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THAT Pbass tone? Educate me please!

Ian774

Ian774

Jan 27, 2007
1,749
3,033
Edinburgh, Scotland
#1
Hey guys,

I have been wondering how to achieve this Pbass tone…. I know the guy plays a Pbass for sure, and that he has a SansAmp BDDI (V1 I think) and a Rat on his pedalboard, but no info about anything else.
I love that slightly driven, gritty tone, yet not harsh.

Any advice welcome on how to achieve this sound. Educate me! Doesn’t seem to be rocket science. thanks!

 
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#3
Impossible without talking to the producer.

Not being "harsh" may be studio magic. It could be ear bleeding going into the box.

I was doing some not so dissimilar sound last night but I was using some WILD eq.

8db cut low self running way up into the mids and boosted high shelf on the distorted channel.
Parallel clean bass, pretty compressed. Both channels routed to another buss with more specific eq and and compression and I also had a desser on the group channel to stop some 6 to7khz nastiness on certian notes caused but the distortion and a low pass filter set pretty high.

There are guys our there that are pretty good at cloning studio sounds on pedals, but ive never been one of them. Maybe they can chime in and get you close.
I quite trying to get studio sounds out side the studio a LONG time ago. For me it was like beating my head against the wall for no reason. Super frustrating and often near impossible without a pile of the RIGHT pedals.

Beware of album sounds. They can sound wildy different from reality.
 
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#5
Yeah I know he uses a Rat but it doesn’t mean he’s using it here indeed. I’ll experiment with my BDDI V2 and my Pbass, but I feel like it would require a moderate Blend (9 o’clock) as it keeps the Pbass tone at that level, anything higher and the SansAmp baked in tone takes over. I can hear a lot of the P tone in that song.
 
#6
I'm no connoisseur of Rats but my Idiotbox Blower Box sounds delightful at low gain where you don't hear that signature scrunch thing. This could very well be BDDI and Rat stacked. But as Drop1 said, without inside info it's impossible to know what happened in the studio. Could be plugins... and it actually reminds me a bit of a session I did where I went thru an Ampeg plugin.

Regardless, great bass tone. Thanks for the post.
 
#9
P bass into an overdriven tube amp no pedals required.
I've seen a couple videos of him playing a super bassman live and those get super dirty if you want see this video

Might be worth looking at the Origin Bassrig 64 for the Fender drive tone.
 
#13
I'm listening to the video of a gig I did this weekend and the tone is the same. But I'm thinking that's not entirely true, because there were more elements involved: I had the BDDI into the input of the amp, so the EQ of the amp also affected, and so the cab. The settings in the BDDI were: Blend full, Bass and Treble 13.5, Drive at noon and Presence 13.00. The DCX settings were: drive mode, dark voice, Drive at 10, LF and HF at 13.00. I don't remember the amp settings, but taking these variables into account, take it with a grain of salt. I know I had the mids and the treble pushed in the amp, to counteract the darkness of the 810. Also, I was using fresh rounwound strings.
 
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#14
What I'd try : a P or any bass with a neck pickup in a similar spot, compression into EQ with high mids boosted and low mids slightly cut, into a cab sim. Some reverb for that 360° thing is a plus.
Keep us posted on your progress!
 
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#15
I was curious, so I tried something quick and dirty! It would be close enough to me if I wanted to replicate this tone live.
Zen Blade in neck position > MXR bass comp > OCSD replicating a 8x10, with added overdrive and reverb from Audacity (post-everything, not ideal). I think with overdrive before cab sim it'd sound much closer.
Let me know what you think (backing track made using splitter.ai).

 
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#16
I got to see Balance and Composure live before they broke up last time in Jersey City NJ and the bass tone was every bit as good as the vid here. He plays Fender tube heads quite a bit. I always assumed that's where much of the pleasing growl originated from?
 
#17
XLunacy said:
I was curious, so I tried something quick and dirty! It would be close enough to me if I wanted to replicate this tone live.
Zen Blade in neck position > MXR bass comp > OCSD replicating a 8x10, with added overdrive and reverb from Audacity (post-everything, not ideal). I think with overdrive before cab sim it'd sound much closer.
Let me know what you think (backing track made using splitter.ai).

Click to expand...


thanks, that sounds good!

anticlimactic said:
I got to see Balance and Composure live before they broke up last time in Jersey City NJ and the bass tone was every bit as good as the vid here. He plays Fender tube heads quite a bit. I always assumed that's where much of the pleasing growl originated from?
Click to expand...

Recently he’s been playing Ampeg. And here’s the best image of his pedalboard I could find :D



IMG_0515.png
IMG_0516.png
 
#18
tvbop said:
Yep, back in the day, P bass, fresh rounds, heavy pick into a full SVT stack is that tone and with more heft. Chk out The Damned, The Jam etc etc.
Click to expand...
Except that Bruce Foxton started out on an Ibanez Ric 4001 copy, then moved to a P or an Epiphone Rivoli hollowbody, all the while using Marshall amps. The earliest days of The Damned, with the Captain still on bass, saw him with a Hofner(or knockoff)violin bass through Hiwatts. Algy Ward had a P, Paul Gray a Ric with Orange amps(when I saw them a couple of years ago).
 
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