Heavily distorted bass - why?

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RockerRocker Frets: 4941
Yesterday I accompanied a friend who went to buy a guitar.  So I was tied up for the couple of hours we spent in a music shop in Dublin.  At one stage someone took a bass from the rack and plugged it in to an amp.  He then adjusted the amp until the sound of the bass was almost indistinguishable as a bass.  The sound was so distorted that a listener listening blind would be hard pressed to say it was a bass, let alone the type of bass being played.  I intended to ask him what type of music he played or what songs that sound worked for but when I had a free moment, he was gone.

So my question is: what type of music benefits from extremely distorted bass and/or why would a bassist set up that kind of sound in the first place?  This is not a criticism of his playing but asked merely out of interest.  Oh, my friend bought a Taylor acoustic guitar - a lovely instrument that sounds great fingerstyle (his preferred way of playing guitar).
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. [Albert Einstein]

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  • CirrusCirrus Frets: 8481
    edited April 2019
    It's amazing how distorted a bass needs to be to sound like a distorted bass in a mix. Generally, as you add on distortion you get more harmonics to play with which help your ear pick up the sound of the bass on smaller speakers that don't reproduce the deep, fundamental frequencies very well.

    You don't even hear it as distortion in the context of a full band arrangement a lot of the time. It's just easier to hear it, and maybe a bit more exciting sounding. Most classic recordings have some amount of gain on the bass, either from an amp, overdriven mic preamp, or tape saturation, but in small doses it adds character rather than sounding dirty.

    So, if you play heavy music (think Muse etc) and you actually want the bass to sound like it's distorted, even against guitars which are themselves distorted, then you really need to pile on the gain. Gnarly, nasty jagged sounds can be fantastic. If you want the bass to catch your ear as a central part of the mix it's just the way it is. It can sound top heavy and harsh in isolation. No good for Brown Eyed Girl, but if you want to sound like this;




    It's just the ticket.
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  • ICBMICBM Frets: 71950
    Punk, or anything with that kind of general sound. I use a heavy fuzz pedal a lot for things like Stooges and Sex Pistols songs, or more modern stuff like Queens Of The Stone Age.

    To be honest, it doesn't actually sound very good on its own, so if you heard it in isolation in a shop I can understand why you might have been a bit shocked by it - but in a band context it sounds fantastic, actually not as 'fuzzy' and nasty, and more fat and almost organ-like sometimes.

    Listen to a song like the Stooges 'Dirt' for a good example.


    "Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski

    "Just because I don't care, doesn't mean I don't understand." - Homer Simpson

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  • fretmeisterfretmeister Frets: 23906
    Youtube is full of isolated bass tracks to listen to.

    Many of the sounds are slightly overdriven - even when within the mix they sound clean. 

    Small amounts of drive can massively increase the harmonic complexity of the tone making it sound fuller without actually sounding dirty in the mix.

    It's a 50 year old approach and works very well.

    Then there is modern drive, that sounds amazing:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-w5qFCT6EZY




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  • EricTheWearyEricTheWeary Frets: 16253
    I haven't watched it for a bit but I remember watching the Classic Albums episode for Motorhead and being surprised by how much of the sound was the bass, the distortion helped it become almost two instruments at once. If you think of the classic rock trio formats ( Cream,  The Who, early Grand Funk,etc) there is often some distortion in the bass as it helps to fill up and drive the sound. I've got albums with Bill Laswell and Jonas Helborg playing on which are jazz ( in a broad sense) , I guess because its a different texture and a way of helping the bass pop out in the mix.
    All sounds are about context and have a use somewhere, contrary to what I spent decades reading in Guitarist there are no such thing as good and bad guitar or bass tones only what works in context ( and sometimes what doesn't work of course). 
    Tipton is a small fishing village in the borough of Sandwell. 
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  • sweepysweepy Frets: 4158
    edited April 2019
    The Stranglers bass sounds were in your face and aggressive as hell, a Precision pushing an Ampeg to destruction with a Fuzz face helping it along 
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  • Winny_PoohWinny_Pooh Frets: 7730
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  • Winny_PoohWinny_Pooh Frets: 7730
    And this is audio engineering excellence


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  • Winny_PoohWinny_Pooh Frets: 7730
    Classic Rocker thread BTW :)
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  • steamabacussteamabacus Frets: 1258
    I think this was the first heavily distorted bass on record, used in a solo break (I think it was accidental but liked and kept)



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  • DannyPDannyP Frets: 1667
    I was really shocked by the isolated bass sound in Wonderwall, from 5m20s

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=silOU_BvPWc

    (PS. Check out Rick Beato's "What Makes This Song Great" series!
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  • EricTheWearyEricTheWeary Frets: 16253
    I think this was the first heavily distorted bass on record, used in a solo break (I think it was accidental but liked and kept)



    Usually credited as the first use of fuzz on record ( as opposed to valve distortion) I believe but on bass and on a country record. 
    Tipton is a small fishing village in the borough of Sandwell. 
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  • FunkfingersFunkfingers Frets: 14320
    edited April 2019
    Billy Sheehan's two channel system routes the output of the Mudbucker neck position pickup to its own processing and amplification. This enables him to blend in a distorted sub-bass component to what is, basically, a Precision sound. It is also possible to make this sort of racket using a Rickenbacker with the dual jack socket Rick-o-sound wiring.

    With Cream, Jack Bruce's bass was often overdriven and farty. 

    For me, the modern exemplar is Les Claypool. It works when he does it because his bass guitar is the main component in the Primus sound. The guitarist is usually making abstract/obtuse/angular walls of noise.
    Be seeing you.
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  • CirrusCirrus Frets: 8481
    DannyP said:
    I was really shocked by the isolated bass sound in Wonderwall, from 5m20s

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=silOU_BvPWc

    (PS. Check out Rick Beato's "What Makes This Song Great" series!
    Absolutely love the Wonderwall mix. It's one of those songs that's so iconic and well known that half the time people don't even listen to it any more when it's on.

    But actually listen to it. The acoustic guitar is basically the central feature of the arrangement, right? Listen to what happens when the drums come in. It's almost faded totally out - you just end up with a distant jangle, almost lost behind the panned egg-shaker tracks. And that bass tone was chosen because the bass needs to live alongside a string section, which is smooth and lush sounding. If you got the bass cleaner and louder like you might have expected in the mix, it'd swamp the cello.

    So that's another use of distortion on bass - they were able to make the bass sound smaller, to fit into the small space it'd need to occupy in the arrangement.
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  • fretmeisterfretmeister Frets: 23906
    Classic Rocker thread BTW :)
    Bless him.
    It's his version of shouting at clouds.
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  • octatonicoctatonic Frets: 33725
    Classic Rocker thread BTW :)
    Bless him.
    It's his version of shouting at clouds.
    He's like a laid back Emp.
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  • fretmeisterfretmeister Frets: 23906
    :D 

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  • MattBansheeMattBanshee Frets: 1498
    Because it sounds great.
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  • MattBansheeMattBanshee Frets: 1498
    P.s. what amp was it that sounded like that? Even through an Ampeg, I still resort to pedals.
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  • FreebirdFreebird Frets: 5821
    Sweet Jesus!


    If we are not ashamed to think it, we should not be ashamed to say it.
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