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What does "bad tone" sound like?

#61
JimmyM said:
Lemmy played in Black Uhuru?


Except that for Purple's most recent album, Roger used Bob Ezrin's old Precision for half the songs. Roger wanted to change the strings, and Bob Ezrin told him, "Don't touch the strings." Personally, I thought Roger sounded better on Made In Japan than he does with his Vigier.
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Interestingly, Geezer Butler used Vigier basses for a while, but then switched to Lakland P-basses... essentially going full circle, right back where he started from.
 
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#62
Korladis said:
Rick was done in hard rock? You must be joking.
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Of course I am.

But only by half. After the early 80s, the Rick was replaced by other models as the go-to sound. People looking for the the vintage 70s sound sought out Ricks later on, but as an iconic model for rock the Rick was retro by '83.

Not that Retro is bad, by any means. But I remember guys selling their Ricks to buy MM Stingrays by the truckload at that time When they weren't buying Steinbergers, or fretless basses with chorus pedals. Rock is a funny thing - you can do it with any bass, but players seem to think you need a certain model to play certain things. It's just a bass guitar.
 
#63
Gianni "Orlandez" Orlati said:
Dear friend, I will take the jazz bass to be of John Paul Jones on Lemon Song 20 times against any tones from Geddy Lee in any of his recordings just to talk about the same bass.. JPJ finger picking and timing in that tune is pure RNB and funk with 16 notes which were precursorsprecursor of what would come off the hands of our bipolar friend genius ... Jaco
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Agreed. JPJ's performance on that song is terrific. But his tone is lackluster, given what Entwistle, Squire, and Bruce were doing at the same time. That's the point: Those guys were changing the paradigm for the instrument. He was in a band that was changing the paradigm for Rock. Different function. Yeah, he's a stud, but those guys changed the instrument. Important difference.

Clapton is great, but Hendrix changed the instrument. Dig what I'm sayin'?
JPJ was great, but his tone changed nothing until he picked up the 8 string.
Well, I'll give him the leslie thing on Heartbreaker. That was coo, but no one else moved the ball forward.

Oh, and one more thing. There is no good reason to point out Jaco's disease in this context. Shaming people with mental health problems is part of a dysfunctional culture that leads to harm for the people who live with those problems. You've now identified yourself as part of that dysfunctional culture. Shame on you.
 
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#65
Max Blasto said:
Of course I am.

But only by half. After the early 80s, the Rick was replaced by other models as the go-to sound. People looking for the the vintage 70s sound sought out Ricks later on, but as an iconic model for rock the Rick was retro by '83.

Not that Retro is bad, by any means. But I remember guys selling their Ricks to buy MM Stingrays by the truckload at that time When they weren't buying Steinbergers, or fretless basses with chorus pedals. Rock is a funny thing - you can do it with any bass, but players seem to think you need a certain model to play certain things. It's just a bass guitar.
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And yet, where are those 80s basses now?
 
#66
JimmyM said:
Lemmy played in Black Uhuru?


Except that for Purple's most recent album, Roger used Bob Ezrin's old Precision for half the songs. Roger wanted to change the strings, and Bob Ezrin told him, "Don't touch the strings." Personally, I thought Roger sounded better on Made In Japan than he does with his Vigier.
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You wish Lemmy played in Black Uhuru. Actually, I do too! Guess who's coming to dinner, now, mudhafukaaa?:laugh::roflmao:;):roflmao:

But your story proves my point: Glover gave up on the Rick years ago, even though he sounded better then than anything he's done since.
 
#68
I can't think of many I find truly appalling, and actually all sounds mentioned here already I wouldn't consider terrible by any stretch, but those that come to mind scream "bad setup". Choked notes (not the flatwound thump but just... the sound of a dying goat), rattle (there's a good and a bad kind of rattle/clack... You know it when you hear it), intonation issues.
 
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#71
Max Blasto said:
Yes. And yet, where are those Ricks now? Not where they were.

Don't get me wrong: I love my Rick and love anybody else who's rockin' them. But mostly I see them in Rush tributes now and I'm sad about that.
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Actually I see them pretty frequently at shows being used in hard rock and metal bands. Not as common as P-basses, but certainly more common than Steinbergers or any other 80s style bass.
 
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#75
NullPorch said:
I will also say, I have mad respect for true jazz players and most have good tones. It's just a lot of the "new age, avant-garde" crowd gets too heady and weird. I'm all for experimental, but it's like poetry: When it strays too far away from the fundamental rules of the language your message gets lost.
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You were doing fine, just stating your opinion, until you got to the part when you stated that somehow people who push the boundary aren't "true jazz" players. Miles Davis would smack you for that. Because yeah, playing within a safe boundary and never pushing the limit is truly what jazz is about.
 
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#77
honeyiscool said:
You were doing fine, just stating your opinion, until you got to the part when you stated that somehow people who push the boundary aren't "true jazz" players. Miles Davis would smack you for that. Because yeah, playing within a safe boundary and never pushing the limit is truly what jazz is about.
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Well, Down Beat magazine had the same thing to say about Free Jazz. Conservatism within the "jazz scene" is a fascinating subject.
 
#80
Impossibly subjective judgement to make, but I will say that my idea of what is good tone (for my basses) has changed over the years. When I play fretless, I am NOT going for the old Pastorius sound I favored in my 20's. I want a big, fat, heavily scooped tone, to fit in with a drummerless jazz group. I don't have to worry about cutting through all the cymbals. When I play blues, country and rock, I go with a P-bass style tone with heavy flat strings (it's an MTD Heir active bass, but that tone is pretty easy to emulate on it). When I play jazz and Latin on fretted, I like a very hi-fi style sound, with a bright top end, scooped.

Ideally, good tone sits in the mix, but then a lot depends on the other players. If the other players are hogging the sonic spectrum, getting good tone in that context becomes much, much harder. It's why Squire with Yes sounds so horrible, to my ears. He had to cut through so much sound that he went over the top. Brilliant playing, though.
 

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