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What bass is Meshell playing here?

I remember buying that Plantation Lullabies album when it came out. I wasn't really a fan of rap, but the way Meshell did it was very appealing to me. So much musicality there. She's great no matter what she plays.

Same here. Her music always comes from an artistic angle whereas some other stuff just seems to come from ego, arrogance and posturing.
 
I remember seeing her in an ad with her Modulus VJ but I can't remember what it was an ad for.
vj.jpeg
 
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Same here. Her music always comes from an artistic angle whereas some other stuff just seems to come from ego, arrogance and posturing.
I was in love with her first three albums.
But since then, she's been one of those artists who is obsessed with "different" rather than good.
Instead of playing to her strengths and developing from that place artistically, she'd rather do something else.
 
Yup. Was gonna say, same as the video for the tune she did with Mellencamp.

Of course, what's in a music video has nothing to do with what we hear on the actual song. But the second i saw the bass in the OP i recognized it from this video and was pretty sure it was a Gibson from my fuzzy memory of it 30 years ago. :D:thumbsup:


I have hailed a lot of taxis over the decades. Never once did I have a driver that looked like that.
 
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I was in love with her first three albums.
But since then, she's been one of those artists who is obsessed with "different" rather than good.
Instead of playing to her strengths and developing from that place artistically, she'd rather do something else.

I haven't really listened to much of her newer stuff, but my impression is that she's just following an artistic calling rather than doing something different just for the sake of it being different. I just watched her NPR Tiny Desk "concert" and the music and performance is genuine, even if it is very different than her first few albums.
 
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I was in love with her first three albums.
But since then, she's been one of those artists who is obsessed with "different" rather than good.
Instead of playing to her strengths and developing from that place artistically, she'd rather do something else.
I believe what we see there is how much influence the producer can have on an artist’s sound. That was David Gamson on the first two records and I sure do wish they would make another one together.
 
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Here’s a video from waaay back in 1994, Meshell playing “If That’s Your Boyfriend He Wasn’t Last Night.” Check out how young Jon Stewart looks!

I’d post this just because it’s badass and fun to watch, the band is very tight here. But Meshell has an interesting bass, a Les Paul body shape with dual humbuckers and a very modern, almost Mark King tone. She plays it when she wants to feature the bass; there’s another guy playing the recorded part on an J. Anyone know what Meshell’s bass is?

I find it interesting because even at that point she was mainly playing vintage looking Fenders with flats or dead rounds, this bass is a departure from her pattern both visually and audibly. Sure sounds good though.



Whenever someone post's a music video like that I always get sucked into it and then I forget what the damn question was :smug:
 
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I was playing an old 90's (1992?) passive Les Paul with vintage cherry finish, Gibson Thunderbird pickups (but no Bartolini preamp or active circuitry), ebony fingerboard with dot markers, and a slab flat top mahogany solid body. Looks like Wild Nights (the Mellencamp cover) was from sometime around 1994. I think by that time they were making an active hollow body version made more like a Les Paul guitar, with many aesthetic improvements over my plain cherry solid body flat top one (fancy carved top, semi-hollowbody, block fret markers). They had a cherry burst hollow body one that looked exactly like the one M'Shell is playing in the video.

Sometime in the 2000's they were making a big bass guitar (more like a bass-scaled version of the big-body Les Paul guitar). I think all the basses except the older ones in the 90's kept the active circuitry. Wikipedia claims the initial ones in the 90's had the Bartolini preamp and active circuitry (which many people ripped out because it didn't sound all that great, apparently).

The passive ones had massive sound all on their own. Mine was the hottest signal I ever got out of a bass. I had to run it with the volume only halfway up, or I'd overdrive the amp channel and get an unpleasant (to me, at least) "bleating" distorted bass sound (some of the live Cream stuff had this sound coming out of Bruce's Gibson SG (or EB-0?) bass). Mine had a very nice heavy bass sound, much like the sound of a good Thunderbird with more heft to it. These basses had the three-knob jazz style electronics: neck pickup volume, bridge pickup volume, master tone. Other versions from this era had the four-knob Gibson Les Paul style electronics: two knobs for each pickup volume and tone.

I bought a replacement for my initial one last year, and the seller claimed it had the preamp in it. However, it had the three-knob controls just like my old passive one, so I was hopeful. When I got the bass, I immediately took it apart to check, and it had just the passive pickups and no preamp (and no battery compartment) as I had suspected. I was actually happier NOT having the active circuitry, because I loved the old passive ones, which apparently were released only for a few years in the early 90's. And the three knob ones are very difficult to find (the four-knob LPs are much more common). I suspect they made the three-knob ones only for one or two years.

Many years later I played a Pedulla P/J style four string fretted bass, and I swear the neck on it was almost exactly the same as my 1992 Gibson Les Paul Bass neck. He must have patterned it after the old Les Paul Bass necks.
 
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