Yamaha is good, go ahead and don't turn back. If you find an old MIJ it may be even better.
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Yamaha TRB in metal?
- Thread starter Kauczukowe_Jajo
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- metal rock trb yamaha yamaha trb
Yamaha is good, go ahead and don't turn back. If you find an old MIJ it may be even better.
I am a TRBX 305 owner. Great bass. My experience is the TRBX series has great fit and finish and good tone. Really the only thing it lacks is a more popular name on the headstock.
I regularly gig an MIA active P bass with a J humbucker for church. The church owns it and likes to use it because they have a lot of experience doing EQ for it in the house. I honestly think the TRBX 305 is just as good as the MIA Fender. Construction is just as good. The TRBX seems more solid and put together better. The bridge on both is honestly almost identical except for color. Knobs feel more solid on the TRBX. Balance is just as good. Tuners are just as stable.
Both have active preamps and can do a lot of different sounds. Both play very well and are set up very well. They are very comparable instruments in my opinion. (I've played bass for 20 years)
The TRBX was $300 new.
I regularly gig an MIA active P bass with a J humbucker for church. The church owns it and likes to use it because they have a lot of experience doing EQ for it in the house. I honestly think the TRBX 305 is just as good as the MIA Fender. Construction is just as good. The TRBX seems more solid and put together better. The bridge on both is honestly almost identical except for color. Knobs feel more solid on the TRBX. Balance is just as good. Tuners are just as stable.
Both have active preamps and can do a lot of different sounds. Both play very well and are set up very well. They are very comparable instruments in my opinion. (I've played bass for 20 years)
The TRBX was $300 new.
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I'm thinking that using whatever bass you want to use for Metal, is probably the most Metal choice you can ever make for playing bass in Metal.
That should be the top banner on this site. With exclamation points.
"Metal" is too wide a genre to say what instrument would go best with it.
Some metal bassists are content to follow the rhythm guitar, if that is the case then brightness and treble are not so much a concern. But if you're playing separate counter melodies on bass or there is only one guitar then you may want a tone which cuts through the mix and has a richer upper range.
If you like the way your bass plays but are unhappy with the tone you can try shaping it with EQ and compression pedals to give you a different sound.
The TRB1005J has active pickups and looks like a great bass, I'm sure with a good set of round wound strings it would work very well for metal.
Some metal bassists are content to follow the rhythm guitar, if that is the case then brightness and treble are not so much a concern. But if you're playing separate counter melodies on bass or there is only one guitar then you may want a tone which cuts through the mix and has a richer upper range.
If you like the way your bass plays but are unhappy with the tone you can try shaping it with EQ and compression pedals to give you a different sound.
The TRB1005J has active pickups and looks like a great bass, I'm sure with a good set of round wound strings it would work very well for metal.
The umbrella of Heavy Metal is so huge though. Like, say Deep Purple... Totally a Heavy Metal Band. As with Led Zeppelin or (early) Rush. Would you go around "upping the horns" and shouting "METAL" in reference to them? I doubt it. They're not a sub-genre. They are "Heavy Metal Apparent".
All that said....
If someone asks "What's the best bass for Heavy Metal?" I tell them a Jazz Bass.
If someone asks "What's the best bass for Metal?" I tell them any bass.
Most of the scene considers Black Sabbath, not Zeppelin or Purple, the first heavy metal band.
Sure they did. But Sabbath is, for the heavy metal scene, basically the originators. All the elements existed in other bands, but Sabbath put them all together.
Also, just because a band uses a phrase or the name is a reference to them, doesn't mean that they're of that genre. The black metal subgenre is named after a Venom album. Venom themselves aren't a black metal band.
Regardless, of who might be the first Heavy Metal band was in the late 60's (which wasn't my point at all), they all were considered "Heavy Metal" bands. Like Iron Maiden was/is.... They have elements of RnR and Blues.
Cradle of Filth? I call them Metal. Not Heavy Metal.
To me "heavy metal" is just the long form name of "metal." I consider Steppenwolf, Zeppelin, Purple to be hard rock bands verging on metal but not quite there. Iron Maiden is definitely metal. Judas Priest didn't start as heavy metal but they became that later.
I like this kind of convo. "To me" is a commonly used phrase with it. I use it too. It isn't defined enough to say "What it is". So we come up with our own definitions. I get what you're saying, and I hope you get what I'm saying. Metal is a good classifier of the whole movement that is post Heavy Metal. Like anything with Extreme, Death, Doom, Dark or Black as it's prefix. Heavy Metal is the parent genre, yet I can't call anything past Metallica or Megadeth Heavy Metal... Just Metal. That's what it is, "to me".
It's like Punk. I once had a conversation with someone that refers to Lagwagon as "Punk" yet won't classify The Clash in the same genre. Was The Clash only "just getting there"? Not to me. I think they're the epitome of it. They weren't the end of it, yet they were the exact definition of punk rock.
But I digress. LOL
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A TRB is a dual humbucker bass with a nice, round, slightly nasally tone that is typical of Yamaha. Quality was near boutique-level on the TRBX series, where X= 4, 5, or 6 depending on model. IIRC, the TRB100X series were built elsewhere in Asia than Japan and were of typical (good) quality for their price point.
I can't see any reason not to play one in a metal group.
The electronics in Yamahas are very proprietary, meaning that everything in them is bespoke for the design. If you are a "tuner", be aware that you have to pretty much gut everything in a Yamaha and replace it all, versus trying a new preamp on a lark like you can with a Fender. If you don't mod your instruments it's no issue.
I had a TRB5 for a number of years. It sounded great but was a bit heavy.
I can't see any reason not to play one in a metal group.
The electronics in Yamahas are very proprietary, meaning that everything in them is bespoke for the design. If you are a "tuner", be aware that you have to pretty much gut everything in a Yamaha and replace it all, versus trying a new preamp on a lark like you can with a Fender. If you don't mod your instruments it's no issue.
I had a TRB5 for a number of years. It sounded great but was a bit heavy.
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The hardware you need for metal exists in two places -
1) Between your ears and:
2) On the ends of your arms.
The bass you use...not so important.
1) Between your ears and:
2) On the ends of your arms.
The bass you use...not so important.
Well, everyone has their own interpretations. It's kind of like when does Renaissance style painting end and Mannerism begin? It's easy to pick out typical examples from sort of the stylistic "center" of each, but the transition is ambiguous and hard to identify. There are even a bunch of bands that people call "post-metal." I'm not sure that I would consider that a thing, since they're mostly still clearly metal, even if of a variety that eschews some of the stylistic tendencies of previous metal artists while greatly expanding other aspects of the genre. But is it really enough of a change for the "post" prefix, as if it fundamentally changes what the art form is? I don't personally think so, but then I've rambled.
In any case, people have used all kinds of basses for heavy music. What instrument someone uses isn't as important as how they use it.
I've seen a lot of Ibanez and Yamaha in metal, but the real question is what r u calling metal?
I don't think it really matters. You can use just about any playable bass for just about any genre.
well, yeah... but still "metal" is such a broad genre now that its like saying your favorite meal is food.
