We've lost the old school sound.

[alexclaber]

Not sure how to even tittle this. So I'm driving, whole lotta love comes on the radio. Ofcourse we all know and love JPJ's tone on it. Some old Marshall or hiwatt or orange or something but killer right. Then there's Glover's tone on good ol smoke on the water. Just to name 2 old songs with killer tones we just don't hear in new music.

I'd say you hear sounds like that all the time in new rock music. The tone that has (mostly) been lost is the so-called 'modern' tone which is actually best described as the '80s tone, the result of those new fangled active basses and the influence of synth bass, certainly in mainstream rock and pop music we hear in the UK. Another tone which has thankfully been lost is the '80s rock bass tone (muffled rumble which you can only hear if your hi-fi cranks to 110dB for that authentic coked up hair metal studio experience...)

 

[BoogieZK]

Listen to Opeth - Sorceress album.

Vintage tone can easily be done with pedals, eq, modern amps...
Remember that your tone is mostly coming from you, not your gear.

Roll your bass tone halfway down, play with your picking hand between the neck and the Neck PU, roll down bass and boost some low mids your amp and Boom, you have a 50's sound.
No matter the amp, bass or cab.

 

[Axstar]

I favour older bass tones, but Glover on Smoke and JPJ on Whole Lotta Love are two tones I would never want to copy. The former had a sort of farty clank that lacked any proper lows, and JPJ had some annoying anaemic sizzle that I subconsciously blame Jimmy Page for.

For me, those good old tones that need to come back are John Wetton with King Crimson, Ray Shulman with Gentle Giant and Chris Squire's tone with Yes. To a lesser degree Geezer Butler's trademark 'wump' and Entwistle's tone on Live at Leeds.

 

[Nine lives]

All well and good ... for a 50s rumble sound that many seem to define as "vintage" tone, but the sound I use is more towards (but not quite) "Live at Leeds" bright. Clean with a lot of harmonic content until you dig in and that is in the hands. The speaker cabs are a large part of it, the 200s amp into a modern cab is nowhere near the sound of using the matching cab loaded with the vintage speakers. As an aside I still do have modern gear when needed, a custom made 1x15 with a neo speaker driven by a MarkBass head. With pedals it will get me in the ballpark, but won't knock a homer into the bleachers! Also crushing loud is not what I'm after, a 22watt Fender Deluxe is the amp of choice for most of the guitar players in my genre. Need more sound out front, I read on here all the time "let the FOH do the heavy lifting" then your rig is a stage monitor.

 

[bigswifty1]

Interesting thread! I'll just say this. It's a lot easier to get 70's tone with modern gear than the other way 'round!
Mike

 

[SteveCS]

Quite a bit of the recorded tone you're talking about came from the board. A lot of bass was (and still is) just DI. Then there is the compressor that was in the chain to consider. Then the eq settings. Then if an amp/cab was used. A big old acoustic 360 would get you part of the way there. Definitely look into something with big slot ports for that wide sound.

I'd say the board, eq, and the compression type/amount is most of what you're after.

I seem to remember Zep using a Helios board on a lot of their recordings. I had a chance to record using some modules from an old Helios board and if you eq'd them just right, bonzo and jpj would materialize. Magic modules, those were.

Not forgetting tape saturation as another source of 'character'...

 

[Teijo K.]

As stated, recorded bass was often DI, but then the recording couldn't have those low frequencies because stereos and car speakers of the time couldn't handle those notes. And look at the typical radio people listened to music on back in those days! You throw a low frequency bass note to that and one of two things will happen: a) nothing, because the speaker can't produce that frequency, or b) blow out the speaker.

So a lot of "vintage" recorded bass was done without the modern day low end bc of necessity. And then you have the bass cabs of the 60's which couldn't produce a good loud clean low frequency either - but even before the cab quit, the tube amps would saturate and go in to fuzz, so the speakers weren't receiving a clean signal to begin with.

I'm over-generalizing here, I realize. Point is, you can recreate the old tones with the right gear. It might cost a few bucks. Hey, its wasn't cheap gear back then either. The modern bass tone is different because the technology has advanced to allow a P bass to sound more like the tone a P bass actually produces.

But in a way, for some people anyway, sound quality has taken couple of steps back. We made a record last year for a friend. I formed a band for it, recorded, mixed, produced and played bass on it. So naturally I was really proud of it, and at some point had a copy of it with me all the time. Some of my friends were actually really eager to hear it, and kept bugging me about it, but when I finally came with the cd turned out they dont have a cd player. So they only listen music with headphones, or laptop speakers. And even the laptop is one of the new models with no cd/dvd in it. It was not just one or two people. All the musician friends naturally had a nice stereo set. But among those who just listen, the core audience so to speak, it was surprisingly common not to have a radio anymore.

I did went for a retro sound, so it kind a works on laptop skeakers too, but anything with more up to day sound in it... The band could as well make the record without the bass at all. Same with those tiny bluetooth speakers some use. Well they are better than the build in speakers in a laptop computer. Remains to be seen if the music industry reacts to this.

 

[40Hz]

Interesting thread! I'll just say this. It's a lot easier to get 70's tone with modern gear than the other way 'round!
Mike

I'll just say that most folks who really dig and are going for the '70s tone aren't all that interested in getting what you're calling the modern gear sound anyway. So it's kinda moot.

 

[Korladis]

I'll just say that anybody who really digs and is going for the '70s tone isn't all that interested in getting what you're calling the modern gear sound anyway. So it's kinda moot.

Indeed. I don't have much use for the "modern" or "hi-fi" sound on bass. Nor do most in my scene.

 

[pbassjbass]

Don't under estimate the role of the physical record in the sound chain. That little groove was an unforgiving limit on the frequency range which could be used for a recording. A big low end thump and the needle jumps the track, too much high end, and the lathe cutting head gets damaged. Compared to digital, the lows and highs are gone, leaving a manageable middle. In my limited experience back then, everybody in the process worked inside those limits. (Who needs a five string, when the recording, bass amp, and PA are all going to start rolling off at the low A.)

 

[bassballs27]

It seems to me the recreating the past accurately will always be more expensive than now. And getting the best of now will be expensive too. The key is to make the best of now with what you have.

 

[Korladis]

Don't under estimate the role of the physical record in the sound chain. That little groove was an unforgiving limit on the frequency range which could be used for a recording. A big low end thump and the needle jumps the track, too much high end, and the lathe cutting head gets damaged. Compared to digital, the lows and highs are gone, leaving a manageable middle. In my limited experience back then, everybody in the process worked inside those limits. (Who needs a five string, when the recording, bass amp, and PA are all going to start rolling off at the low A.)

You can still have a pretty decent amount of low end on vinyl. I have records by bands that tune to low A.

 

[rodl2005]

I'll 3rd, 4th or 5th the Fender Super Bassman suggestion. Passive bass with flats thru the vintage channel. ... even better thru a single 15" and the amp cranked a bit. Sounds- to me at least- like what I hear on 60s n 70s recordings that I like.

 

[Guitalia]

Some of the '60s and '70s musicians who played with tones referred to as "vintage" now would have used a cleaner (more "modern") tone if they could have found amps capable of that tone. Listen to Jack Bruce with Cream versus his later recordings.

If fact, when Frank Zappa recruited Jack Bruce to play on his "Apostrophe" album, he asked him to play through an old Marshall amp, because he was looking for the Cream tone that Jack had moved on from.

 

[petrus61]

You can still have a pretty decent amount of low end on vinyl. I have records by bands that tune to low A.

Not to mention truck loads of hip hop that was and is still being pressed. They do design turntables now (actually for many years) that are sturdy enough to handle being in proximity to sub woofers.

 

[Korladis]

Some of the '60s and '70s musicians who played with tones referred to as "vintage" now would have used a cleaner (more "modern") tone if they could have found amps capable of that tone. Listen to Jack Bruce with Cream versus his later recordings.

If fact, when Frank Zappa recruited Jack Bruce to play on his "Apostrophe" album, he asked him to play through an old Marshall amp, because he was looking for the Cream tone that Jack had moved on from.

Like I've said elsewhere.... the Cream reunion video was one of the most disappointing sounding things I've ever experienced.

 

[okonokos]

For me, it would be really cool to get a sound like that from modern gear. Most of what I hear on recordings is pretty boring. I'd love to hear a new band with tones like that as it gets my attention.

Tame Impala - Currents

 

[rtslinger]

You are pointing out tones that were produced in the studio with doubling bass tracks one clean and one dirty and compressed a few times. parlor tricks. Saw Led Zeppelin live in the 70's and FOH the bass tone was deep and punchy on every song no grit no noticeable chorus stuff. Deep Purple I saw in MSG 1974 I had great seats Glenn was using a Fireglow Ric and was getting your typical Ric sound from it all night. and switch out to a Fender for a few songs He was using two SVT heads on top of two large open folded horns like EV cabinets my guess

 

[40Hz]

Listen to Opeth - Sorceress album.

Vintage tone can easily be done with pedals, eq, modern amps...
Remember that your tone is mostly coming from you, not your gear.

Roll your bass tone halfway down, play with your picking hand between the neck and the Neck PU, roll down bass and boost some low mids your amp and Boom, you have a 50's sound.
No matter the amp, bass or cab.

I gave the Opeth track you mentioned a listen. Nice kinda King Crimson (sort of) vibe. But it sounds like a bass with some smooth fuzz and the tone rolled off to me. Not the '70s sound.

When I think of the '70s sound I'm hearing something like this Joe Cocker concert. It was recorded in 1992 so it benefits from better recording technology. But the band's sound is what a good concert sounded like live during the '70s. Notice how the bass sounded more back in the mix than it does today. Much more of a blended in sound that resembled distant thunder with a floomy legato quality people try to get with fuzz and effects these days.



If a concert is too long to listen to, try this instead. It has that same sonic quality:



I'd appreciate somebody who claims they can "easily" duplicate that same sound with modern gear to send us an audio clip or video and some liner notes on what was used and how it was done. I'm prepared to be extremely impressed.

I'm not saying it's impossible to duplicate that old sound. Because it isn't. But it's so different, both sonically and stylistically, from how most popular bass is played today (to say nothing of the gear it's being played on) that I think it would be far from an easy thing to recreate convincingly.

 

[Korladis]

I gave the Opeth track you mentioned a listen. Nice kinda King Crimson (sort of) vibe. But it sounds like a bass with some smooth fuzz and the tone rolled off to me. Not the '70s sound.

When I think of the '70s sound I'm hearing something like this Joe Cocker concert. It was recorded in 1992 so it benefits from better recording technology. But the band's sound is what a good concert sounded like live during the '70s. Notice how the bass sounded more back in the mix than it does today. Much more of a blended in sound that resembled distant thunder with a floomy legato quality people try to get with fuzz and effects these days.



If a concert is too long to listen to, try this instead. It has that same sonic quality:



I'd appreciate somebody who claims they can "easily" duplicate that same sound with modern gear to send us an audio clip or video and some liner notes on what was used and how it was done. I'm prepared to be extremely impressed.

I'm not saying it's impossible to duplicate that old sound. Because it isn't. But it's so different, both sonically and stylistically, from how most popular bass is played today (to say nothing of the gear it's being played on) that I think it would be far from an easy thing to recreate convincingly.

What defines gear as modern?

Is a V4B built yesterday modern or old school?