What really impacts on your bass tone?

[Terry M.]

8 minutes ago, Stub Mandrel said:

A voice in favour of digging in... I  use it to vary the amount of overdrive on my tone.

Actually I forgot because I rarely use it. I dig in a bit when using my envelope filter pedal to trigger it. But that's it ☺️

[Sean]

Can I get a reverse-wound frappachino with  a 0.96 delrin plectrum with soy milk that leverages the stickiness all across the piece to ringfence the low-hanging fruit in the red ocean that gives us a steer going forward enabling the blue sky thinking? P or J? What's your vibe?

[Steve Browning]

I must have been very fortunate my entire playing life. I use the tone I like and have only ever been asked (occasionally) to take out a little lower mid as it booms a little at certain points on some stages. I have no problem with that. Otherwise, I've never had anything but compliments on the sound.

 

I have tended to play in bands without too many other instruments and the keyboard player is a wonderfully musical chap, who stays out of my 'domain'. Couple of numbers we double the lower end part but it's a free for all otherwise.

[jonno1981]

Room acoustics and gear placement!

I’ve played the same places before with back line in a slightly different spot. It can make such a huge difference to what you and the audience hear.
One time everything was perfect instantly with no adjustments needed (dreamland!), another time I was in safe cracker territory with no end of knob twiddling getting me nowhere! I shifted the rig a few cms away from the wall and it all came together. 

If you don’t believe me, try it next time! 

[Rodders]

An adjustable HPF made the biggest difference for me, still learning how to use EQ to best compensate for the room. 

Pick, fingers, roundwound, flatwound, hand position etc all change the tone for better or worse in different styles of music and band line ups. 

[80Hz]

It's interesting that the metal guys have a different perspective - which I agree with.

 

Talking recorded here, not live.

 

Metal has been on a gradual journey down in pitch over the last 40 years or so (sub-genre dependent). So where the bass can "fit in" to the mix these days is somewhere just above the kick drum but below the low B/B flat/A/A flat whatever of the guitar, but with a bit of clank popping through somewhere in 2-3.X kHz range. I think modern metal is its own technical challenge which has more in common with EDM production.

[Terry M.]

1 hour ago, jonno1981 said:

 I shifted the rig a few cms away from the wall and it all came together. 

If you don’t believe me, try it next time! 

Yes!!! Totally agree with cab placement respective to wall position. Forgot about that. 

[SimonK]

1 hour ago, jonno1981 said:

Room acoustics and gear placement!

I’ve played the same places before with back line in a slightly different spot. It can make such a huge difference to what you and the audience hear.
One time everything was perfect instantly with no adjustments needed (dreamland!), another time I was in safe cracker territory with no end of knob twiddling getting me nowhere! I shifted the rig a few cms away from the wall and it all came together. 

If you don’t believe me, try it next time! 

 

Yes I agree on this - I always make sure my cabs are at least a foot away from a wall, but better yet is something absorbent like a curtain behind the cabs. I did once leave an open bass case behind the cabs in a particularly bad room but not entirely sure it made a huge difference. The other thing is coupling or decoupling the cab from the ground using casters/beer crates etc. Certainly hollow stages are a real problem if the cab sits directly on the floor.

 

Mind you I would still say playing technique followed by EQ make the biggest difference.

[BigRedX]

EQ is only a partial solution to room acoustics as the sound of a room is both frequency and time domain based and EQ is a frequency domain only solution. What normally happens with EQ is that you can correct for one area of the room but you are just shifting the problem to somewhere else. 

 

You have to move cabs quite a way from walls, floors and ceilings before you break the proximity effect they cause. However moving your cabs will cause the position of the room nodes to shift which may help with the sound of the room (changing the time domain parameters). Decoupling solutions rarely work at gig volumes. I stopped using my Gramma Pad because it did little to improve the sound but did make my rig wobble alarmingly on some stages

Edited Wednesday at 10:15 by BigRedX

[Terry M.]

I will say though that my front port facing Bergantino cabs are less sensitive to walls than rear facing port cabs I've owned in the past such as Markbass. 

[chris_b]

Too much is being made of bad sounding rooms. 99% of the gigs I do are in venues with a good sound and most of the bad sounding rooms can be managed. So getting a good sound is still the most important thing for bass players. The sound of a bass can be a challenge but with good gear there is very little that can't be resolved.

 

Badly designed cabs are a large part of difficult sounding rooms. Buy properly designed cabs you'll get a better sound right out of the box. 

[NHM]

Something I've found helpful to getting an even and consistent tone is having the amp set just a little louder that it needs to be - so I can play within myself and concentrate on good/expressive finger or plectrum contact without having to worry about playing hard to get volume. Then the volume is there when you need a bit extra.

Edited Wednesday at 16:39 by NHM
grammar

[Dan Dare]

8 hours ago, chris_b said:

Too much is being made of bad sounding rooms. 99% of the gigs I do are in venues with a good sound and most of the bad sounding rooms can be managed. So getting a good sound is still the most important thing for bass players. The sound of a bass can be a challenge but with good gear there is very little that can't be resolved.

 

Badly designed cabs are a large part of difficult sounding rooms. Buy properly designed cabs you'll get a better sound right out of the box. 

 

If only life was that simple. It isn't so much bad sounding rooms per se. It's more to do with how the instrumental mix and the sound each band member makes combines and reacts with a particular space. Sure, a space with lots of hard surfaces - tiling, large expanses of glass and similar - is going to be a problem, but many rooms have not been designed or built with music reproduction (especially loud music) as a consideration. The worst sounding space I ever played in was an art deco style ballroom that was shaped like a Nissen hut internally. The walls/ceiling were hard plaster and it was a complete nightmare sonically.

 

Leaving aside such obvious horror scenarios, pretty well every room has resonant frequencies. They will depend on dimensions, volume (as in capacity, not loudness), etc  Excite those and there's often trouble. It has little to do with how good or well designed your cabs and gear are. Several of us recount instances above when quality gear has not sounded great. Quality gear that has a wide frequency response may even make things worse because it gives you more of everything.

 

The fundamental disagreement in this thread seems to be between those of us who favour tailoring individual sound/tone to blend well and suit the overall in-room sound - even to the extent that they may not particularly like the sound of their instrument/rig very much - and those who are concerned primarily with enjoying their personal sound (and who presumably expect others, including the audience, to adjust to suit them).

 

Assuming the band isn't playing entirely through a PA, with an engineer to take care of FoH, the first camp is the one to be in. Imho, obviously.

 

[Stub Mandrel]

12 hours ago, SimonK said:

 

Yes I agree on this - I always make sure my cabs are at least a foot away from a wall, but better yet is something absorbent like a curtain behind the cabs. I did once leave an open bass case behind the cabs in a particularly bad room but not entirely sure it made a huge difference. The other thing is coupling or decoupling the cab from the ground using casters/beer crates etc. Certainly hollow stages are a real problem if the cab sits directly on the floor.

 

Mind you I would still say playing technique followed by EQ make the biggest difference.

 

Only downside of the at212 slim is a rear-dacing reflex port. The bottom end boom if too close to a wall is terrifying. A foot away does seem to be the magic minimum.

[Stub Mandrel]

15 minutes ago, Dan Dare said:

 

If only life was that simple. It isn't so much bad sounding rooms per se. It's more to do with how the instrumental mix and the sound each band member makes combines and reacts with a particular space. Sure, a space with lots of hard surfaces - tiling, large expanses of glass and similar - is going to be a problem, but many rooms have not been designed or built with music reproduction (especially loud music) as a consideration. The worst sounding space I ever played in was an art deco style ballroom that was shaped like a Nissen hut internally. The walls/ceiling were hard plaster and it was a complete nightmare sonically.

 

Leaving aside such obvious horror scenarios, pretty well every room has resonant frequencies. They will depend on dimensions, volume (as in capacity, not loudness), etc  Excite those and there's often trouble. It has little to do with how good or well designed your cabs and gear are. Several of us recount instances above when quality gear has not sounded great. Quality gear that has a wide frequency response may even make things worse because it gives you more of everything.

 

The fundamental disagreement in this thread seems to be between those of us who favour tailoring individual sound/tone to blend well and suit the overall in-room sound - even to the extent that they may not particularly like the sound of their instrument/rig very much - and those who are concerned primarily with enjoying their personal sound (and who presumably expect others, including the audience, to adjust to suit them).

 

Assuming the band isn't playing entirely through a PA, with an engineer to take care of FoH, the first camp is the one to be in. Imho, obviously.

 

 

A decent audience helps, people are extremely effective at mopping up nasty reflections and resonances.

[Steve Browning]

24 minutes ago, Dan Dare said:

The fundamental disagreement in this thread seems to be between those of us who favour tailoring individual sound/tone to blend well and suit the overall in-room sound - even to the extent that they may not particularly like the sound of their instrument/rig very much - and those who are concerned primarily with enjoying their personal sound (and who presumably expect others, including the audience, to adjust to suit them).

 

I have to say, your last statement is rather troll-like. I play music that suits the tone I like and choose what I do accordingly. It is me making the adjustment. 

 

It is likely many of us do the same. 

[peteb]

19 hours ago, chris_b said:

Too much is being made of bad sounding rooms. 99% of the gigs I do are in venues with a good sound and most of the bad sounding rooms can be managed. So getting a good sound is still the most important thing for bass players. The sound of a bass can be a challenge but with good gear there is very little that can't be resolved.

 

Badly designed cabs are a large part of difficult sounding rooms. Buy properly designed cabs you'll get a better sound right out of the box. 

 

I'm surprised that only 1% of the rooms you play have a bad sound, but I agree with your point, and you should be able to get a decent sound with the right gear. For me, the point is to be able send the sound I want to the desk and to make it as fool proof as possible. I try to make the sound engineer's job as easy as possible, bearing in mind that not all of them are that great. 

 

First of all get a sound that you like that works with the genres / bands you play with, which doesn't have too extreme an EQ that is likely to cause issues. It also helps if you have a half-decent technique and can get a usable sound to send to the desk. I always use a bit of light compression and you might find that a HPF is a good idea for many rooms that have issues with bass frequencies and sometimes you might have to tweak your settings to get rid of unwanted frequencies. If everybody in the band takes the same approach (and they generally do IME), then you shouldn't have any insurmountable problems. 

 

Edited yesterday at 08:45 by peteb

[matybigfro]

3 hours ago, Dan Dare said:

 Assuming the band isn't playing entirely through a PA, with an engineer to take care of FoH, the first camp is the one to be in. Imho, obviously.

 

 

Except as was already pointed out in the thread room the idea of an overall 'in-room sound' is a bit of a misnomer . Unless you are able to listen in multiple locations in the room or very very experienced with how your bass sound reproduces in different rooms and have a high amount of control of many variables there's very little guarantee being in the first camp produces a better result than the second.

[SimonK]

6 hours ago, matybigfro said:

 

Except as was already pointed out in the thread room the idea of an overall 'in-room sound' is a bit of a misnomer . Unless you are able to listen in multiple locations in the room or very very experienced with how your bass sound reproduces in different rooms and have a high amount of control of many variables there's very little guarantee being in the first camp produces a better result than the second.

 

Which is why my main focus is making sure it sounds good where I am standing as I simply can't be everywhere at once so can adjust the one thing I have control over. Of course if the person mixing FoH asks for adjustments I will generally make them unless it stops me being able to hear myself. But providing a nice DI signal with a bit of compression to stop any big peaks, and using a HPF set at about 40, seems to keep engineers happy.

 

Years back I used to do the FoH sound and play at the same time, and yes that requires a slightly different philosophy, but at the moment I am lucky enough always to have someone else handle the PA.

[-asdfgh2-]

On 15/02/2025 at 21:40, KingPrawn said:

I really enjoyed this. Having fallen into every trap around upgrades and mods over the years. This is very much where I'm at as a more mature player

 

 

 

It's a little flawed as it suggests that a Jazz has one tone but with three pickups it has at least three distinct options before you play with the tone knob. And the examples are all FSOs to some degree and something like something with soap bars, a Rickenbacker, Gibson would have been good. It's a good video as far as it goes, but it could have been just a little better.

 

I was surprised about the pickup changes, but when I've changed them maybe they've been more significant differences in design, for example overwound.

[Dan Dare]

19 hours ago, Steve Browning said:

I have to say, your last statement is rather troll-like. I play music that suits the tone I like and choose what I do accordingly. It is me making the adjustment. 

 

It is likely many of us do the same. 

 

How so? I can only speak for myself, but I certainly don't choose music that "suits the tone I like". At the risk of being branded a troll again, that seems bizarre. I choose music I like and adjust the sound I produce, the style I play in, etc to suit it. I can't be the only one.

 

16 hours ago, matybigfro said:

Except as was already pointed out in the thread room the idea of an overall 'in-room sound' is a bit of a misnomer . Unless you are able to listen in multiple locations in the room or very very experienced with how your bass sound reproduces in different rooms and have a high amount of control of many variables there's very little guarantee being in the first camp produces a better result than the second.

 

Not so. It's simple to use a wireless or even a long lead during sound-check to go for a walk and check the sound from a variety of locations in a venue. I do it all the time. You don't need to guess or be experienced in "how your bass sound reproduces in different rooms" when you can hear it for yourself. Problems will usually be obvious - too much/not enough low/mids/highs, more/less volume required and so on. Most amp heads have plenty enough variation in  eq settings to get a decent result. I'm struggling to understand why so many find it a problem to ensure they blend well with the other musicians and the room. It seems so basic.

 

[Sean]

Powercuts.

[Mrbigstuff]

Strings and string height are the big two for me

[Terry M.]

1 minute ago, OliverBlackman said:

Strings and string height are the big two for me

Please elaborate on string height. I've heard this before and would genuinely like to know more. For reference I like my action super low. 

[Mrbigstuff]

On 18/02/2025 at 01:10, tauzero said:

 

It ain't bad.

Unless the one is timing, then it’s a bit of an issue for James Brown.

 

On 18/02/2025 at 14:38, JoeEvans said:

The great thing about playing bass, especially with a darker, softer tone, is that very often playing the exact right note isn't critical. You have to get the rhythm right, but a different note is often fine. I once played a couple of bars a semitone up, noticed and shifted down for the next bar, and it actually sounded pretty good in context, but when I mentioned it afterwards, nobody else in the band had noticed.

You’re right but wow how did they not notice! I recorded a video where I was a tone out on one note and the whole band was looking at me 😆