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"Your" sound.

#21
My fretted bass sound is growling, slightly overdriven yet percussive tone, with a lot of snap and grind. I don't mind a little fret buzz, it's part of the sound. It's a kind of Geddy Lee meets Marcus Miller sound. I keep a very low action and I generally pluck Stanley Clarke style up near the neck. Most slapping I do is double-thumping, but not in a "funky" way at all, more like just using my thumb as a pick. I sometimes do a "funk fingers" thing, ala Tony Levin, but without the actual Funk Fingers, just using my fore and index fingers to "drum" on the heavier strings.

My fretless "voice" is a whole other animal: I like it smooth and "hi fi" with a nice warm midrange, and a lot of mwah. I pluck lightly over the bridge pickup (which is favored.)
 
#22
As I've progressed as a bassist, my tone has gone in a completly different direction then when I started. I started playing a fretless bass, plucking by the back pup to get that Jaco thing going, but for the past two years I've moves away from that drastically. These days I'm primarily a pickstyle player, and I like to play through old tube amps (well, digital recreations of them on my POD). Basically it's DR Hi-Beams on my Geddy Lee, played with a 1.14mm Dunlop pick through a series of Boss Pedals (Bass Distortion, chorus, phase, reverb, and volume pedal) into my POD on the Marshall Super Bass setting. I get a big, defined bass "guitar" sound that makes most guitarist crap their pants. My fretless playing is still Jaco-esque, but thats just because I'm not creative enough to try and find a unique fretless voice yet. :D
 
#23
Wow...this topic is old. I'm gonna revive it, 'cause my sound has come a long way.

Since I started the topic, I've started playing with a very light touch and hugely incorporated tapping, harmonics, and chords (sometimes all three at once ;)). I put SD Hot for P and J pickups in my bass, an Aguilar 3 band preamp, Leo Quan Badass II bridge, and switched from using D'addario strings to TI Jazz Rounds. I also recently acquired a Yamaha fretless (BB404F) and put TI flats on it. My sound on the two are very, very different (I consider playing both as playing two different instruments, because fretless has so far been a completely new monster to take on).
On both, I usually keep the neck pickup at 100 and the bridge at very low, and the play between the two. The neck pickup on the yammy is a jazz, and the fretted is a p, so there's obviously huge tonal difference there. Tone's all the way up on the yammy, and there's no tone pot on the samick (vol/vol/3bandeq). I was never a big fan of the jaco-nasal thing, but there's a perfect mix of smoothness and grind with the settings I have on it right now. For when I do harmonics, I do jaco-nasal, just so they pick up better (neck pickups, IME, is a crappy place for picking up harmonics). There's some hardcore mwwwahhhh on the Yammy, too. I honestly didn't know what mwah sounded like, because I'd only ever played one fretless before and that was once, two weeks into playing :o. Now...I get it completely. This bass has mwah up the wazoo, and I love it. I find it easiest to scope out what a person's individual sound is when they improv, and when I do it, it's all about the bluesy-grooves and chordal tapping. There's just the subtlest hint of grind on both basses when I tap, but it's much more pronounced when I go into finger style. It adds a neat touch that you usually don't usually here when I do solo-y jazz type stuff on the fretted, but it totally works.
Slapping sounds completely different on both, when I do it on the fretless, a lot of the time it sounds like Primus. On the fretted, it's a really controlled type slap sound -- not wild and aggressive like Flea, somewhat closer in quality to maybe Stanley Clarke. Sometimes I boost the bass and treble a little bit to be a bit more aggressive.
EQ is almost always flat -- almost a shame, considering the money that went into the aggie, but it's been indispensable in covers for stuff like Motown and slap. The mid knob connections weren't done correctly, so I honestly don't use those yet. Through certain amps, I mix in some treble and do a bit of bass cut on the fretted 'cause the p pickup can be a bit bottom heavy (except through my Yorkville, which is a very tight sounding amp -- great investment, that was).

Any of y'all change your approach in the last few months?
 
#25
Sadowsky through an Ampeg solid state combo is the combination that seems to be working best for me , Just a enough deep bass to keep the low end up front but enough mids to articulate the mids and higher end specficly helpfull when playing alot of higher register octives.
 
#27
Heck...my sound?

I don't know. I end up using a different setup wherever I go and I sound different in each setting.
With my own amp, however...i use a (too) harsh attack kind of like Steve Harris (why did i have to learn to play from those vids :p ) so i get clanky a lot of the time. Although I would really prefer to have a nice warm mid-ful tone which I now get somewhat with my new jazz replica and my hartke.

I like the "bouncy" mid tones if ya know what I mean. The prob is i cant get them to work in rock environments due to the drums and guitar distortion so i end up just having to clank away, which sounds fine to them, but my amp doesnt have enough headroom to cut through without me smacking tthe bass (so that it doesnt start farting). Ah well...maybe with a new head+cab i might get it...
 
#28
I use 3/4 Bridge humbucker, 1/4 neck, use a pick in between the two. Then run it through an M-80 bass DI to fatten up the low end and boost low-mids and treble.

Oh, and use 10" speakers, much punchier. My ideal cab is an Epi NYC610, but for the moment, I have to make do with a Laney R5. :(

EDIT - For a rough idea, listen to the bass in the intro on Guns n Roses' 'You Could Be Mine' I didnt think, I wanna sound like him!!, I just ended up like that. ;)
 
#29
Like many of you, I have several sounds with which I like to experiment. But I think my ideal sound is what I would describe as a "floating bass" sound - very present, full & "upfront" in the mix so as to fill up all the holes - kind of like a flood of warm maple syrup that seeps into all the cavities of the waffles ;), yet played with such sensitivity & lightness of touch that the effect is one of subtlety & finesse...

The tone stays clean, but with enough gain (and low playing action) that it can produce rich harmonic overtones. Not so much super deep as just very full, sweet & supple. Paul McCartney often achieved this type of tone with the Beatles (thanks in no small measure to George Martin). Chris Squire somewhat likewise, though usually with a good deal more gain & crunch. Maybe this was a kind of 60s/70s Rickenbacker thing - but more likely just good sound engineering...

MM
 
#30
Nasty. That's my sound. :)

I keep my GHS Boomers close to the board, and when I dig into the Harris P, you can hear it grind. The harder I play, the nastier it gets. I have an 18V EMG setup, and usually decrease the highs and keep the lows flat on the bass. That curently runs into a Rocktron Sonic Glory overdrive into a Rocktron Short Timer digital delay. From there it enters into the front of my Ampeg head, sometimes I bypass the main jack and just hit the power amp input. And finally contacting the 4 10" speakers of my Ampeg cab (tweeter off). Occasionally I'll use a pick, and almost always play over the pups.

I like to have my distortion set so I have to really hit it to get a noticeable distortion. I'm also currently in the process of building a custom stomp-box preamp, and have the new Rocktron Silver Dragon distortion ordered :)
 

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