Is it really in the fingers and not the bass?

[Funky Dunky]

[quote name='JellyKnees' timestamp='1434728604' post='2802294']
It's both. Next...
[/quote]

You win the thread!

[Damonjames]

To say it is one or the other is just ignorant, of course it is a combination of both. Despite what some will argue, you cannot coax a stingray sound out of a p bass, regardless of who is playing it. Can you get a good sound out of both? Absolutely, but they are very different beasts. The real thing you need to consider is who do you WANT to sound like? Find out what gear they play and start there.
I agree that GAS is usually fuelled by a desire to sound different/better, and it a lot of cases, simply tweaking some things can get you want you want, but the other thing is it may also open up a whole
New sound. That you weren't expecting.

[martin8708]

I have 5 Precisions , one amp , and one cab , and one set of fingers ( no Isle of Wight jokes , please )

They all sound slightly different according to age , strings , maple or rosewood neck .
Still don't sound like Colin Hodgekinson though

[discreet]

[quote name='martin8708' timestamp='1434751493' post='2802635']
[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]I have 5 Precisions, one amp, one cab and one set of fingers. [/font][/color]They all sound slightly different according to age...
[/quote]

How come your fingers are different ages? Was it a difficult birth??

Edited June 19, 2015 by discreet

[lojo]

It's not all in anything , but any physical contact with the strings and how's it's done is an important part of the signal chain and hass bearing on the tone and shape of the final sound, and is what your electronics have to work with.

Edited June 20, 2015 by lojo

[KevB]

[quote name='ambient' timestamp='1434726240' post='2802261']
Gather a few bassists together and take it in turns to play the same bass. Leave all the controls the same, don't touch anything.
Then come back to this thread ��
[/quote]

Well of course I've done exactly this being in the house band for jam sessions, which is why I wrote my post. I think the main example where style and tone become synonymus is pick v fingerstyle, 2 different playing styles that significantly affects tone. But I'd class that as different playing [i]styles[/i] anyway rather than what is already set up at source. You could still more dramatically change what someones [i]tone[/i] was with just a few turns of a few knobs on the amp irrespective of what they could do with their fingers.

Edited June 20, 2015 by KevB

[steve-bbb]

[font=courier new,courier,monospace][size=6][b]YES[/b][/size][/font]

hope this helps

[CamdenRob]

[quote name='skankdelvar' timestamp='1434733097' post='2802355']


Apart from other bass players who stare intently at one's amp settings, turn to their wives and observe that 'the sound is too scooped and needs more low mids'.
[/quote]

Mrs c nods and says "yes dear" when i say things like this...

I do the same when she's talking about feminism, social justice or inequality...

[discreet]

[quote name='CamdenRob' timestamp='1434785023' post='2802743']
Mrs c nods and says "yes dear" when i say things like this...
[/quote]

Are we married to the same woman?? That's really, really weird. And would explain a lot.

[Phil Starr]

It's a bit Through The Looking Glass really, the question is, how widely do you define tone and perhaps, how important is tone.

If tone is everything outside playing the right notes at the right time then technique probably is more important than the bass you play. Even if you define tone more narrowly as the sound coming out of the speakers then the speakers and the amp have roughly the same effect on sound as the bass you use, give or take.

If I hand my gear over to a more experienced bassist they get sounds out of it I can only dream of. Even listening to two equally talented bassists playing the same gear will give you differences in tone. Equally playing at home My J Bass has a much nicer tone than my more expensive P-Bass. On stage with my current band I think the P works better but I don't suppose the audience notices or cares. Listening to live recordings of my band I couldn't swear to you which bass I was using in most of the songs. I no longer bother swapping basses at gigs for such marginal gains as the dynamic of the gig is more important.

Of course we care about tone, if you want to play music you should take it seriously, but hours spent on the bass will improve your sound more than hours spent shopping surely?

So to answer the OP it's all a factor but if you've got decent gear then most of how you sound it is down to you. If you have the money you can buy marginal improvements but narrowly defined tone is only part of how your sound.

[FuNkShUi]

I'd say both.

But a way to test if it is in the fingers is by having a group of 5 or 6 bassists learn the same song, and then have a rig and bass set up that will remain the same for all of them whilst they play, and ask them to play the song.
If it is ALL in the fingers, each of them should still sound different.
Next bass bash maybe?

[leftybassman392]

It's a whole bunch of stuff!

The point's been made about confusing tone with style; but in respect of the actual sound you are making then pretty much everything in the chain that you can think of (plus one or two things you might not have thought of - string age and cleanliness for example; or room characteristics; or how about wall proximity behind your rig...) has an effect on the sound you make at any given point. So yes, how, where and with what you attack the strings is a factor, but only one of many. Some would even include your mains cable (though I'm not one of them I hasten to add!).

[lojo]

Lozz can set up a test next bass bash, get 20 people to play the same line on the same bass, see what happens.

[Lozz196]

[quote name='lojo' timestamp='1434800259' post='2802895']
Lozz can set up a test next bass bash, get 20 people to play the same line on the same bass, see what happens.
[/quote]

Now that is a great idea, thanks lojo, will PM Mick (The Greek) now about this before I forget.

[Funky Dunky]

Film it!

[gjones]

I have a friend who is a very good pro bass player. I first met him when he was playing a P bass through an old Gallien Krueger 1 x 15 combo. His sound was a lovely old fat P bass sound that really laid a great foundation for the rest of the band. In fact I liked his sound so much that I promptly went out and bought a P bass.

The next time I saw him play he was playing a Warwick Thumb Bass (which has single coil jazz type pickups very close to the bridge). His sound this time was very nasal (in an extreme Jaco Pastorius kind of way) and didn't support the bottom end of his band as well as the P bass did. He was still playing through the GK amp.

Recently he's aquired a MM Stingray. This bass has a very, aggressive, rocky sound. As above, it didn't complement the band as well as his P bass did.

He has also changed his amp setup to an Aguilar Tone Hammer 500 and an SL 112. I actually preferred the tone of his old GK combo which had a deeper rounder sound, especially when he played his P bass through it.

So to answer your question, yes your gear does affect your sound. It doesn't make you play any better (assuming your bass is well set up in the first place) but it does affect your sound.

[SteveK]

If, by tone, we mean "eq" - then different amps and instruments (of reasonable quality) will have marginally different characteristics. However, once that instrument is strapped on and being thumped, those "characteristics" play a hardly perceivable part of the overall voice.
Providing you have half decent kit in the first place, spending a couple of grand on a rig or instrument in an attempt at changing/improving your tone is money ill spent. Much better to spend it on a good teacher. Your "tone", "voice", (call it what you will) will be all the better for it.

[TimR]

It's all in the fingers. That's where the sound is created and if the sound coming from the way you strike the strings isn't right you cannot fix it with strings, pickups, tone woods, FX, special leads, amplifiers or speakers.

You can dramatically change the sound coming from the gear just by changing one small aspect of how you strike the strings.

[Pinball]

Yes the tone comes from your fingers but its also the bass.... and the amp, the cabs, the strings, the shape of the of the room, not to mention the tone/EQ nobs!

Edited June 20, 2015 by Pinball

[Guest bassman7755]

[quote name='jazzyvee' timestamp='1434720431' post='2802166']

[color=#141823][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]I still consider myself fairly new to live bass playing and I have a basses I love the sound of and I'm starting to discover what I think my tone on each instrument is. I use one brand of bass so do not have any real experience of different brands. So.... what I'm seeking for with this post is clarity to something I've read so many times on-line here and other places, and heard many bass players claim but I haven't read anything that convinces me that this is really true.[/font][/color]
[color=#141823][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]What I hear is this "Most if not all of the tone we have as players comes from our fingers and not the bass." [/font][/color]

[color=#141823][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Now I'm not going to express my own view at this point, but I'm putting it out here to find out from more experienced musicians if there is any meat on this view. However, if that really is the case why are we falling for the seduction of spending so much money time and effort on the smaller percentage of our playing that contributes the least to our sound, namely the bass and the rig, the gear?[/font][/color]
[/quote]

I think gear is more of a factor when its not up to snuff, good gear gets out of the way and lets the playing/player shine through. For instance Geddy Lee always sounds like Geddy Lee to me despite the fact that hes used a variety of kit over the years.

For basses, pickup configuration is probably the biggest influence on basic tone and there are essentially 4 variants that the vast majority of basses use: 2 single coils ("J"), 1 mid single coil ("P"), 2 humbuckers and 1 bridge humbucker ("stingray"), well if you include fretless bases then theres a 5th common variant - single mid mounted humbucker.

When I hear some random bass sound on a recording I can sometimes tell if its using single coils or humbuckers but not really determine much about the bass being used other than that.

[Damonjames]

This argument is never ending... Some say it's all in the fingers, some say it's in the bass, some like me say it's a combination of both.
The reality is that tone is something completely unmeasurable, because it is relative to the context of what is being played, by this I mean the "tone" gets tied in with "feel/groove".
If someone said (rightly or wrongly) they wanted to sound like flea, the obvious place to start would be with a Stingray and a gallienkrueger rig, but that would in reality be as close as they would get. If they learned some chilli' songs, they may get a close approximation, but ask them to jam on something or create lines for an original song, and this is where the individual shines through.
If you were to set up the Pepsi challenge as suggested earlier, but instead just asked to play a single repeated staccato note, the feel of the player has less impact, and the characteristics of the instrument and associated equipment come more into play. It is ALWAYS a combination of the two, that's why Geddy sounds very little like jaco, flea very little like 'nard. But it's also why people can still pick a particular bass out in a mix, I'd fancy I could tell a p from a 'ray and I'd like to think most of us could regardless of who was playing it.
Flea always sounds like flea, regardless of what he is playing, but if you take an album like one hot minute, which he recorded on a Wal, except for aeroplane, which when you listen is blatantly obvious what instrument he is using.

[72deluxe]

I'd say it is both - I have different basses and they sound different, even played through the same amp with the same settings. So the woods of the bass make a difference (maple is bright, for example).

But the way you play is also a large factor. I have a problem where the first finger on my right hand sound significantly brighter than my index finger, so depending on which finger I start a bar on it'll sound aggressive or warm. I think my first finger is more calloused

Additionally, the left hand makes a difference. This is particularly apparent when you play fretless or double bass, where the flatness of your hand against the fretboard will make a warm round sound but if you play with fingertips it'll be a thinner sound.

So it's both really.
Get some good gear and play it flat to begin with I suppose. I realise I don't really use the EQ very much, even on basses with preamps in them!

[bubinga5]

its in the nuances of a bass player's style that changes the tone. nothing to with basic tone., more to with the way they manipulate that instrument.

[BILL POSTERS]

Maybe we are all thinking differently here. Put it this way, if Keef plays Midnight Rambler with a Strat, then I play Midnight Rambler with a Strat, the two would sound very different. Thats whats in the fingers.

If Keef plays Midnight Rambler with a Strat, then plays it with a Les Paul and a cheap woolies amp, the two would sound different, but thats the gear.

Nobody, but nobody would ever play it like Keef, which is why I used it as an example.

Edited June 20, 2015 by BILL POSTERS

[CamdenRob]

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1434786605' post='2802757']


Are we married to the same woman?? That's really, really weird. And would explain a lot.
[/quote]

It's possible... She does disappear for long periods during the day.