put on the floor next to the board. Plain box is the Univox Superfuzz clone.
old timer doom-roomers, a while back there was a company that did a run of Sunn Beta style preamps that were defective. A bunch of doom-room guys bought them and they had MAJOR issues: The the power side of the circuit was feeding into the audio side and it fried the preamp and connected power amps. IIR, the dude was doing cabs for Verellen for a minute. The dude from The Osedax got two unfinished 6x10s from him too.
Does anyone remember the name of the company?
Does anyone remember the name of the company?
We released an album a few weeks back if anyone wants to check it out. It's my first foray into singing (on two tracks), so be gentle. Funeral Mask, by Funeral Mask
Also, inspired by @br1qbat and the recent calls for more pics, here is an untidy shot my my corner of the Funeral Mask dungeon:
Also, inspired by @br1qbat and the recent calls for more pics, here is an untidy shot my my corner of the Funeral Mask dungeon:
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