The Last Bass Outpost
Main Forums => The Bass Zone => Topic started by: Blazer on November 24, 2008, 02:32:31 PM
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I'm sure we all have our own standards on what is a good tone and what isn't, let's post clips of players who had the misfortune of either working with a poor sound guy, or just having no message to the fact that as a bassplayer he should be providing low end to a band's spectrum.
One bassplayer who suffered from production issues was Spandau ballet's Martin Kemp who's playing on their first album was hampered by being mixed until it was a very tinny "doink" kinda sound.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KrFLZ9OCBQ
"To cut a long story short"
And to give you guys an example on how it COULD have sounded, here's the original Demo of that song, Kemp's bassline really sounds full and powerful.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_97vLgAJpI
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I think JPJ and Bill Wyman both suffered from being blurred into the background.
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I think JPJ and Bill Wyman both suffered from being blurred into the background.
Bill Wyman, I could agree with. I'm also not a huge fan of Wyman overall, but I liked a lot of what he did in the middle years. JPJ was never in the background early on. If anything, he was predominant in their sound.
My vote for worst bass sound would have to be Starcastle, who bastardized the Chris Squire sound by taking out ALL of the bottom. Next up would be what Lars did to Jason Newsted's sound on the first few albums he did with Metallica.
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I think JPJ and Bill Wyman both suffered from being blurred into the background.
Bill Wyman had a good sound sometimes especially on the part of 12 X 5 that was recorded at Chess studios.
I always thought JPJ had a great sound especially on the first few albums. He did start to get buried on the later albums when the drums became the second lead instrument in the band.
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I think I actually have a Starcastle album somewhere :vader:
I will give you LZ 1 and 2 but parts of 3 and definitely 4 are very blurry.
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On several Stones bootlegs I've gotten recently I can actually hear what Bill is laying down. I would have liked him a whole lot more than I have over the years had I heard him in a better mix.
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Without a doubt, it's "Sugar on my Tongue" by the Talking Heads. I love the album and band but Tina Weymouth's tone turns my stomach!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8iY7XwhVf8
Ignore the uh, dance stylings?
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Man, that really sucks.
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Ignore the uh, dance stylings?
Ahhh cool- now I know what Tom Green has been up to! :mrgreen:
I once saw Tina use an effect called "Busta Jones" to fatten up that sound...
(http://i87.photobucket.com/albums/k125/0chromium0/forums/th_TalkingHeads-CrosseyedandPainlessRo.jpg) (http://s87.photobucket.com/albums/k125/0chromium0/forums/?action=view¤t=TalkingHeads-CrosseyedandPainlessRo.flv)
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And apparently, David Byrne was using the Belew effect. Sorry, but I was never a big fan of Talking Heads. And I can see now why the one time my last band tried a TH song, it sounded thin. You need to double the stage musicians to get any meat out of a lot of their material.
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Without a doubt, it's "Sugar on my Tongue" by the Talking Heads.
Go ahead and flame me but I kinda like it and it suits the song well.
For me, Cream-era Jack Bruce is the worst recorded bass sound.
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Oh ilan :o how could you? ;D
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There's a whole world of recorded slap bass out there... how could you possibly choose which one is worst? ??? Besides, making that decision would actually require listening to it. :sad:
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Without a doubt, it's "Sugar on my Tongue" by the Talking Heads. I love the album and band but Tina Weymouth's tone turns my stomach!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8iY7XwhVf8
Ignore the uh, dance stylings?
Yeah the tone's not that great but I think it's the way she's playing the bass not the tone itself, VERY weak and sounds like a pick. Weak and picks do not sound very good together. She usually has had a nice fat sound.
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Go ahead and flame me but I kinda like it and it suits the song well.
For me, Cream-era Jack Bruce is the worst recorded bass sound.
That comment does not even deserve to be flamed. ;D You must REALLY hate the sound on West, Bruce and Laing.
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"Once in a Lifetime" has to be one of my least favorite songs of all time. It is just plain goofy. After that, it was impossible for me to take the Talking Heads seriously. To say that that is not my kind of music would be putting it mildly. On the other hand, Cream is my favorite band.
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I'm a big Talking Heads fan.
As for "Sugar on my Tongue", I believe that was a no-budget direct-to-2-track recording before Jerry Harrison even joined the band. Tina had probably been playing bass for less than a year. Not surprisingly, it sounds like crap.
There's some much better live recordings from the early years... here's a random one from '78 when they were still a four-piece.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87eY75_TZVw
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I don't think David Byrne & Co ever aspired to sound fat, they wanted to sound sparse and geeky, they were not about to emulate Foghat or Grand Funk Railroad soundwise. Tina's "bass" sound - more a baritone guitar - does the job on that number I think.
I can understand what Ilan - a Rickenbacker man, mind you, from across the universe - feels when he hears Jack Bruce' sixties and early seventies sound, I used to feel much the same. I also used to think Jack Bruce's bending-infested fretless playing horrible, but in recent years I've grown to appreciate the musicality in it (even if its not always what your ear expects). I like a lot of untypical or radical bass sounds for their idiosyncracy, but that doesn't make them sounds I would want to have myself. Likewise I appreciate how Chris Squire and Geddy Lee sound, but it's not my cup of tea for myself.
One bass sound I really dislike is Lemmy's (and I just saw him in concert). It is neither here nor there for me. All that distortion makes it lose bass frequencies, it doesn't really have a full sound and though Lemmy's is power chording all the time, you can - unlike on a baritone guitar which he is trying to emulate - never make out quite what he is playing. Much of the time it sounds like a rhythm guitar played through a broken octave divider that has issues transforming the signal. It's not the style of his playing that I dislike - listen to Space Ritual of Hawkwind to hear how melodic and even lyrical his style of flowing rhythm bass can be, but then he had a largely undistorted sound on that -, I think he frankly has a bad sound. His preferred type of Marshall's lack of headroom might be more to blame for this than his signature Ric or are those pups the culprits?
Uwe
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He sounded that way before the signature Ric existed. The Marshall's lack of headroom is part of it; the other part is that he cranks the mids all the way up and turns the bass and treble down to 1.
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I think he frankly has a bad sound. His preferred type of Marshall's lack of headroom might be more to blame for this than his signature Ric or are those pups the culprits?
It's a combination of pretty hot pickups and the Marshall tone stack, but the thinness is mostly the Marshall. When I saw him a few years back, he had no low end at all and the bass drum was mixed to take up the bottom, but it sounded VERY good, and oddly, never stepped on the guitars and vice versa. However, I was so close (front row), I was getting stage wash from his backline and I could easily guess that his 4x15 was filling out the low mids in a way that might not be translating through the PA.
When Lemmy isn't playing rhythm guitar on bass, his playing can be downright funky in a rock way. I have few compilations where he plays bass and instead of his usually blown-speaker bass tone, his tone is traditional and fat and his playing is nothing that would expect if all you know is Motorhead.
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I think the entire production of Ozzy's Blizzard Of Ozz is horrible. And the bass sound is no exception. For instance the song Goodbye to Romance with the "plop plop" sound of Bob Daisley sounds downright silly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2R0Q5YE-JMw
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I think the entire production of Ozzy's Blizzard Of Ozz is horrible.
The original production or the recent "Ozzy and Sharon hate Bob Daisley" version featuring brand new bass parts replacing Daisley's?
And as much as I love him the heavily processed tone that Entwistle was using the last few years before his death was in my opinion just horrible, live and on recordings. He took his signature sound and just added so many effects that it sounded like a bandsaw gone berserk. :-[
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The original production or the recent "Ozzy and Sharon hate Bob Daisley" version featuring brand new bass parts replacing Daisley's?
Like I said; the Bob Daisley version.
Have never even bothered to listen to the new version.
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Really didn't mean to turn this into a Talking Heads defense council meeting, it's really just that one song. It's that plunk sound when the string snaps on her fill late in the song that makes me heave!
For me, Cream-era Jack Bruce is the worst recorded bass sound.
I'm sorry good sir but "best recorded bass sound" is another thread entirely! ;)
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I know I'll get killed for this, but I cannot listen to Walk This Way by Aerosmith.
I like Tom Hamilton, but that rubbery tone goes right through my spine everytime I hear that song.
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i think you should be applauded!
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Next up would be what Lars did to Jason Newsted's sound on the first few albums he did with Metallica.
+1 I wonder what that album COULD have sounded like with bass in the mix.
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I know I'll get killed for this, but I cannot listen to Walk This Way by Aerosmith.
I like Tom Hamilton, but that rubbery tone goes right through my spine everytime I hear that song.
Tom Hamilton seems to think his bass playing was the worst ever on this song. In fact, he seems to be self-critical in general, but especially on "Walk This Way."
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I guess I should add my former bass player Ade to the list.
hxxp://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=45014781
Cut and paste the url, and put the "http" back in for this to work.
Slavantas at our first gig playing "Road to victory." Evident in this recording is Ade's use of a Gretsch baritone six string bass through an Electro harmonix "Big Muff" distortion pedal. At the 1:18 mark he does a little solo and his "lawnmower-on-nitrous" sound is evident. He would NEVER turn that damn thing off either.
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I think the entire production of Ozzy's Blizzard Of Ozz is horrible. And the bass sound is no exception. For instance the song Goodbye to Romance with the "plop plop" sound of Bob Daisley sounds downright silly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2R0Q5YE-JMw
As much as a Gibson fan as I am, I have to say I've always agreed about Bob Daisley's tone on Blizzard. Look below for the culprit.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v47/gcarlston/players/oz-blizzardrecording-0001.jpg) (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v47/gcarlston/players/oz-blizzardrecording-0002.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v47/gcarlston/players/oz-other-studio-0001.jpg)
BTW, as a fan of Randy's I like both versions of Blizzard and Diary. The re-recordings, while definitely a cheap shot, have their own charm and feature cleaner mixes which benefit the guitar parts quite a bit. Seeing as I have the original CD releases and the 1992 22 bit remasters (of the original releases), I didn't feel guilty at all picking up the Daisley/Kerslake-less versions.
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BTW, as for the topic at hand, this has to be near the top of the worst bass sound ever committed to tape:
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v47/gcarlston/players/Angel_Sinful.jpg)
I really like the album but that overbearing Stingray sound is as grating to my ears as any horrible bass sound I've ever heard.
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I have that album in some closet around the house........................... :-[
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I have the feeling this is going to turn into another hair topic :mrgreen:
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I have that album in some closet around the house........................... :-[
I'm not familiar with them, but they certainly don't look like they're in the closet.
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:rimshot: :toast:
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Well, it's not the happy closet where girlie stuff is..............
Guess I'll have to hook up the turntable and give it a spin to confirm George's opinion of it, I honestly haven't had that album out for the 16years I've lived in my house.
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I'm not familiar with them, but they certainly don't look like they're in the closet.
you win.
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I remember liking that Angel album also. Haven't heard it in so long that I remember nothing about the bass sound. Do the songs still hold up from this album?
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I know I'll get killed for this, but I cannot listen to Walk This Way by Aerosmith.
I like Tom Hamilton, but that rubbery tone goes right through my spine everytime I hear that song.
You're not alone. I never cared for that song and never really appreciated Aerosmith in general.
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Felix Robinson's Stingray tone never bothered me that much, but I did prefer the P-Bass sound that Mickie Jones got prior to Felix joining the band. Oddly, early pics of Felix show him with a Precision, but every time I saw them he had the 'Ray. Sometimes the MM sound through an SVT can be a little annoying - you have to watch them active 'lectronics, as there is no padded/attenuated input on old Ampegs.
That was one GREAT live band.
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I don't know if I can pick ONE bass sound as the all time worst, but for me, Michael Anthony's tone on VH II is certainly up there, along with Rudy Sarzo's on "Speak of the Devil". Both sound very dull and lifeless for a three-piece situation.
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You're not alone. I never cared for that song and never really appreciated Aerosmith in general.
As I pointed out on another post, even Tom Hamilton himself has pointed out that he doesn't like his bass playing on "Walk This Way." As for Aerosmith itself, I'd have to say that their music is an acquired taste. It took me many years before I actually started liking their music.
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<------ STILL doesn't like Bruce Springsteen.
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<------ STILL doesn't like Bruce Springsteen.
I never understood the appeal of Bruce Springsteen, although as far as I know there was nothing wrong with any of his bassists. I've just never been able to listen to any of his music, though.
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Exactly! I tried to give him a shot and just couldn't get into his music at all. His bands themselves though always sounded good.
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I always thought 'the Boss' was a douchenozzle, but even if you love the guy you have to laugh when one of the supposed greatest songwriters ever has to steal from KISS to get his next single. I'm a KISS fan from way back and I even like their 'disco' song, but damn... And he didn't even do a good job of ripping it off!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uANKzbaucU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og8Iix-Fj90
That's OK though, Gene's already on the case!
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Never liked his music, but I respected him until he suddenly fired the whole E-Street band back in the '80s.
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Funny but some tones I thought were the best I know no longer like. I really am finding I do not like the sound of "active" brittle/artificial basses like Alembics & Warwick Buzzard Birds ( JE ). Funny but my active Decade actually does not sound brittle or artificial.
I really loved the Alembic sound when they came out, like on songs like the Who's Eminence Front. Now, not so much.
I find I really like warm passive sounding basses and analog effects like Moog synths. I guess I am just getting old.
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Funny but some tones I thought were the best I know no longer like. I really am finding I do not like the sound of "active" brittle/artificial basses like Alembics & Warwick Buzzard Birds ( JE ). Funny but my active Decade actually does not sound brittle or artificial.
I really loved the Alembic sound when they came out, like on songs like the Who's Eminence Front. Now, not so much.
I find I really like warm passive sounding basses and analog effects like Moog synths. I guess I am just getting old.
I also very much prefer the sound of warm, passive sounding basses. But I suppose the reality of it is that we really may be too old school and getting outdated. But new doesn't always mean better.
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I also very much prefer the sound of warm, passive sounding basses. But I suppose the reality of it is that we really may be too old school and getting outdated. But new doesn't always mean better.
I want tube amps, passive basses, big rumbling V8s and REAL Twinkies, dammit! And while you're at it get me some Chuck Taylors made the way they used to be, with the cushioned arch, two layer canvas and double stitching.
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Funny but some tones I thought were the best I know no longer like. I really am finding I do not like the sound of "active" brittle/artificial basses like Alembics & Warwick Buzzard Birds ( JE ). Funny but my active Decade actually does not sound brittle or artificial.
I really loved the Alembic sound when they came out, like on songs like the Who's Eminence Front. Now, not so much.
I find I really like warm passive sounding basses and analog effects like Moog synths. I guess I am just getting old.
I went to a jam not long ago and took my 51 P RI, which I have really grown to love. There was a younger player there who had an Alembic and he really wanted me to play it and give it my stamp of approval. As I mentioned ,he's a younger player who is always looking to cop some new licks, and for some strange reason , he looks up to me. Anyway, he proudly handed me his Alembic and spent a couple minutes giving me instructions. I spent a minute or two trying to dummy it down to a nice warm passivelike sound and then played a tune or two. It felt nice, but more like a guitar than my raw old slab of Fenderwood. It was very powerful and sounded good but I still couldn't wait to get my hands back on my 51 with its' primitive volume and tone controls. I'm not knocking Alembics, but they aren't my thing.I get everything I want from my single coil pickup and volume and tone controls. In fact , I could lose about half the functionality on the upper end of the tone control and I'd still be OK with it.
I also was one who lusted for an Alembic many years ago :-[
Rick
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I also was one who lusted for an Alembic many years ago
Same here, but I think a Wal would be better suited for the tone I prefer now.
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I always thought 'the Boss' was a douchenozzle, but even if you love the guy you have to laugh when one of the supposed greatest songwriters ever has to steal from KISS to get his next single. I'm a KISS fan from way back and I even like their 'disco' song, but damn... And he didn't even do a good job of ripping it off!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uANKzbaucU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og8Iix-Fj90
That's OK though, Gene's already on the case!
With all due respect, George, Kiss did not invent the minor scale! :mrgreen:
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On several Stones bootlegs I've gotten recently I can actually hear what Bill is laying down. I would have liked him a whole lot more than I have over the years had I heard him in a better mix.
I just bought a 4 CD set of Stones outtakes, demos and live BBC stuff from 1963 to 1971, Wyman's bass really stands out on most of the tunes, you can hear the Willy Dixon influence he probably got both from blues and also Chuck Berry, he could really play blues and rock. I was amazed at how good they sounded live on the BBC.
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Tom Hamilton seems to think his bass playing was the worst ever on this song. In fact, he seems to be self-critical in general, but especially on "Walk This Way."
I thought his tone was great on that song but his playing was sloppy, I would not want to play in a band trying to copy lead guitar licks with a pick, you have to pick every individual note to make it sound good on a bass unlike a guitar and that song was just too fast.
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I think the bass tone on walk this way is horrible. To think he did it on a Thunderbird.
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And apparently, David Byrne was using the Belew effect. Sorry, but I was never a big fan of Talking Heads. And I can see now why the one time my last band tried a TH song, it sounded thin. You need to double the stage musicians to get any meat out of a lot of their material.
Chris and Tina actually proposed the idea of firing Byrne and having Adrian Belew replace him as the leader of the Talking Heads. Belew kindly rejected the offer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lCYdMXVre0
But Belew learned a lot while touring with the Talking Heads and applied what he learned with King Crimson.