Nothing's Carved In Stone, for fans of growly bass.

[Shockwave]

Hey guys.

For years I have been chasing a very growly cutting tone with little success. I have been aware of this band for a while, but the bass plaayer really is something else. He uses a variety of basses but seems to get a signature style growl that I absolutely adore.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqIoZr8j9cU[/media]

This being my favorite one of all (Intro is fairly standard but wait til it gets into the song!). From the video it appears to be an Orange Valve stack, overdriven with a Lakland Jazz bass. Obviously whatever he recorded the track with could be different, however I reckon it was probably with some sort of valve amp with a J bass with a soloed neck pickup, anyone else care to chip in? Whatever it is, seems to be heavily compressed as his tone is very constant and present in the mix.

Scooped mids you think? Flats, rounds? 60's or 70's Jazz pup spacing?

Either way, great player and fantastic tone. Looks like the rest of the band are geared towards making him sound fantastic balance wise.

Here is another track that you may enjoy!

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8f7jGVaymY[/media]

Sounds more P bass to me, but hard to tell.

Current gear is a Fender P-J all maple P bass with Dimarzio Super Woofer and Ultra Jazz and a Gibson Grabber. VT Bass Deluxe, Ampeg PG-500, Barefaced S12T. Cant get anywhere near this tone! Ideas?

[alstocko]

In the first video it looks like the bass has 60s spacing. I love this spacing
Pretty sure it's rounds, even with my iPhone speakers...

[Dingus]

Any decent vintage-style Jazz Bass with hot pickups on is going to get you into the right territory to emulate this guys tone . Your amp setup looks to be more than apt to get a grindy but vintage sound . I've never heard of this lot before - its a bit too energetic for me - but this guy is a nifty and obviously very capable player . A PJ bass will sound a bit different to his Jazz setup , but not neccesarilly in a negative way ; the extra honk of the P pickup could give you your own version of this gritty modern rock tone thay seems so fashionable nowadays . To me this kind of tone owes a debt to Geddy Lee , but that's no bad thing .

Just listened to some more - this fellow's a player ! Some very agile licks sneaking in in a very tasteful way . I can see why you would want him as a role model .

[Graham]

Not heard this lot before, but I liked both of those - to me it sounded like a quitesentially overdriven jazz bass; though from what I remember of my old one, sounded like both pickups on full to me - could easily be wrong. Also, rounds; almost certainly.

Others with more knowledge of this pedal than me might want to chip in, but would a Fulltone Bass Drive be a goodd addition to get that sort of sound?

[hamfist]

I like. Very nice. Definitely my sort of thing.

SOund like his neck pickup soloed (maybe with a small amount of bridge blended in), with some OD on it. OD from amp or pedal - who knows. I would tend to say a pedal as he retains a lot of attack. 12AX7 OD played with fingers tends not to have quite a s much attack IME. Something like an EBS multidrive could certainly get very close. WOuldn't need extra compression as that much OD would give you that already. ROunds - yes. Defo not mid scooped. THe mids are nicely enhanced and sculpted - NOT a "metal" tone at all. Not too much brightness on top though.
DOn't be misled by his "soloed" tone which, I believe, has some sort on envolope filter and/or modulation on it, to hollow it out. Personally, I would have preferred if the the tone had not been "messed" with for those bits.
thanks for putting this vid up. Might learn a couple of their choons !

[Musicman20]

Bass plus overdriven tube amp, (Orange amps have a very nice grit to them, as well as a stunning warm clean tone).

Most basses sound great with the right overdrive, and pushing the mids gives it a different tone over the typical crap modern metal bass tone.

Or, just use a Sansamp BDDI, or VT pedal.

[Kiwi]

I'd go with hamfist. It also sounded like he had heavy strings and pretty high action, but looking at the vid its clear he's not running high action.

[mike257]

I think everyone's covered the bass angle, but just chiming in to say nice one for introducing me to this band - just watched through a bunch of stuff on YouTube and love it, right up my street!

[BassTractor]

Could of course have given you the right answer, but don't want to be a thread stopper, so I'll just say: Thanks for introducing me to this band!


best,
bert

[Chris2112]

It just sounds like a jazz bass into an overdriven amp with some compression at the desk to make it sound even. The whole recording is slathered in compression...

[Happy Jack]

[quote name='Chris2112' timestamp='1356544263' post='1911009']
The whole recording is slathered in compression...
[/quote]

When 60 seconds at lowish volume on high quality monitors is enough to give me a headache, I tend to agree ...

[thunderider]

its kinda geddy lee sound!! or the other way to do it is get a small head say 50w valve and crank it,or deffinate for a dirty sound os buy a ric on neck pup n crank the 50....depending on how much distortion u want get a jcm 900 marshall higain lead amp.

[Shockwave]

Necro bump. I cant help but come back to this. I think I need a 60s style jazz in my life and a lightweight alternative rig to the Orange!

[chrismuzz]

I actually get a really nice growly sound from my LMT800 using Entwistle neo pickups and a lot of compression. I could easily get away with not using any of my drive pedals but I'd wager even the cheapest nastiest one would get me a beastly tone!

[paulbass]

I would guess he is using mostly the neck pick up and the tube/valve tone on the amp with some compression. I think he may be well using an envelope filter also in parts of this song. Good band and i've never heard of these before...very good bassist.

[dannybuoy]

Listening to the end of that second song, I can get pretty close to that with my Darkglass Vintage Deluxe. It's a great pedal for adding drive but with clarity, whereas some other pedals can over compress the lows and make everything sound woolly.

[Qlank]

Have you tried nickel strings? I'm having a lot of fun with my Geddy Jazz, Genz Benz Shuttle + Focus 4x10. D'addario XLs, bass + treble noon, both mids at 3 o'clock. Neck pup on full, bridge pup 75%. Sounds like a pack of wild dogs. And dig in over the neck pup.

[MikanHannille]

Been listening to them for a while too. Your second video is my fave from them. Really like his tone specially on the song called Pride.

[bassmachine2112]

hiho,lightweight Orange-easy
Terror Bass head and a sp212 cab,bdi21 in front of amp-job done

[Shockwave]

Found out that he actually has a Japanese built (By ESP) Lakland Shoreline Signature model.

http://www.espguitars.co.jp/lakland/shoreline/sl44-60r_hinatch/index.html

Stacked knob!