"Woody" Bass Sound, AKA "Woodsy" ala

Ventura Highway- America, Love street- The Doors, Brown Eyed Girl- Van Morrison. While these are by no means the same sound, does anyone know how these were done at the time? Any suggested techniques and/or EQ settings would be appreciated.

While I am getting reasonably close, that really woody tone is a tough one. Maybe what's missing is the pre-CBS Fender? Strings? Tape/Vinyl?

Fender Precision Bass, flatwound strings and play hard.

DI'ed into Fairchild compressor and shaped with a Pultec roll of below 50Hz, dip at 190 (-3dB), bump at 500 (+2dB), roll off above 2K.

You can replace the Fairchild with Blockfish or some other coloring compressor: compress at 4:1, 8 msec attack, 120 msec release and set threshold to get 3 to 5 dB of gain reduction.

You can replace the Pultec with the channel eq.

The PBass has that characterist mid-rangy woody sound, that's the key. Also, if you have round wound strings, you can put a little bit of foam under the strings right the bridge.

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I just saw your sig, you have 4 PBasses? Cool, set one up with flatwounds. You can also try using the SVT, does it have a DI out?

And the Voxengo Crunchessor or Marquis compressors are great for this application.

ORIGINAL: TheFingers
...Maybe what's missing is the pre-CBS Fender? Strings? Tape/Vinyl?

It's really hard to answer this question without knowing what you've already tried and a little more about what you mean by "woody."

I think Ed is kind of on the right track, instrument-wise. Have you ever played or seen someone play a bass that achieves the sound you're after? A lot of modern basses have a somewhat brighter, stringier, more aggressive sound than older basses, although that doesn't necessarily mean they're not "woody," as well.

I've been playing bass for about 20 years, and have played dozens of basses, and owned probably ten, and have recorded and done live sound for probably 100 different bass players, and to tell you the truth, I don't think that having "vintage" or boutique instruments or gear really makes that big a difference with most kinds of conventional bass. Certainly way less than it matters for guitar.

Technique makes a huge difference in the sound of the bass, and consistency and control matters a lot, much more so than with guitar, which is usually supposed to be an "expressive" performance. Good studio bass players adjust the way they hold the pick or finger the strings, the type of pick, the type of strings, the way they fret the notes, where on the string they play, and so on to control the dynamic profile and duration of each note.

For the sound I think you're talking about, I would probably start with a split-coil pickup, maybe with a tiny little bit of a jazz-style bridge pickup rolled in on the volume knob, if the bass has a second pickup, a well-broken-in felt pick played just behind the split-coil pickup, very slight palm-muting, the tone controls rolled about halfway down, and either groundwound or well-broken-in roundwound strings. Of course, technique is going to make the biggest difference.

I think the only thing gear-wise that should really hold you back is if you are playing a bass with a very modern sound-- hot, single-rail jazz pickups, for instance, will want to have a deep, slinky, aggressive kind of sound and probably won't cooperate.

Even a cheap bass can usually sound pretty good, and can usually get you pretty close to where you need to be. A better instrument or better signal chain can give you a better version of "that sound", to be sure, but a good player can usually get something in the ballpark even with subpar gear.

Messing with your effects or signal chain may give you a better version of the sound you already have, but is not likely to be satisfying if what you are looking for is really a different sound. Kind of like trying to get a fingerpicked stock telecaster to sound like Rage Against the Machine.

Cheers.

ORIGINAL: yep


Technique makes a huge difference in the sound of the bass, and consistency and control matters a lot, much more so than with guitar, which is usually supposed to be an "expressive" performance. Good studio bass players adjust the way they hold the pick or finger the strings, the type of pick, the type of strings, the way they fret the notes, where on the string they play, and so on to control the dynamic profile and duration of each note.

Cheers.

I've been saying the same thing around here for years. Technique technique technique. There is no stomp box or effects processor or EQ setting that will compensate for poor technique. The session players I've worked with know this. I used to think the Fender basses were the end-all but I've seen all manner of bass guitar produce excellent results in the right hands. And while technique applies to any instrument - there's just something about the bass...

I'm not following ya - was there another post about this topic?