Metal bass tone

ThePrettyDamned · February 2014

I have a musicman sub USA which is neat. But basically, I'm going to be spending plenty of time recording guitar and bass tracks with the intention of finding like minded musicians.

So, assuming I'm playing with pick or fingers, what are the main qualities in a good bass tone for hard rock and heavy metal? It'll be more fast than it will heavy, and more punk than djent, but plenty thrashy an all.

I've spent many hours obsessing over my pick attack and pick material to get the most from my guitar, but I've never though about it for bass! I will likely just use POD Farm plugins for the tone, as I don't have a bass amp or anything.

Guitars will mostly be fairly tight and more compressed than open.

Help much appreciated!

Bucket · February 2014

You probably want a grinding, slightly overdriven tone, like this (my absolute favourite bass sound):

Use lots of low mids to give it plenty of shove, and pick hard. Treat the strings like they've said something nasty about your mother.

ThePrettyDamned · February 2014

@bucket, I was hoping you'd chime in because you've posted this on the old place.

That is exactly what I'm after!

Low mids, pick hard.

Great band, too. Not listened to them for ages...

Bucket · February 2014

Others worth checking out - Nolly from Periphery, not normally very high in the mix but he's been turned up here, and his tone is absolutely MONSTROUS - in a similar vein to the Karnivool sound:

Ride - not metal, it's shoegaze, but what a tone. It's really aggressive and punchy, similar sound again but a bit cleaner:

And Billy Gould from Faith No More.

randomhandclaps · February 2014

Most important rule - Don't mix it like Bob Rock does!

monquixote · February 2014

If only someone had written a series on Bass Tone

http://www.easyeartraining.com/learn/series/bass-tone/

The VT Bass pedal is awesome for big rocking bass sounds.

chrispy108 · February 2014

Yup, agree with the low mids and a bit of grind recommendations.

You want a gritty sound, not a distorted one, or it gets messy and loses power, an Ampeg model with the gain on about half.

You want to lose the rumble - Shelf the bass, move the frequency control up until you lose the 'heaviness', then back a notch.

Lose the click-clack - Shelf the high end, move the frequency control down until it sounds thuddy, then add a bit back in.

You also want to take the low mids out of the guitars so the bass has somewhere to go.

However, completely disagree with Bucket's play hard mantra, the bass is a much more dynamic instrument than guitar, so use that! My normal sound would be setup on me playing pretty lightly, so I've got the option to get fills/runs/slides to be a bit louder just by playing a bit harder/slapping.

Heaviness doesn't come from smashing the shit out of it, it comes from a well-mixed band (not just the bass), and being in control of it.

guitarfishbay · February 2014

It is fairly standard practice in heavy rock/metal to have multiple sounds layered on top of each other in a recording. The simple setup is one cleaner sound (DI or bass amp sim) and one gritty sound (overdrive / distortion to taste) and then blend them. You want to get your lows from the cleaner track and you can take some bass from the grit track to stop things getting mushy.

Ola Mel Gibson did a video on this, don't take his compression / EQ settings as gospel but it will give you an idea of where to start.

ThePrettyDamned · February 2014

Cool guys, cheers.

*sigh* I've downloaded the free version of reaper, but it's taking me a while to get used to using it. I feel like it would be much easier if I was just mic'ing up and had an external metronome as well, because the Reaper one confuses me (I like a high pitched click on the 1, and the others to be low, on Reaper it's reversed).

I'll let you know how I get on! How easy is mixing in Reaper?

chrispy108 · February 2014

No reason you can't make a click-track in something else and import it to Reaper as an audio track?

guitarfishbay · February 2014

I don't use Reaper, but usually you can change metronome sounds in DAWs. Here is one result I found googling quickly.

http://reaperblog.net/2012/06/everyone-hates-the-default-click-sound-shut-up-i-fixed-it-for-you/

Honestly I would not recommend using an external click for your own stuff. It is a lot easier if everything lines up in your DAW.

PolarityMan · February 2014

I find getting good bass tone really tricky tbh Fresh strings definitely help but i suspect my cheap bass jsut doesnt cut it. Anyway one interesting observation i had was that if you listen to this:

You realise how actually revolting the tone is solo, but when you hear it with the guitars it sounds great.

longi · February 2014

I've also been on the lookout for a bass overdrive pedal as we're about to become a power trio. Something in the Ampeg ballpark would be nice.

chrispy108 · February 2014

This is a great pedal, especially at that price: http://www.amazon.co.uk/XBD-Bass-Driver-Distortion-Pedal/dp/B0002GYYEK

therose789 · February 2014

I love Justin Chansellor's tone, might be worth looking into what gear he uses as i find his tone sits really nicely in mixes!

I use a sans amp and a aguilar tone hammer and an orange ad200 with a bit of dirt from the amp just to drive it, fills out the low end nicely without sounding too messy as you don't want to muddy up all the nice tight guitars you have!

therose789 · February 2014

Also dont use uber saturated drived like big muffs, IMO they dont work well IMO! Drives are much better than distortions and cheap fuzzes.

Howdy, Stranger!

Categories

In this Discussion

Become a Subscriber!

Metal bass tone

Comments