How To Fix Your (Metal) Bass Tone
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#Fix #Metal #Bass #Tone
Originally posted by UCM-QvuFKd9DQIgLaGNjeIIA at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFFpTEravJY
WTF?? The entire time I thought this channel was at least in the 300k+ subscriber range, and then I look at your subscribers and see you're still a growing channel! This is such good quality advice, with great examples, and I hope you know that (mostly) everyone who watched this appreciates it.
how… drunk were you?
you had me at "I can't stand davie504".
WOOT spot 795!!!!! Now make some more videos, lol. Not sure what you are into, but if you could toss in some SOAD, Spiders, BYOB, and just some really great lines both Funk and Rock, you will gain me as a channel addict. Last thing, get rid of picks bassists, go fingers or go home.
Buying NYXL strings is your best investment. They stay present for more like years, instead of months.
Easily worth the upcharge.
I disagree with the pick part, use whatever pick you need to get the bass to sit in the mix. I personally massively prefer 0.60 picks because of the clicky/trebly sound that they give and the punk scene has managed just fine getting some great tone with them. I've also never snapped one in my life, they loose their edge way before they start showing signs of breaking and I am not gentle on them at all. Even then, its a 0,70eu investment if you break/loose one, just have some backups hang from a mic stand and learn to at least half ass your way through a song using finger picking so you can get yourself out of a tight spot if needed.
sub'd m/
I actually preferred the old strings compared to the new ones
Why does it seem like everything you're framing as good actually sounds worse?
hoping to get you to 1000 subs bro you need more appreciation
This is the least helpful video I've ever skipped
#5 unless your JJ Burnell lol!!
Yes to high passed chorus or flanger for top end shimmer.
Make good use of a compressor… faster said than done 😉
Point nr. 1 can be debated by just mentioning John Entwistle.
Played super light and had THAT sound. Let the amp do the work.
Or whatever, do what you want.
Unsubscribed and stopped watching when you slammed Davie504. Congrats on your… squints to see if I'm looking the wrong spot… 753 subs though. LOL
agree with everything besides the pick part, i find my tone more aggressive with a thin pick, but i guess this is a very particular situation and will work differently for each one. Nonetheless great video man!
I'm sorry, but when you dig in on your example it sounds horrible. It doesn't blend well at all. I prefer the softer sound to the harshness of the bass when you are digging in. When I listen to music only for bands like slipknot, five finger death punch, etc., their bass tones are well blended. You do not want too much separation and digging in creates exactly that. My humble opinion.
I once broke a low B string during a live show when I got extra aggressive with finger style.
Darkglass pedals are the holy grail. ???? 6:55 Don't boil strings. Instead put them in a hot air oven (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rr_HkpCDZWc&t=1s). ????
Pick thickness depends on what you want to play. Prog Metal with a 1mm or thicker pick is a nightmare to play. Heck I wouldn't even play Prog with a .8mm one.
I use picks and fingers, it depends on the tonal thing I'm looking for.
I find fingers are a more intimate connection to the instrument for me. Soft playing vs hard is so much more different to me than when using a pick. I love that I can get super-aggressive and just bounce the strings off the frets from plucking so hard lol, it sounds incredible.
I will not touch a distortion pedal unless it splits and remixes the two bands. Ie, pedals designed for bass. Pro Tip: add a compressor before the distortion pedal to really hammer its input 😀 On the Zoom B6, ALL the distortions are designed like this, even the Metal Zone sim.
HUGE plus one for a solidified band tone. I am so tired of marketing that uses "cut through the mix" like, assholes, if we are ALL cutting through it sounds like shit lol. Save it for solos.
I use a Zoom B6. I love seeing people disparage it over specs/price because it's not a Quad Cortex, a Helix, Axe FX etc. Meanwhile I'm living my best life actually playing my instrument as they endlessly gear/tone search. Zoom catered to bass players and gave us more amps than just an ampeg SVT or a Darkglass B7K. The Zoom Djent Pre + the EMG P5 sounds ROWDY as fuck when I dig in with it and I love it.
Max everything gotcha
just dont use a pick, and your music be epic
I love how new strings are only a suggestion on bass tone videos. Having old strings on a guitar is an unbearable enough sensation as it is
engagement is Fup
TECH 21 DP-3X.. all problems solved
your content is fantastic, how have you not blown up yet? I'm here before you get massively famous.
"Music should be about self expression, not copying."
Dead wrong. Gatekeeping is always a bad take, no matter the justification.
When you play fretless and/or upright and use flat wounds the new strings thing is in my opinion is false. When playing heavy and dirty, I've found you want a more "thuddy" sound than "plinky". You can blend guitars and bass in the mix cleaner. …but the rest of your video I agree with. Do what's best for the song, give it whatever it needs.
I bought a Dark glass Alpha omega distortion pedal and that solved any problems I had lol
A lot of what You say in first "paragraph" is wrong. First of all: you're much more likely to break a string than a pick, second of all – what about all those technical bands? Not that i recommend playing "softly", but often very technical playing isn't compatible with "digging" into the strings. Third: with modern gear like darkglass preams and basses like dingwall, you don't really have to punish the instrument to sound heavy – and that's actually a bit sad, since the preamp and compression does all the work, tbh.
Second argument is spot on – if You don't want a heavy, foggy, psychedelic, doomish sound, like, for example, Sons of Otis on their "Temple Ball" record, don't get too much distortion.
One of my favorite pedals that gets shit on constantly on the internet is the boss bass overdrive. People complain that it has too much gain and it's "not really an overdrive", but in my opinion that's exactly what makes it good. It has the most dynamic gain range of any bass distortion I've ever used. Pull it all the way back for a little bit of grit, or crank it up and it turns into a full-on fuzz pedal. You can go from rage against the machine to bolt thrower just by turning one knob. I've gotten more compliments from my bandmates about my tone when using that pedal than I have from using Darkglass stuff that costs 4 times as much. I've actually been thinking about re-housing it into a blank pedal enclosure and acting like it's something I custom made, so people don't know I'm using a $75 boss pedal
The thing I love most about a visual medium is staring at a fucking logo for 10 minutes.
All metal bass tone is terrible. Idk how or why that awful clank sound became the meta. Im a deathcore guy but i think metal bass tone peaked at Geezer Butler. It fits every band.
One of the best bass tones is Hiro Yamato’s P bass tone off is soundgardens Ultramega Ok
Unless the frequencies are split and effects are applied to specific ranges, I hate distortion on bass.
Also, I'm a cheapskate so I clean bass strings in the ultrasonic cleaner ????
#665. The neighbor of the beast….
3:20 i agree with everything you said, and i use 2mm ????
Best one stop plugin: Parallax by Neural DSP.
I fixed my bass tone, and it's now as metal as can be! It does raises some eyebrows in my reggae band though.
Well said! Being a long time drummer, I've worked with many bassist and is frustrating when they take the easy route in their instrument. Not being in time or listening to the bass drum is something they need to do in order to be crushing with the rhythm. Also, sometimes less is better with notes too. Example is the bassist of Skeleton Witch will play 8th notes while the guitars are playing 16ths. This keeps everything tight, heavy and less distorted. Just a couple of pointers from a drummers prospective.
that was quite helpful, thx
My strings have turned 15 years old this summer 😀
Is there a way tho to get clean lows and distorted highs with just 1 amp and some pedals ?
One thing to add: especially for live a good gate is also essential imho. You can have the best killer tone and still ruin your performance with some unwanted noise shit going on inbetween. A fast gate also makes your staccato play and breakdowns hit way harder.
Was searching for a pleasing live tone for like 15 years. A programmable Sansamp Bass Driver into a transistor amp almost did the trick, but what really got me there was switching to a guitar tube pre-amp and using it's crunch channel. Still running the Sansamp into it and all of that runs into a transistor PA amp and out into a Hartke BXL 4×10 and 1×15 bass cab.
Also, as you mentioned, having a decent comp is also essential. I use the TC Electronics Hypergravity Multiband pedal and it just slaps.
3:07 i agree