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The Cure, anyone??

Bassdude15

Bassdude15

Guest
Feb 26, 2013
687
42
Nashville
#1
I saw the music video for "Lovesong" today, and I must say that bass tone is fantastic!!!

Does anyone know what bass guitar/strings the bass player (I think his name's Simon Gallup or something) used on that song??



Thanks,
Bassdude15
 
#3
Big Gallup fan here, main influence really. Love this bassline.

From the late 80's to the early 90's live he mainly used a Dick Knight custom semi hollowbody bass with two EMG pickups, one neck and one bridge.

Of course, i'm not certain this is what he used during the Disintegration recordings (the record that has lovesong), throughout most of the 80's he used a Fender Precision and during the Disintegration tour he used a Music Man Stingray and a black electro-acoustic Washburn AB-40 (seen on many disintegrqtion tour era which leads me to believe he used it a lot) which he might also have used in the studio. So basically...it was liekly one of those basses....or not. Who knows.

As for strings, I don't know THEN but more he's been using regular gauge rotosound strings in more recent years so that might help. Don't think he ever used anything other than regular gauge and definitely never anything other than roundwounds.

In terms of effects, all Boss, DD-3 digital delay, BF-2 flanger, Ce-5 Chorus ensemble and MT-2 distortion mainly to varying degrees.
 
#4
clmayhew said:
I believe that he mostly used T-Birds in those days but lately he seems to favor the Jack Casady model Epiphone.
Click to expand...


I've never seen him with a Thunderbird until the late 90's. Pretty sure he never used one then. And I've only seen him a few times with the Casady. He said himself he cares more about how a bass look than how it sounds, reasoning that with enough fiddling about you can get a bass to sound close to what you want.


Another thing that might help is his EQ settings, in his own words "it goes heavy on the bottom, I take out the middle and it's heavy on the top. On a graphic EQ, the shape is like a chevron""
 
#6
Lovesong has been played on a MusicMan Stingray (The one you can see on Live in Orange), through his faithful Boss BCB-6 pedalboard with power supply, super overdrive, flanger, chorus, analog delay and noise suppressor connected to a Peavey Megabass head and a Peavey 1820 (1x18" + 2x10") cab.
The strings where Rotosound and the picks were 1mm Dunlops (The black ones)
 
#7
MC1970 said:
Lovesong has been played on a MusicMan Stingray (The one you can see on Live in Orange), through his faithful Boss BCB-6 pedalboard with power supply, super overdrive, flanger, chorus, analog delay and noise suppressor connected to a Peavey Megabass head and a Peavey 1820 (1x18" + 2x10") cab.
The strings where Rotosound and the picks were 1mm Dunlops (The black ones)
Click to expand...

Simon? Is that you?

Honestly though i'm impressed. Where did you get all this info? (not that im doubting you at all, its just very thorough, like, down to the picks used... so i'm genuinely interested...were you part of the studio crew?)

At least i did mention the right bass...at some point.
 
#8
Bassdude15 said:
Actually, now that I look closer, the bass he's playing does in fact have F-holes… but his strings are shiny, they can't be round wounds. Interesting.
Click to expand...

Actually in the video he's playing his black Washburn AB-40


washburn-ab40-vintage-sunburst-422556.jpg


that was ubiquitous during the Disintegration tour and which doesn't have F-holes. But don't necessarily trust the basses he plays in videos. They're more often than not not what he used in recordings.

For example, in the Fascination street video he plays a Fender Bass VI (which yes the cure did use a lot but 99% of the time, by Robert Smith), there's no way this bassline is played on a Bass VI
 
#10
Hallo Milk,
sorry to say that it's not Simon here ;-)
My name is Marco and I'm fm Italy; I happen to know a few info concerning Simon's past gear since at the time I lived in London and I had chances to meet Simon and chat with him about basses and gear..... That's how I know about it; I wish I had a more interesting truth to share, but this is how it went.
Another thing I remember is that Simon told me he used two different StingRays for the Disintegration sessions; an all maple neck one with black body and white pickguard with a standard tuning, and another one, black and maple neck as well, with a black pickguard tuned D A D G.....
So, when you hear low D it is the black/black, otherwise it is the black/white one.
During the tour he used mainly his Washburn AB40, switching to the B/B StingRay when low D was needed.
since he did not like the lows that came out of the AB40, he changed the setting on the Boss GE-7..... Everything flat except the two lowest slides "full throttle"

Hope it helps

Marco
 
#13
MC1970 said:
Hallo Milk,
sorry to say that it's not Simon here ;-)
My name is Marco and I'm fm Italy; I happen to know a few info concerning Simon's past gear since at the time I lived in London and I had chances to meet Simon and chat with him about basses and gear..... That's how I know about it; I wish I had a more interesting truth to share, but this is how it went.
Another thing I remember is that Simon told me he used two different StingRays for the Disintegration sessions; an all maple neck one with black body and white pickguard with a standard tuning, and another one, black and maple neck as well, with a black pickguard tuned D A D G.....
So, when you hear low D it is the black/black, otherwise it is the black/white one.
During the tour he used mainly his Washburn AB40, switching to the B/B StingRay when low D was needed.
since he did not like the lows that came out of the AB40, he changed the setting on the Boss GE-7..... Everything flat except the two lowest slides "full throttle"

Hope it helps

Marco
Click to expand...


Amazing. Wish i'd have been lucky enough to meet him. Well...i guess it's not too late, but it's unlikely. :-p

The two stringrays situation is reminiscent of the two Dick Knight semi-hollows he used for the Wish your (both seen in Show). The black was standard tuning, the white was half a step down on the top string (or maybe all strings were half step down...i used to tune myself properly when i played along to Show years ago but i forget now how exactly it was tuned). I fell in love with semi hollows (and Eb-2 style bodies specifically) the very first time i saw him with one of those Dick Knight
 
#14
My wife is a huge fan of The Cure, her CD collection of them alone spans about 2 bookshelves, without even getting into records, tapes and dvds. When we saw them on tour in 2004 on the Curiosa Festival, Simon was playing Thunderbirds for most songs and sounded great. Fascination Street was a big highlight, his bass tone was rumbling the floor with the stadium sound setup.

I totally buy that he used Stingrays on Disintegration, by the tone. He strikes me as the type of musician though that will make just about anything sound good live. Their albums are so heavily produced I don't think they rely too much on a specific bass/pickup to get the sound.
 
#15
Corey Y said:
My wife is a huge fan of The Cure, her CD collection of them alone spans about 2 bookshelves, without even getting into records, tapes and dvds. When we saw them on tour in 2004 on the Curiosa Festival, Simon was playing Thunderbirds for most songs and sounded great. Fascination Street was a big highlight, his bass tone was rumbling the floor with the stadium sound setup.

I totally buy that he used Stingrays on Disintegration, by the tone. He strikes me as the type of musician though that will make just about anything sound good live. Their albums are so heavily produced I don't think they rely too much on a specific bass/pickup to get the sound.
Click to expand...

I saw them for the only time live on the same tour. Haven't liked anything Post-Wish but they were clever and would play one new song and one classic for the first like 12 songs and then only played oldies for the rest.

And Gallup is quoted as saying he doesn't really care what he plays ultimately, that he's more about aesthetics than sound. His philosophy is rooted in punk, play what you got. Still most of the basses he's ever played are listed in this topic.

I remember an interview about The Cure self titled in 2004 where he said he let the producer do what he wanted with his tone but that live he reverted to his usual setup and wouldnt try to replicate the record tone. Personally his live tone during the Wish era is my ideal tone. Like Charlotte sometimes on Paris for example.
 
#16
I dig most of the Cures songs. It took me years to appreciate the bassist. I didnt pay attention when I was younger. Then I started playing the bass and I listened to and heard the Cure in a completely different light. The bassist is AWESOME!! He really does write some of the tastiest, busy yet exactly what the song needed bass lines. Great great bassist.
 
#20
good page with lot of info about Cure gear and such: [Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

Simon Gallup is a favourite of mine: simple but catchy bass lines, and a tone that defined an era. I'm still struggling to play lovesong line fingerstyle...
 

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