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We've lost the old school sound.

#221
Bill Fatty said:
Having grown up in the 70s, when I got my first shi tty bass, first shi tty amp and first sh itty cab, I really think the "old school sound" was a rarity in the "old school".

Firstly there was a lot of distortion going on, and I hated distortion, my bass player mates hated it, everybody hated distortion on bass but it was almost unavoidable. If you wanted to be heard you had to crank it. If you cranked it, it distorted. End of.
Look at the live sound of even the most highly respected bassists from the old days -

Entwistle? Appalling. Distorted to hell, muddy and irritating.
Geezer? Sounds like he has two blown speakers going on there, overtones drown out the fundamentals, it's terrible.
JPJ? Even studio, what the hell was that on Heartbreaker? Distorted and played through a Leslie, you can't even tell if it's bass or guitar or what.
Cliff Burton? Don't get me started, was he using a Big Muff or what?

Not to say that a nice fat tube sound isn't great, it is. And there were a few old school tracks with a great bass sound. Verdine White with EWF had a great fat tone SOMETIMES but he still farted a bit and also plonked away middily sometimes which is also annoying.

A little overdriven is OK but most bass sounds in the old days were sh it. I remember reading an article with JPJ where he tried to develop a speaker that could handle good clean lows and still be super fat; he worked with Rickenbacker to develop a 30" speaker, which they thought would do the trick. Apparently when they plugged it in, it just did a huge farting noise and turned inside out. 8 x 10s seemed better!

And there are some new tunes that are good - I find that Bruno Mars respects the bass and often gets really close to that old school sound; I really enjoy the bass on his funky numbers.

So let's respect old school but don't get too mushy; remember those Acoustic amps and cabs like Jaco used to use? Never never quite good enough imho; Jaco's live sound could be appalling too.

And new stuff can also be good!
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Psh. Entwistle's sound on Live at Leeds is godly.
Geezer's tone on Master of Reality and Live Evil are the holy grail of bass sound as far as I'm concerned (he only had the blown speaker cab for the first album).
JPJ's sound on Heartbreaker is awesome. And obviously a bass.
Also Burton only really used the Big Muff for solos. The rest of the time it was just amp overdrive (his tone is really, really easy to get with a Mesa D-180).

Also even in clean bass tone you're not hearing very much fundamental. The bass itself doesn't produce that much of it compared to the overtones, most amps don't produce it very well, and most speaker cabs aren't very loud at those frequencies. Even if you go DI to a good preamp, most sound engineers will high pass the bass at 60hz, and that's on the low end, to make room for the kick drum.

Your examples of supposedly bad tone I consider to be excellent sounding bass.
 
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#226
Korladis said:
Psh. Entwistle's sound on Live at Leeds is godly.
Geezer's tone on Master of Reality and Live Evil are the holy grail of bass sound as far as I'm concerned (he only had the blown speaker cab for the first album).
JPJ's sound on Heartbreaker is awesome. And obviously a bass.
Also Burton only really used the Big Muff for solos. The rest of the time it was just amp overdrive (his tone is really, really easy to get with a Mesa D-180).

Also even in clean bass tone you're not hearing very much fundamental. The bass itself doesn't produce that much of it compared to the overtones, most amps don't produce it very well, and most speaker cabs aren't very loud at those frequencies. Even if you go DI to a good preamp, most sound engineers will high pass the bass at 60hz, and that's on the low end, to make room for the kick drum.

Your examples of supposedly bad tone I consider to be excellent sounding bass.
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Don't get me wrong here, I'm a big fan of the old stuff; I grew up learning to play with Geezer and JPJ, love the clattery sound of Glover's Rick, love the sound of Geezer, especially on Paranoid (the last bit of Iron Man; how can you do that with fingers for so long!?!) but what I maintain, as others have said in this thread, is that the sounds they got were not ideal, maybe not even what they heard in their heads, but the best they could get with the shi tty gear available at the time. If you see pics of Glover's Rick during Made In Japan it has some Jazz pickups bunged it at a funny angle; it was said he did this to get more clean lows out of it, but wasn't satisfied ultimately. As bassists, we suffered in the 70s for sure. Entwistle on Live at Leeds probably wasn't satisfied with that tone, but it was the best he could get!
To sum up; the old school tone may sound cool now because of nostalgia and stuff, but it wasn't ideal then, and I bet most of the players in the old school wished they could have got a better tone.
 
#227
Bill Fatty said:
Don't get me wrong here, I'm a big fan of the old stuff; I grew up learning to play with Geezer and JPJ, love the clattery sound of Glover's Rick, love the sound of Geezer, especially on Paranoid (the last bit of Iron Man; how can you do that with fingers for so long!?!) but what I maintain, as others have said in this thread, is that the sounds they got were not ideal, maybe not even what they heard in their heads, but the best they could get with the shi tty gear available at the time. If you see pics of Glover's Rick during Made In Japan it has some Jazz pickups bunged it at a funny angle; it was said he did this to get more clean lows out of it, but wasn't satisfied ultimately. As bassists, we suffered in the 70s for sure. Entwistle on Live at Leeds probably wasn't satisfied with that tone, but it was the best he could get!
To sum up; the old school tone may sound cool now because of nostalgia and stuff, but it wasn't ideal then, and I bet most of the players in the old school wished they could have got a better tone.
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I actually don't like anyone's sound on Paranoid. To me the whole album sounds thin and dry. I much prefer both Butler's and Iommi's sounds on Master of Reality. And on Live Evil.
 
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#228
Some dude flamed me on here a year or so ago because I was critical of Geezer's early tone. I love Sabbath, but I still maintain that his tone on the first two or so albums was terrible. Black Sabbath as a whole didn't really start to get good production value until Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.
 
#229
LiquidMidnight said:
Some dude flamed me on here a year or so ago because I was critical of Geezer's early tone. I love Sabbath, but I still maintain that his tone on the first two or so albums was terrible. Black Sabbath as a whole didn't really start to get good production value until Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.
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I agree with that! I loved Sabbath when I was starting out, but that tone! Yikes! Like the intro to NIB: when he's soloing with the wah pedal it's OK, if a little quiet, but when he kicks into the riff it's pretty shabby sounding! All overtones and distortion! That's ok for effect but leave us some fundamentals there!
But I must agree with Sartori, the sound on Master of Reality was pretty good; quite full and still clattery enough. I read they tuned down three semi-tones for that album so that might have helped!
 
#230
A few posts back is Bobby Vega playing his Acoustic 360. I saw him at Bass Player Live a few years ago where he had the 360 and his modern rig. The modern rig, IMO, paled against the sheer authority and tone of the 360.

There's a few things that haven't been mentioned in this thread. First, bass cabs were rarely ported. That makes a big difference in the transient response, and the way the low end rolls off. Second, speakers from the 60s and 70s had tighter voice coil gaps (this according to the main recone guy in my city). More efficient and different response. Third, there weren't tweeters in the cabinets. Fourth, you had more cone area - 2x15s was kinda the minimum.

Pushing a tube amp into a little power amp distortion doesn't sound fuzzy at all with an old school cabinet. It just sounds nicely compressed, and big. If you're playing rock, especially in a trio setting, it fills the space, and doesn't get lost.
 
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