Jaco using a bow?

[jude_b]

I listened to Weather Report's 8.30 for the first time in around 10 years last weekend on a long journey, and towards the end of Teen Town it sounds Jaco's using a bow - at least I've always assumed it was a bow.

I've not (quickly) been able to find mention of him using a bow elsewhere. Does anyone else know if he used a bow live as a party trick or otherwise what produced the effect (it certainly sounds like a bow 'biting' against strings)?

[BassBod]

I think that's just his fuzz/distortion effect - probably from the Acoustic 360 preamp. Larry Graham also used a similar sound in the early 70's...good isn't it!?

[jude_b]

I'm really surprised that he got the sounds near the end of that particular recording without using something else - to my ear, there's a part which really sounds like physical bowing. There's an interesting comment on the YouTube version saying that he 'drops out' towards the end (although I don't think he does), but that's about as much as I can find to suggest that something funny was going on in that particular recording.

However, I'm certainly not a scholar of bass amps/effects, so I'll take your word for it.

Many thanks for the answer, although I'm probably not going to spend $5,000 to get the rig to recreate the sound!

[Bilbo]

My guess is that this is a manifestation of the massive volumes that Jaco was playing with at that time. Listening to the tune on Spotify, I hear nothing thatthink is a bow, just a lot of noise generation by amps played at high volume. A lot of Hendrix stuff is only achievable if you are playing LOUD and Jaco was very influenced by Hendrix and that feedback/distortion manipulation thing. Jaco would often finish his solos by leaving the bass lying on the floor feeding back while he walked away or climbed up an amp stack and jumped off to land on the bass and cut of the sound.

[lowdown]

When getting excited Jaco would often really dig into the strings, causing really hard note attack.
I did see Jaco once, when he used a volume pedal for Upright type Legato [< >] and he often used the volume control[s] on his Bass for this.
With a typical gig set up Bass, you could only really use a Bow on Electric with any kind of articulated success, if you were just bowing on the E and G string [four string]
And this would have to be somewhere towards the head stock end, the horns and body would be in the way.
Because there is no serious bridge arch on Electric, it would be [and is for me] nearly impossible on the inner A & D strings.

More than likely some clever geezer/geezeress on Youtube to prove me wrong though.


Garry