How do you like your sound?

[Dave Vader]

P-bass, flats, bass shoved up on the amp, tone rolled nearly all the way back. Cuts through anything.
Recent Rickenfaker revelation, both pickups, tone all the way off on the bridge, half off on the neck, more flats, also destroys the crap that gets in the way.
I do twiddle the tone controls, and the amp eq, til it cuts where it's meant to. Fell in love with flats last year, tried to go back, but rounds just sounded so thin, and took ages to get the horrible overtones played out of them.
Also have to twist the tone controls for certain songs (playing synth bass lines from 80s electro without pedals, roll all the tone out, close enough) and can get away with the one or two bits of slap that I need to throw in (more of that 80s stuff).

I also ripped the horns out of my 2 15s, they were too trebly with them

Oh, and I don't know where I get the inspiration from, but I do like Geezer a lot...

[goblin]

I like a range of sounds just to make it complicated. When I'm playing slap, I want a nice punchy low end with a bright and zingy top. When playing fretless it's got to be smooth yet punchy sound throughout, with a deep sounding low end, and a nice blend of mid and hi. Cuts through beautifully, as when playing normal fretted I love a nice neutral yet punchy sound.

[WalMan]

Solid bottom with a bright top, but not hugely scooped mids, and with a smidge of grit.

Settings tend to be
[list]
[*]EQ flat on the MB
[*]Slight boost to treble & bass on channel A of the EBS MicrobassII with treble boost on
[*]On the L2500's
[*]either both pups or just the front
[*]Series/parallel switch forwards to series
[*]preamp switch on (middle) or sometimes forwards for treble boost
[*]bass & treble normally full, but occasionally roll back a bit on the treble
[/list]

Until I actually sat down to try & learn the Chris Squire line to Astral Traveller I would have said I was after his sort of sound, but listening last week it sounded horrid.

Love the sound Dave Meros of Spocks Beard gets, and the guy who plays in Neal Morse's European touring band also has a great sound (IMO) on the recent live CD.

[Lozz196]

[quote name='WalMan' post='902394' date='Jul 22 2010, 09:43 PM']Solid bottom with a bright top, but not hugely scooped mids, and with a smidge of grit.

Settings tend to be
[list]
[*]EQ flat on the MB
[*]Slight boost to treble & bass on channel A of the EBS MicrobassII with treble boost on
[*]On the L2500's
[*]either both pups or just the front
[*]Series/parallel switch forwards to series
[*]preamp switch on (middle) or sometimes forwards for treble boost
[*]bass & treble normally full, but occasionally roll back a bit on the treble
[/list]

Until I actually sat down to try & learn the Chris Squire line to Astral Traveller I would have said I was after his sort of sound, but listening last week it sounded horrid.

Love the sound Dave Meros of Spocks Beard gets, and the guy who plays in Neal Morse's European touring band also has a great sound (IMO) on the recent live CD.[/quote]
The sound I use in my band, is:

Fender Precison, strung with heavy gauge rotosound roundwounds, volume and tone on full, played with a heavy gauge pick.

My Marshall DBS has bass and treble set to flat, with both deep boost and bright boost switched on, and on the graphic equaliser, slight boost (+3db) on the lower mids (80 & 160 hz), and a slight cut (-3db) on 320 hz, all other frequencies left flat. On-board compressor on about 2. All this thru my VBC 412, which has no tweeters. Depending on the venue, if too boomy, I make a cut on the 50hz.

Probably the nearest I can explain this sound is Bruce Foxton from The Jam, but with slightly less high mids, so a bit smoother/less spiky, providing a solid base for the guitars to work on. A bass that is felt, as well as heard!

Edited July 23, 2010 by Lozz196

[51m0n]

I liken my tone to a good solid punch to the face. Its clean, very articulate and feels 'fast'. No excess flab (unlike me ) to drag around.

I got there with a lot of mistakes on the way, and a lot of experience trying to do FOH in pub venues and dealing with bassists who insist on full fat low end which ends up spilling into every mic on stage and turning the PA into a very effective hum (re)creation device. Result, the entire band sounds like plop. Deep bass in the wrong genre or the wrong venue is a nightmare to control.

I was in a band with two guitars and two drummers and a vox/flute for years and got to a point where the bits I played could be heard and not just felt, whilst not completely muddying up the mix. In that cacophany I used to slap, tap, strum and play fast melodic fingerstyle parts, sometimes in a single song. Compressors are a real necessity in that situation, getting the right one and setting it up right took years, and I still am learning! Its also immensely important to control the low end of the guitars, nothing worse than a big smiley face guitar eq to make the bass hard to mix or hear.

I like new strings, I love the extra harmonic content whether you have a trebly sound or not, that grind is really lovely to my ears. So I clean my strings after ever gig in a tube o' meths. Fresh on for the gig. Lots of string rotation at chez 51

I go for the flat eq on the amp, slightly favouring the bridge pickup for fingerstyle, if I want to burp through more I give myself more bridge pup (and maybe more bass from the Roscoe pre to make up for the natural rolloff on that pup). Once up at full on volume, if the room can take more bass, I'll bring up some low end, either on the amp, or with the focusrites' bass enhance knob (set to 'huge' as that works upto 100Hz, which allows less of it to be used with useful results), only ever needs a tiny bit though (less than 9 O'clock). I sometimes pull down around 1KHz if its a really bright room, but usually bodies soak that up enough to leave it. The secret to the big punch is the low mids, the right frequncy is super important, and not too much, which is the hardest thing to figure out.

Outside of the band my tone is not very pretty, in a mix its exactly what I want to hear, and what I want the audience to hear too - venue permiting! That is, every single mistake, in all its glory, and a few right notes as well on a good night

The venue is a bigger influence on any eq than anything else IMO. Until you learn this you are never going to get it right with any sense as to how and why, its all just a big guessing game. In a bigger place you can learn to eq off the reflection from the far wall. Play very staccato notes and listen to what comes back off the back wall, too boomy? turn some bass down etc etc. Its a real skill though, and not 100% accurate, but it can really help in a pinch.

Also when you walk into a venue dont be afraid to try and size up the acoustic when its empty, clap your hands, shout, listen for flutter reverb (if you get that all bets are off, unless you expect a lot of bodies in there to soak it all up), get the PA up and some full range music on, walk around, does it sound consistent?, bassy?, bass lite?, middly? are there obvious nulls and peaks in the bass in the room? All of this is valuable info you need to start thinking about to help you tailor your sound to the room.

Anything you do when the room is empty must be tailored to the knowledge that as it fills up with punters you will effectively lose treble and upper mid, and if it gets hot and humid then you lose even more. If you dont take that into account then you will give the punters an ill defined rumble and not the articulate warm thud you want. Or the punch in the face I like to provide

[urb]

Horses for courses innit... Jaco-ish for more fusiony funk and jazz, thick bass-heavy tone for more pop/funk stuff, both with very little or no treble, though I do add mids for more definition - then more top end added in for the occasional bit of slap that I do.

I like to adjust it live all the time anyway as so much depends on the room, the on stage sound, the backline (which I have to borrow sometimes) - I just play it by ear and see what works best in the mix and for the style of music I'm playing.

M