Vin Venal

Thanks for the input all. I'm now getting the sound I want due to a fantastic combination of a GK MB800 and a Darkglass 112 cab. I'm getting all the clank and crunch anyone could ever wish for out of that. 😁

Used to wear it low slung. Most of my bass idols did so. Now that I'm old and fat, it has had to be elevated considerably to accommodate my girth, and back pain. I'd say nowadays I'm at about Joe Lally height.

I dunno who either of them people are. Lol.

Dude, you're super adamant about what will and won't work, considering you just told us your experience of downtuned heavy music is your band wanted to tune down one step live, so you went out and bought a 35" scale 5 string cuz you thought your 34" scale bass couldn't handle that for some reason... This bit - "Of course if the rest of the band are using top quality gear then there is a risk that any deficiencies in yours may be more apparent." - just makes me feel sad.

Yeah, I get you. I dunno much about down tuning, or crazy multi-scale 5 string basses. I play short scale 4 strings. But a few people above have said a 34" scale with a good setup would do the job, and even if not, there are multi-scale basses available for very reasonable prices these days. If twere me, I'd not want to drop a couple of grand not even knowing I was gonna get on with the multi-scale thing.

It's so easy these days to have a decent DI pedal on your board, and/or a tiny class D amp in your gig bag. Only thing it really makes sense to borrow is a cab, which I wouldn't have any issue with, as long as I knew it could handle the output.

Agree that a grand sounds like a very sensible budget for an instrument upgrade at that stage, if you feel that an upgrade is needed. Don't let gear snobs pressure you into spending more than you want to.

How much money is your band making? If the answer was anything less than enough to quit my day job, I'd tell em to fosters off, and buy summat much cheaper which will do the job just as well. Especially if you're downtuning to buggery, cuz even with a five string multi-scale, you're probably still gonna have to invest in a specialised setup, and mess with the nut and stuff, and I wouldn't want that much money tied up in a bass dedicated to one thing. Also, imagine your band really takes off so you're touring and stinky poo. Do you really want to watch your £2000 Dingleberry get shot-putted onto a conveyor belt by Glaswegian baggage handlers at the airport? And you'll need redundancy, so are you gonna invest in a spare £2000 Dungwall, also down tuned to buggery?

I have several short scales, probably for similar reasons to you. Dodgy hands and back. I have a Sire U5, and it's a great instrument. Punches way above its weight in terms of value for money. The neck is incredibly comfortable to play. It's the lightest bass I've owned. Obviously, in terms of hardware and finishing it can't really compete with a Mexican or American fender (have owned both), but that would be an unrealistic expectation. I've got two Mustangs, but they're both Mexican. The player series PJ and the Vintera. The neck profile is very different on these. The PJ has a super comfortable narrow nut, and modern shallow neck profile, and a matt finish, and is lovely to play. The Vintera has a gloss finish, and feels both wider and thicker, and is way less easy on the hands. IMO, if you're looking at the American performer and the JMJ, you wanna make sure they have the more modern style neck rather than the vintage style. To throw a wild card out there, I also own a Maruszczyk Elwood 4p in a 30", and it's pretty much perfect. It feels like better quality than the Mexican Fenders. The nut is 40mm rather than 38mm, but the neck profile is nice and thin, and I find it very comfortable. Also if you go custom, you can spec 38mm. The fretboard is also very flat, if you like that. It's lighter than both my Fenders, just a touch heavier than the Sire. If I was ranking all my basses in order of preference, it would go: Maruszczyk, Sire, PJ Mustang, Vintera Mustang. Hope that's helpful.

Don't agree that it's pointless. Except obviously in the sense that everything is ultimately pointless. Trying to use words to describe sounds is fun, creative, and a great example of what language is for. Like using words to try to describe colours, smells, and complex emotional experiences. I think its pretty cool that some air moves in a certain way, and what you hear, and what I hear, and the effect it has on us are totally different, and can never truly be shared, so we use this complex system of symbolic meaning to try to convey that to each other, and in the process discover that we're wired completely differently. It's the Kantian epistemological break happening right before our ears. Lol. FYI I'm pretty high at the moment, so apologies if I'm rambling.

Dunno what you mean mate. I'm not advocating anything. Said it plain as day, it's subjective, and you should do whatever works for you. Only thing I think anyone is "wrong" about is the idea that bass tone doesn't matter, or nobody else notices or cares, cuz that's a daft idea IMO. Reckon I've got a few different sounds. A bit dirty. Pretty dirty. And really f*ckin dirty. Try to always keep it spiky though. 😀

Oh and to answer the OPs question, I like to think of my tone as dirty and spiky. Like putting your hand into one of those bins for used needles. Lol.

I can't believe there are professional musicians who think this way. So weird. Like, in a live context, I concede tone matters less, simply because you have less control over it, but even then, like, it makes a huge difference what's in the bassists signal chain. On recordings, it's even more of a huge deal. Like the idea that there isn't much noticeable difference in the bass sound between, say, The Police and The Jesus Lizard records? Crazy. During covid I've "been to" a load of virtual gigs - livestreamed. And even then, in that format, with the sonic limitations it brings, on more than one occasion, there were punters in the chat commenting on bass tone. The idea of other musicians not caring about it is way out there. All the musicians I know obsess over their own tone, sure, but they also talk about other people's all the time. Even drummers. Lol. Maybe it's a generational thing? Or a genre thing. I know if you go back far enough, there were less readily accessible ways for bassists to easily alter their tone, and a lot of stuff did kind of all sound the same, and some genres are still quite traditional in that sense I suppose. I think that all changed dramatically in the 90s though really. Noise rock and shoegaze and stuff like that (sure there are loads of other examples but that's just my area) saw bands really pushing for different sounds, and I think since then, even non-musicians who are into music are relatively clued up on sounds. My own take on this is that if you take the view tone doesn't matter, and you discount all the ways of changing it from your musicianship, you're missing out on a huge part of what playing bass is about. The quality of the sound is as much of a factor to me as your left hand and right hand technique. We play electronic instruments at the end of the day, so everything we do is about manipulating an electronic signal. It's no less musical in my opinion to do that with a massive pedal board, and a load of knob twiddling. Being a minimalist or a purist is totally an option though. Like if you just happen to think the only sound in the world for you is a P-bass with the knobs all the way open, into an SVT with everything at 12 o'clock, through an 8x10, that's cool. Whatever works for you! It's totally subjective. It's just the idea that it isn't important at all I find weird.

Maruszczyk?

Howdy I don't know much about cabs. I currently have a Fender Rumble 210. I feel like it's a bit muddy and boomy. Could be because it's on the floor in an upstairs room. Could be because im nowhere near pushing it, playing at sensible indoor volumes. But I'm wondering if replacing it would help me get a sound closer to the sound I get when I listen through cans? The rest of my rig - various passive basses into an Ampeg SCR-DI pedal, into an Ampeg PF500 head. My tone when I play through cans, and the tone I'm going for has good low end, but also has plenty of "clank", usually with some degree of distortion. Think 90s alt-rock/post-hardcore bands like Jesus Lizard, Shellac, Fugazi etc. What kind of cabs should I be looking for? Any recommendations? Needs to be able to handle 500w at 4 ohms or 350w at 8ohms. Ideally not much heavier than 20k. Ideally under 500 quid. Cheers!

I like the lobster. Unlike some bass YouTube channels, he seems to buy stuff himself, doesn't seem to get paid for his reviews, and regularly slates stuff. Some of the others often sound like they're reading out the manufacturers marketing bumph. And it's hard to trust them when you literally never see them do a properly negative review. That could just be because this guy is too small to get paid for his reviews yet. Who knows.

Hey, I really like your former band! Been listening to colossus today. Kind of a Shellac thing going on.

I thought this was an interesting video. Before people start straw manning me, just wanna say, I know this isn't real science, despite the sciency-ness. And it's qualitative rather than quantitative. But its still interesting. The only real observation was that having more material of any kind surrounding the bridge and pickups seemed to give better volume and sustain. No other real tonal differences were particularly apparent, even between chipboard and mahogany. I'd like to see someone do the same thing, but play a single note rather than a chord, and do it 100 times with each body, and 10 different bodies of each wood, then look at the average waveforms in more detail, including isolating volume and sustain at specific frequency ranges.

Pickup position is probably even more of a factor than the pickups themselves. All this stuff could be answered pretty definitively, if a bunch of people were prepared to invest enough time and money in it. As a starting point though, you'd need to build a number of guitars from a material which is much more consistent than wood, and ideally one which you could alter the stiffness of. Some kind of plastic or resin probably. And you'd need to install the same electronics (not just the same model, the actual same loom) in each guitar.

You can also get nylon and rubber picks which are supposed to sound more like fingering. More inspiration in terms of musicians who overcame physical limitations- Mike Ness from social distortion lost the use of his index finger on his fretting hand. Dave Mustaine suffered nerve damage and temporarily lost the use of his left hand, although I can't help but kind of wish he'd stayed retired... Best of luck to you.

From my experience of watching loads of YouTube videos (lol), I reckon wood does have an effect on sound but there's loads of stuff that has much more of an effect - pickups, strings, bridge, scale length would be a few. And I reckon if we're talking about wood, the fretboard wood makes way more difference than the body. Personally I prefer a pretty bright sound, cuz you can always take frequencies away, but you can't add em in.

I'd love an Aluminium necked bass. Big fan of Shellac, who used Travis Beans I think.

I don't know very much about the physics involved, and I'm certainly no expert on tone. That said a couple of things seem obvious to me. As somebody else said, pickups aren't microphones. They aren't in any way directly picking up vibrations happening in the wood of the body or the neck. They are just detecting the vibration of the strings. However, the strings also aren't vibrating in complete isolation from any other part of the instrument, wood or otherwise. The strings, bridge, body, neck and fretboard are all part of a system, so it's reasonable to suggest that to some extent (how much is debatable, but its probably minimal), resonant characteristics of the wood could alter the vibration of the strings, and thus have an impact on the signal chain. To the very small extent that this is likely to be taking place, it stands to reason that it should probably be taking place the most where the strings are in direct contact with the wood. Which probably explains why fretboard wood seems to have a more noticeable impact than body wood. One thing I can't understand, maybe someone knows - given that the material of the body should have minimal impact, why do hollow body basses all have such a characteristic sound?

Howdy. I want a chorus pedal, and have very limited board space. I know this is a guitar pedal, and as such there are very few bass focused reviews or demos. Thought I'd solicit opinion from this community. Does it work good for bass, and if not, what's a similarly tiny chorus that does? For what it's worth I do like the sound of the CS mini when demod on guitar. Cheers.