Bottled growl in a preamp?

[Al Krow]

Guys I'm a big fan of the Warwick MEC / Ibanez Norstrand growl.

I should add that my Spector EMG 40s also provide a very tasty tone, albeit with a less pronounced growl than the Wicks and Nords. It's my current personal favourite.

Have any of you been able to get that in "bottled form" in the shape of a preamp pedal which combines well with more clean sounding basses?

Edited November 9, 2019 by Al Krow

[dannybuoy]

Tech21 supplies my growl.

[Al Krow]

12 minutes ago, dannybuoy said:

Tech21 supplies my growl.

You got a particular model / setting in mind?

[dannybuoy]

VTDI or SH1 - both have a clean blend, and on the dirt side, a switchable treble boost and midrange control that are placed before the clipping section. So even if you have the gain set low so it's not obviously overdriven, you have some mild clipping of the mids and treble giving you some extra harmonics, or in other words, growl!

[ped]

That sort of growl comes from the bass, if we're referring to the same thing. Got samples? (referring to OP post)

[Lozz196]

15 minutes ago, dannybuoy said:

VTDI or SH1 - both have a clean blend, and on the dirt side, a switchable treble boost and midrange control that are placed before the clipping section. So even if you have the gain set low so it's not obviously overdriven, you have some mild clipping of the mids and treble giving you some extra harmonics, or in other words, growl!

I’m not sure how the gain is configured on their Para Driver but similarly it can be set so that there’s no noticeable distortion,  unless really digging in that is, but if playing less hard the sound still has greater depth and harmonics.

[Al Krow]

16 minutes ago, ped said:

That sort of growl comes from the bass, if we're referring to the same thing. Got samples? (referring to OP post)

I don't have my Wick any more, but this is not a bad sound sample:

 

[ped]

5 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

I don't have my Wick any more, but this is not a bad sound sample:

 

Sounds like a Warwick. No distortion/drive necessary. 

[krispn]

I'm kinda with @ped on this one. The bass/pick up combinations might be the core feature which is providing the sounds your after with any on board or pedal-based pre-amp simply accentuating that inherent voicing.

I say this with recent experience with 'jazz growl'...

I've just recently got a jazz bass  - a not very expensive Squier but a decent enough version of the classic JJ configuration. It instantly sounded like a jazz bass (unsurprisingly) when using my existing settings on my amp, on my interface, and into a couple of pre-amps I have knocking about. I understand how the pick up placement, the classic mid scoop etc works and trying to 'eq a P bass' to sound like a jazz just doesn't sound like a jazz even with dual semi parametric mid controls - it can get to sound scooped but lacks the authenticity of a JJ.

You may find that if you have some basses which have this combination you mention above already and are nailing the sound you like other basses just wont sound as authentic by virtue of their pick up placement etc. On my gig last night I was running the Jazz into a Tone Hammer and then into my amp. Tone hammer was boosting a bit of low mids and had the AGS engages to add a wee touch of drive - the TH was simply enhancing what was already there. A bit of amp drive now and again that added the 'grind' but it was only really making the JJ sound more pronounced in the same way it would make my P sound like the P bit with some dirt. I know it's hard to qualify these things in words and we all have different meanings of words such as grind grit etc.

I was rethinking the Grizzy bass pedal actually as that can do a pretty good scoped sound as well as grit but I'm not sure that it's the sound in your head.

Edited November 9, 2019 by krispn

[OutSpoon]

The tone is in your hands! 🙂

Some of the growl is going to come from how you attack the note (how hard) then how you attack the note (finger, thumb, pick, nail) then where you attack the note (neck, bridge, in between) then pickups (single, humbucker) pickup position, Active / passive then amp then eq...  I think you can get pretty close the sound with any bass with soapbars, preferably active then with a bit of eq. In my opinion. 🙂 

[dannybuoy]

Yes, the core of that tone is hands, strings, and pickups. But if you have a bass with old strings, darker sounding pickups, etc, you can kick it into that ballpark with certain preamps. EQ to boost the high mids, and drive to fake the missing harmonic content. The Tech21 stuff is the best I've found for making a dull bass growl.

The new Darkglass Harmonic Booster might be worth a look too. It's a clean preamp from them this time.

[Kiwi]

On 09/11/2019 at 16:31, Al Krow said:

Guys I'm a big fan of the Warwick MEC / Ibanez Norstrand growl.

I should add that my Spector EMG 40s also provide a very tasty tone, albeit with a less pronounced growl than the Wicks and Nords. It's my current personal favourite.

Have any of you been able to get that in "bottled form" in the shape of a preamp pedal which combines well with more clean sounding basses?

I've been thinking about something similar.

The growl can be gained from a wenge neck but it can sound a bit boxy unless tempered by a harder wood like rock maple.  Soft maple can also give it too but it's not as deep as wenge more of a purr than a snarl.  My Spector NS5CR is made with soft maple and it purrs nicely on stage regardless of hands or pickup position.  The later Euro basses with the Alder/walnut/maple sandwich aren't as satisfying to play for me personally.  I had a Euro 6 for a while.  Ken Smith basses achieve it with maple and bubinga but it doesn't sound as focussed as either wenge necked Warwicks or through necked, all maple Spectors. Ken deliberately avoids making the neck too stiff, instead relying on a massive ebony fingerboard to provide the structural stiffness - I think the same is happening with my Spector NS5CR too.  Consequently I found it hard to get super low (like...graphite neck low) action on my three Smiths and the Spector but they were still very playable.  Fender J and P basses sometimes achieve it with a combination of light swamp ash (for jazz) or light alder (for p basses) and well seasoned hard maple that is a little on the softer side.  Dingwall do it with a combination of ash+alder that meets specific weight criteria and hard maple necks.  Status did it with their Series II basses using pickups and electronics.  Jaydee do it by using mahogany in the necks and bodies and relatively flat response pickups.

There's no single way to do it, it's like  mixing different ingredients to get the same flavour.  You can do it with fingers over the bridge pick up and plucking very aggressively on many (not all) basses but some people don't feel comfortable playing that way.

GK amps get you close with their boost control too but it's achieved in a different way.  It kind of relies on an interaction between bass and amp and the mid prominence being achieved with bass, hands, the boost control and filtering by the speaker itself.  Hard to achieve at low volumes but sounds glorious at performance.  I'm not aware that GK offer the boost function in a pedal because it relies on passing the boost onto the woofer while leaving the tweeter highs unaffected.

What is happening in both cases is that a very narrow band of mid frequencies (around 250Hz) are getting prominence.  The easiest way to do it in pedal form is with a parametric eq or a band pass filter pedal but it has to be a pedal that does an extremely narrow band of boost.  So narrow that it doesn't actually affect the sound of the bass in any other way.  I've done it with the eq on a mixing desk and hoped to do it with a parametric eq...which is why I actually bought an Empress Parametric eq precisely for this purpose.

But even that doesn't get narrow enough so it sits on my guitar board in order to give strats more bite and shimmer.  The Empress boys actually sent me a way to mod the pedal so the mid band was narrowed further but I haven't had time to plan it yet.

[Al Krow]

Superb post @Kiwi - thank you.

[Kiwi]

4 hours ago, Al Krow said:

Superb post @Kiwi - thank you.

You're welcome.  What I've learned is that there is a balance basically between soft woods to isolate and promote desirable frequencies, and hard woods that maintain structural rigidity for the purpose of playability.  AGC, Tobias and Sei have made wenge and maple necked instruments I've played which sound superb even if there have been other aspects that I've found less attractive. This seems to be the most reliable way to get that purr.  Soft maple is an alternative but those instruments need a bit more bass or warmth around 100Hz.  Other methods involve far more experimentation but if they hit the bullseye (like Jaydee did with their Supernatural range) then I suggest sticking with what has been proven. 

Tone wood is the first point of reference though.  If the wood isn't right then it's too much like trying to paint lipstick on a gorilla.

[Al Krow]

It's a very interesting point you make.

The subject of 'tone woods' is obviously a divisive / controversial one with many (me included) being sceptical of the impact of importance of the wood choices in the mix other than to look / feel good as a playing instrument rather than impact per se on the sound.

But the point you're articulating of woods + pups => key combination for delivering 'growl' has been more scientifically presented than anything I've recently come across on the topic, so very well done in arriving at your insight.

[Kiwi]

There is a hell of a lot of variation in some (but not all) tone wood.  Wenge is a lot more reliable than swamp ash, for example.  The weight of swamp ash varies tremendously according to not only the tree but where on the tree the wood came from which is why not all jazz basses sound the same.  Same thing for mahogany and maple but to a much less extreme degree.  Bubinga and wenge are pretty consistent in terms of their effect because they are fundamentally dense and (in the case of bubinga) oily. What I've found is that matching wenge and flamed maple seems to work really well in a neck regardless of construction (ie. bolt on vs neck through).  So I am going to do my next build using that combination of woods on a mahogany body (maybe chambered to lift the resonance peak a little).

[Kiwi]

For pick ups, they are a very coarse tone shaping tool.  You can specify a resonance peak to hit a specific frequency but that has trade offs for highs and lows as well.  Usually the best approach is to make the pickups as flat as possible and fall back to the wood/construction/playing style for timbre.