Tried listening to The Stranglers today....

[PaulWarning]

15 minutes ago, Lozz196 said:

Given JJs pretty famous sound I’m surprised he hasn’t put some form of Sansamp in his rig, it would def get nearer to that tone than he currently gets. Unless of course he wants to not be quite so full-on nowadays.

I can't believe he couldn't get closer to his original bass sound if he wanted too, I can't get his original sound but I can get closer than he does these days, just listened to a live version of Hanging Around from the 'Feel It Live' album, my favourite bass sound on any record from Norvegicus, and it's a travesty

[Grooverjr]

Well this got me all excited so I spent the weekend with Moises and playing a lot of old JJ lines and fiddling with sounds. Got a couple of the subtleties of Nice N Sleazy and Tramp down, which was great. I had a look at some of the tabs on that site and they are patchy (some are bang on but some are almost completely unrelated to the tune or have huge gaps). 

Unfortunately because I rarely play with a pick I've messed up my forearm so I've got to rest it. Seems like I am not as hardy as the man himself.

[Beedster]

2 hours ago, Lozz196 said:

Given JJs pretty famous sound I’m surprised he hasn’t put some form of Sansamp in his rig, it would def get nearer to that tone than he currently gets. Unless of course he wants to not be quite so full-on nowadays.

 

1 hour ago, PaulWarning said:

I can't believe he couldn't get closer to his original bass sound if he wanted too, I can't get his original sound but I can get closer than he does these days, just listened to a live version of Hanging Around from the 'Feel It Live' album, my favourite bass sound on any record from Norvegicus, and it's a travesty

 

Exactly, there's four possible reasons

1. Personal choice (he doesn't want to use the old tone anymore and is happy to allow sound techs to do as they will)

2. Technology (he can't get the old tone anymore because it was the result of a specific instrument and a specific speaker)

3. Human error (sound techs don't know how to get the old tone from their systems)

4. Laziness (he and the band don't really care any more)

 

I'm guessing it must be 1, hopefully not 4, 2 is out as suggested by @Lozz196, and if it's 3 then it to a degree amounts to 4......

 

[Beedster]

1 hour ago, PaulWarning said:

....my favourite bass sound on any record from Norvegicus, and it's a travesty

 

That bass line comes in like a weapon, IIRC one of the music mags at the time described it as like being attacked by a barracuda. It is sublime 🙏

[Cosmo Valdemar]

22 minutes ago, Beedster said:

 

 

Exactly, there's four possible reasons

1. Personal choice (he doesn't want to use the old tone anymore and is happy to allow sound techs to do as they will)

 

 

That was what I thought. He could easily get closer to "that" tone if he wanted to.

It's surprising when you realise a lot of our most desired and emulated bass tones were the result of necessity rather than choice. Roger Glover has often said his famous Machine Head Rickenbacker tone was not to his taste at all, being overly distorted, and was an attempt to cut through Blackmore and Lord's din. He's very happy with his current Vigier tone, but that sounds bone dry and sterile to my ears.

 

See also, Geezer Butler. His early tone with Sabbath - Fender Precision with flats through faulty amp/speaker was literally the best he could do.

[Beedster]

6 minutes ago, Cosmo Valdemar said:

That was what I thought. He could easily get closer to "that" tone if he wanted to.

It's surprising when you realise a lot of our most desired and emulated bass tones were the result of necessity rather than choice. Roger Glover has often said his famous Machine Head Rickenbacker tone was not to his taste at all, being overly distorted, and was an attempt to cut through Blackmore and Lord's din. He's very happy with his current Vigier tone, but that sounds bone dry and sterile to my ears.

 

See also, Geezer Butler. His early tone with Sabbath - Fender Precision with flats through faulty amp/speaker was literally the best he could do.

 

Sad, but almost certainly true

 

Hopefully we're going to do Rattus Norvegicus in our album band, I cannot wait to experiment, in fact (between you and me) I've booked our rehearsal room for two hours ahead of the band arriving this weekend to start experimenting, over and above some clanky rounds, a maple board Precision, and some serious digging in, my preference is to get it as much as possible from wound-up tubes as opposed to small boxes 👍

[Beedster]

11 minutes ago, Cosmo Valdemar said:

Roger Glover has often said his famous Machine Head Rickenbacker tone was not to his taste at all, being overly distorted, and was an attempt to cut through Blackmore and Lord's din

 

Not unlike JE's awesome Live at Leeds tone the result of having to deal with Townsend and Moon  

[Cosmo Valdemar]

1 hour ago, Beedster said:

 

Not unlike JE's awesome Live at Leeds tone the result of having to deal with Townsend and Moon  

I reckon JE would have sounded like that regardless! 

 

 

 

[Velarian]

14 hours ago, Beedster said:

3. Human error (sound techs don't know how to get the old tone from their systems)

 

Or maybe the sound techs don’t realise that the ‘old tone’ is what a bass could sound like and think that dull/boomy bass is how they all should sound?

[Stub Mandrel]

Makes me wonder if we should have more discussion of 'tone' on here.

 

I don't see much useful discussion of how to get particular types of sound, beyond comments like 'use flats' or 'use pedal x'.

 

It would be interesting to see what settings people are using for their JJ sound.

 

 

[Velarian]

I came across this video of Danny Sapko covering a few bass players’ amp settings. JJ is the third one in at around 24s.

 

 

These are the amp settings he used: -

 

 

[Beedster]

58 minutes ago, Velarian said:

Or maybe the sound techs don’t realise that the ‘old tone’ is what a bass could sound like and think that dull/boomy bass is how they all should sound?

Agreed 👍 

[PaulWarning]

2 hours ago, Velarian said:

I came across this video of Danny Sapko covering a few bass players’ amp settings. JJ is the third one in at around 24s.

 

 

These are the amp settings he used: -

 

 

tbh I don't think that sounds much like JJ's tone, too much treble, a big boost around the 1 -2k Hz gets you nearer, the nearest I can get is using the Zoom B1on sansamp clone for distortion and various EQ

[Cosmo Valdemar]

49 minutes ago, PaulWarning said:

tbh I don't think that sounds much like JJ's tone, too much treble, a big boost around the 1 -2k Hz gets you nearer, the nearest I can get is using the Zoom B1on sansamp clone for distortion and various EQ

They're all vague approximations at best. Apart from Lemmy's which is nowhere near!

[Lozz196]

Yeah the JJ one is fairly weak, if he weren`t playing a Stranglers bassline possible not many would think it was meant to be JJ. For me as well as the blown speaker it`s valves, I`ve always found it much easier to get near the JJ sound through a valve amp, there seems to be a chunky but smooth aspect in mids in valve amps. Many years ago I had a Dave Hall DH1 and it did that nicely. Of course a lot of it will be down to how he was playing at the time, angry young man playing angry new music.

 

[tauzero]

5 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

Makes me wonder if we should have more discussion of 'tone' on here.

 

I don't see much useful discussion of how to get particular types of sound, beyond comments like 'use flats' or 'use pedal x'.

 

Rosewood or maple fretboard? Which tonewood? 😁

[Stub Mandrel]

8 hours ago, tauzero said:

 

Rosewood or maple fretboard? Which tonewood? 😁

 

Exactly, some people will debate that for days, but who wants to talk about adjustin a parametric mid control that has a vastly greater impact...?

[Si600]

On 21/02/2025 at 17:03, Velarian said:

The URL you posted doesn't work. I think this is the correct one:  https://bass.relentlessrevolutions.com/stranglers2/index.html

 

Edit: Great Resource! Thanks 

I think we killed it, at least, it's not there anymore.

[Velarian]

16 minutes ago, Si600 said:

I think we killed it, at least, it's not there anymore.

Damn! That’s a shame. It looks like the whole site is down rather than just that specific URL. 

[Velarian]

22 minutes ago, Si600 said:

I think we killed it, at least, it's not there anymore.

This looks like a reasonable alternative: -

 

https://www.songsterr.com/a/wsa/the-stranglers-tabs-a5147?inst=bass

[Beedster]

On 26/02/2025 at 21:49, Stub Mandrel said:

 

Exactly, some people will debate that for days, but who wants to talk about adjustin a parametric mid control that has a vastly greater impact...?

 

The former has not decent science attached to it and largely comes down to experience/opinion/rhetoric, the other can be measured objectively and systematically using technology. Where's the fun in discussing the latter  

[chriswareham]

I suspect that sound engineers and their presumption of what a bass guitar should sound like is a big factor in what JJ sounds like at any given show. I wouldn't be surprised that even a band with the stature of The Stranglers don't have their own sound engineer these days and normally rely on the house engineer.

 

For example, I'm used to house sound engineers scooping the mids on bass sounds. My sound and that of JJ's early era is the mids at full, a smidge of bass boost and a smidge of treble cut. That goes against what most sound engineers think is appropriate in all circumstances and often a source of argument. I hate it when engineers mic' the guitar amps, but only directly DI the bass before it's even reached the amp. My amp sound is deliberately part of the band's sound, and I have to insist on being mic'ed up or at least having the DI coming out of my amp's preamp.

 

The show I did last Friday we were the last to soundcheck as things were as usual running late, and I set the (mic'ed up) bass amp to maxed out mids, flat bass and treble. I was amused to see the previous bands had left the amp settings untouched when we went on stage, despite the sound engineer's initial grumbling about the bass sound when I first soundchecked solo before we played as full band.

 

Long story short, most sound engineers at small to medium venues have a very blinkered idea of what a bass guitar should sound like for certain bands. And don't get me started on sound engineers who still mix keyboards to be inaudible because most of them are guitar bigots.

 

Edited Friday at 01:38 by chriswareham

[BigRedX]

One of the advantages of being in a band that doesn't have a proper guitarist and is mostly keyboards driven. I get the sound engineer to EQ the Bass VI so that it is sufficiently bright when I'm playing "guitar" parts on it and then it sounds right for the Peter Hook-style bass parts too.

[Musicman666]

a lot of the stranglers bass sound is also tied up in how you attack the strings and how you play  ..in the 80s i used to get quite a few comments after gigs about how i sounded like jjb even though we were playing our own stuff and my rig wasn't set up specifically to sound like him...  

[Geek99]

On 26/02/2025 at 08:25, Stub Mandrel said:

Makes me wonder if we should have more discussion of 'tone' on here

 

 

It’s all from the wood you know 

 

🍿

 

probably, his bass is made of magic wood and is The One Bass that can make that sound 

Edited 23 hours ago by Geek99