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What is 'growl' ...

#22
Different basses like different dogs have different growls but they all have it. Back in the day, Gibsons with the mudbucker had the least growl of any bass. All in all growl is the tone a bass has in its' mid-range. When you boost or cut the mid-range you change the way a bass growls. You can also bring out a basses grown by favoring the bridge pup (if it has one).
 
#25
rduckwor said:
To me "growl" is the result of a subharmonic that seems to very rapidly destructively interfere with the primary pitch you are playing at that moment. It sort of breaks up the smooth sound a non-growling note would make and tends to make it sound rough and aggressive. PB and JB are famous for having growl in spades. To me, the MM axes are more treble biased and clanky though that sounds great in some music.
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Isn't that what I said? Or are you saying that in addition to causing wave cancellation, it adds another pitch to the mix?
 
#26
Some of these opinions of what "growl" is are inexplicably annoying the hell outta me and just seem WAY off compared to what "normal" bassists consider growl

...but thanks for turning me on to Fishbone! Never heard 'em before but they got a lot of cool tunes! Different for sure!
 
#27
IMO jazz pickups have more of a growl than P pickups. The Warwick Corvette listed above has J pickups with bubinga wood which has a very unique growl - it's a take it or leave it type of growl. I had a Spector with a P/J configuration, and when I would have both pickups set at about 50%, it had a more pleasing growl that I liked. Many bass players will add other effects (pedals, digital effects, eq) to create the type of growl that they like. The one bass which seems to have the biggest growl reputation most of the time is the Warwick.
 
#31
NKUSigEp said:
Some of these opinions of what "growl" is are inexplicably annoying the hell outta me and just seem WAY off compared to what "normal" bassists consider growl

...but thanks for turning me on to Fishbone! Never heard 'em before but they got a lot of cool tunes! Different for sure!
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Are you hip to Kings-X? Here in Jersey, they often do a double-bill with Fishbone. Not exactly super-similar, but a lesser-known band, nonetheless, that deserves more recognition as well.

They've both been around a while, but oddly, people don't know of them as much as they should.
 
#32
Muckaluck said:
GROWL!!!:

Stevie picks his bassists well.

I don't know who this cat is or what the bass is he's playing but this is what I think of when I think of Growl....
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Here's a shot of the bass:
 

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#34
CapeBass said:
To me growl is putting the bass on 10, the treble on 10, and the mids on 0. Punchy kind of growl. That's my typical EQ setting.
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Co-sign to CapeBass. I don't know know what stick s/he uses, but when I use that setting on my J, I get growl. Particularly when I run up the bottom E string to the C note on the A string, like:

A-----------3-----
E--0-1-2-3--------

That's "growl", at least it's J-Bass growl.

I've also played a MM, and didn't detect "growl" so much as "clank" (I think someone else used that word, as well).
 
#38
I would define growl as the definition of the low notes. A more defined low note would have more growl than the same note played on a different bass with less definition. The opposite of growl is mud. The more defined the more growl, the less defined, the more mud.
 

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