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What's Important For Bass Tone

#7
Admittedly, I did not watch the full vid, I stopped it when a sound sample was referred to as “terrible and plucky”.

This seems to promote the idea that a bassline in genre X should have a certain sound and a certain playing technique, otherwise you are “doing it wrong”. Sounds a bit small-minded to me, unless you are trying to be as generic as possible, of course.
 
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#10
To me, the first-level factors are technique, setup, and strings. Free or inexpensive to change, but if you dial them in and match the bass, these make the bass shine. Next, more expensive but important are pickups and electronics changes, tho these can be cheap (eg series/parallel wiring, loading capacitors). Even more expensive but critical are pickup positions - but if you know what you’re doing, you get the (approximately) right bass to begin with. Obviously what comes after the cable matters, but I always just strive for the cleanest and clearest amplification/settings to let the hands and capacitors do the work. Of course room matters, but also where you put your gear, and where you stand in relation to gear… sometimes I wish my ankles had ears 😁

The video is ok, but they make some critical mistakes. Essentially, it seems like they had their conclusions and made the video to “prove” them. Foremost, some factors matter most in certain circumstances - like string type matters more when paired with certain techniques (slap is a good example). In general, they ignored interactions between the components/factors…

Also, electronics and cables can matter if you know what you’re doing. They did not mention resistive and particularly capacitive loading, which both can matter for filtering (or matter a lot - at the extreme, that’s how a tone knob works). Also, pickups of the same type (housing) can sound very different depending on what’s inside (even P vs. P, but think about soapbars that can house singles, splits, stacks, sidewinders, and dual/quad/multi-coil humbuckers)…
 
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#11
Clickbaity videos like these are frustrating because they treat the sound created by electric bass as a thing that exists in isolation. For bedroom players this is fine, it's fun to use good technique and gear to make something that sounds dope, but that is not the same thing as good bass tone. In a band situation their criteria for "good" or "sh*tty" makes no sense.

The reality is, that live or on record, most of our harmonic information will clash with or be buried by the other instruments. The magic of good bass tone doesn't come from hearing every detail - it comes from which pieces of that harmonic information are revealed as part of a greater mix, how the fundamental is physically felt by the listener, and which other pieces "clash" musically with the rest of the band. If our bass is smothered in fuzz, for example, alongside guitars that are heavily distorted, the musicality of that fuzz will get lost in an indistinguishable mass of mud. If we're picking fresh rounds alongside scooped guitars or loud cymbals, the high end that sounds so nice in isolation might suddenly go missing. The truth is that if we were to find the greatest examples of bass tone and solo them on a mixing console, they might sound dead, or muddy, or tinny, or downright awful. It's only when the rest of the band is faded up that the legendary bass tone we're looking for comes alive.

This video would be far more useful if they focused on playing with a full mix, with the original recorded bass muted. Show us how tweaking the tone knob, or using different strings, or different pickups changes the way the bass creates the sound of the song.
 
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#12
Those are two different questions. First, important for bass tone is anything that is in the chain of producing the bass tone. some things are more important than others.

Second, to fix a bad bass tone, you first need to define what that is. Just watched Charles B's video about Les Claypool and he mentioned the weired tone. It works for Claypool, but would never work for me. So for me it's a bad tone, for Claypool it pays the bills.
 
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#14
Snert said:
According to Josh from BassBuzz and a couple of friends.

I'm interested what y'all think, and I'll give my 2c later.



As this covered several different fora, I thought it best to post it here.
Click to expand...

I usually don't watch such long videos on stuff like this, but that one seems really well done and it was fun. Every time I want more equipment (everything I have now is actually pretty good), I say to myself that what I really want is more time to learn, play, and practice! It's all in the mind (and thus in the fingers).
 
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#15
It's all important and it all matters. From how you physically play/alter techniques, to every piece of gear in between your hands and the speaker, in what context and how it works for the music.

I get the overall idea behind the statement "it's all in your hands" but those hands have to use a lot of different pieces of gear before your going to hear anything.
 
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#17
Minimalist said:
Those are two different questions. First, important for bass tone is anything that is in the chain of producing the bass tone. some things are more important than others.

Second, to fix a bad bass tone, you first need to define what that is. Just watched Charles B's video about Les Claypool and he mentioned the weired tone. It works for Claypool, but would never work for me. So for me it's a bad tone, for Claypool it pays the bills.
Click to expand...

Speaking of Claypool and tone, when discussing this topic, I like to use that video of him and Larry playing a festival gig last year on a Precision and Strat through Ampeg and Marshall gear. Their equipment truck got stuck in a blizzard and so they had to make an emergency run to a local GC to gear up for the show. Les on a AmPro P through an Ampeg? Surely it will sound nothing like a $15,000 Carl Thompson with pickups that can hear a mosquito fart run through his trusty old Mesa rig.

Nope. Sounded exactly like Les. Equipment may be important, but not nearly as much as tone, technique, and talent.
 
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#18
You’d want a well established bass. Doesn’t have to be vintage but can’t be new either. Preferably brown with tort. The body should be smoothly curved, not offset. Flatwound strings that you’ve played and neglected for years. You’ll want a bass that the engineer is capable of plugging into a console and mixing. Something that a producer can work with.
P bass.
 
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#20
I disagree with him on the Cable comment. He said Length and resistance that most effect tone. It is capacitance that will increase as length increases. This is not so important for basses as for guitars as the capacitance effect the high frequency tones. Still I am picky about my cables. I like Mogami (quality made cable with low inner lead capacitance that dump higher frequencies to ground. I hear a difference between cheap cables and good cables when playing in Bedroom on guitar so I buy better cables as I use them for both guitar and bass. In my opinion resistance effect signal output level.
 
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