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John Myung Bongo 4

How to get this bass sound?

E

Eek

Member
Joined
Oct 25, 2008
Messages
24
Heyhey!





I want to get as close as possible to this sound with my bass:


*You have to click YouTube link, embed won't work sorry.*
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXROKJzn-Hk"]YouTube - Big D And The Kid's Table - Wailing Paddle[/ame]

I have a sterling H 3 EQ bass.

I've already played around a bit with EQ settings but can't quite make it.
I think it might be the strings, I still have the factory strings on my bass. Don't know what these are, but they sound a bit to "bright" (hope it's the right word:P) for me.
Maybe someone can tell me which strings might do the trick?






Thanks in advance!
 
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the owner of the video has disabled the embedding feature but if you click on the video window it takes you to the youtube direct video.

Now about that sound, it is definately a neck pickup sound of come sort, with boosted mids and flat highs, try playing with your amp to get a similar sound with the bass on +3, mids on +5 and treble on 0

good luck

I also think a pick is used. (and it sounds like a P bass, shhhh)
 
I hear lots of mid, and it's definitely played with a pick. Medium bass, medium treble. That's my take.
 
In one of Brandt's demos of the 25th on TPB, he gets a sound very close to that, if not dead on. Check 'em out!
 
The bass player can be seen in this song playing fingerstyle on a Stingray 5 at 1:37. It seems he also favors a jazzer.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLw7eKouSNU]YouTube - Big D and the Kids Table "G.L.D"[/ame]
 
Thank you for the helpful replies ^^ Boosted mids.. I will try this

No tips on the strings though? I think that's also a major factor, no?

Thx anyways:)
 
Dunno, but I think there might be some soft tube overdrive from the amp as well - I can get a sound somewhat like that from my SR5 into my Ashdown amp using the tube preamp.
 
I think that's defiantly a "p" with a plectrum into a a valve based system (ampeg or fender by the sounds of it) with either lots of quality compression to fatten and distort or the pre amp valve pushed to clip.
Could be completly modelled ie pod though???? Sounds too "real" for that though.
 
Well here is a tip for all my fellow bass players chums here:

there is a very underrated effect that you can all use to obtain some really interesting sounds from your bass and amp and that is the use of a very clean bass wah pedal, and the trick is not to use it to wiggle the pedal up or down but to try different levels of the actual pedal travel to get some tone sweeps that you can't usualy get with an eq or other sound shaping effects.

Try it, you will have quite a lot of fun. I use a wah pedal from my Line6 Bass Pox XT Live but you can use any decent wah pedal as long as it's clean and efficient. It woks great with pick style playing and also interesting with slap sounds.

Here's mine

DSC01528.jpg
 
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Yep, I used to do that - borrowed my guitarists wah pedal (not a bass pedal) so it worked mostly on the mid-upper notes and left the lower ones clean. Used to drive the pedal down and leave it there and get a really good dirty raunchy overdriven sound I'd use for playing chords. This was in my sort of loud, rock type of moments of course :D
 
Pedals? For a bass?? For a Musicman??? I think you guys are posting in the wrong side. :D

tbone
 
Umm, sorry T-Bone, I know it's all a bit unclean...

I collected a bunch of pedals from friends once and put them all in a line and thought, hmmm, wonder what it would sound like if I just turn them all on at once? Well, it was like a Stingray with a sort of phasey, flangey, muffy, overdrivey, limited, tubey, compressed, echoey sort of sound which after a few pints did seem really cool - but I've repented now and I'm doing two years effects-free hard labour "a-toning" :rolleyes: for my aural sins
 
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