# How to get a "biting" bass tone?



## RobbYoung (Apr 28, 2015)

I've been trying to track bass for some demos, and been wanting to imitate the really bright, pick attack tone found on bands like periphery and architects. Unfortunately, no amount of tweaking seems to get the satisfying result. I assume it is an issue of my gear, and wondered if anyone could put forward a solution. 

My bass is a Squire PJ, tuned to low F#, and I'm DI'ing the bass through Guitar Rig. The strings I'm using are Stainless Rotowounds, with a low .175

Any help?


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## Seybsnilksz (Apr 28, 2015)

What is your signal chain in Guitar Rig?


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## cGoEcYk (Apr 28, 2015)

Part of it is playing style. It will help you get the aggressive tone if you play aggressively. Generally the "bite" will reside in the upper mids and highs, adding a little "Presence" (if you have something like that available) can help too.


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## Devyn Eclipse Nav (Apr 29, 2015)

A blend of clean and distortion, with plenty of upper mids and highs in the distortion will help a lot - a really biting bass tone won't be achieved without it. If you can, try running a model of an Ampeg SVT and boosted Peavey 5150 in parallel. That's what I use in my POD HD500X for bass tones, and it sounds fantastic.

However, I'd say part of it is your tuning - that's is EXTREMELY low, and without a long scale bass, you're not gonna retain the clarity and bite of a higher tuned bass. Nolly's basses tuned to F#1 are custom fanned Dingwall Afterburners that are 37" on the low end, which will make a ton of difference tension wise


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## TheEmptyCell (Apr 29, 2015)

Zeno said:


> However, I'd say part of it is your tuning - that's is EXTREMELY low, and without a long scale bass, you're not gonna retain the clarity and bite of a higher tuned bass. Nolly's basses tuned to F#1 are custom fanned Dingwall Afterburners that are 37" on the low end, which will make a ton of difference tension wise



Yeah, you're probably lacking a lot of low end clarity. Which, even if you boost highs/ high mids, you've got to contend with rumbling low end.

A high-pass filter and careful use of compression can help, but in the end, you're fighting an uphill battle.

Also, the majority of Nolly's tone, Dingwall or no Dingwall, is the Darkglass B7K which provides all of the grind and bite.


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## DJTanZen (Apr 30, 2015)

Any chance you can post a picture of the bass you're using? i really want to see what a .175 looks like on a bass like that.


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## GenghisCoyne (Apr 30, 2015)

RobbYoung said:


> My bass is a Squire PJ, tuned to low F#



Ive found the problem


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## RobbYoung (Apr 30, 2015)

It looks ridiculous, I know  The set is 175, 130, 105, 85, and tuned to F# B E A.

I've been considering finding a company that'd make me a 37" neck to replace the current one, as this guitar's a bit of a beater anyway, and I've got a nicer Fender P Bass which I keep in standard.

I'll try and post a sound clip of the bass with the 5150/Ampeg idea up asap, It feels great, but the tension's a little lower than I was hoping for.


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## Abaddon9112 (Apr 30, 2015)

I've found the easiest way to get that kind of tone is to use an OD pedal designed for guitar like a Boss SD-1 at the front of the signal chain. Set the tone fairly high to generate those biting mids, and boost the lows on the amp/sim to compensate for the low cut from the pedal.


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## MaxOfMetal (Apr 30, 2015)

Not sure which version of GR you're running, but the "Skreamr" (something like that, if I remember correctly) preset is pretty much made for that kind of tone. It needs some work as it's basically an overdrive feeding a distortion with some back end tweaks and an EQ. Throw a parametric up front to tame some of the lows and add a cab model to suit. You really don't need to add an amp model here. It might sound crazy, but when it comes to modeling bass GR is better sans an amp model in a lot of cases, especially when you're running effects and an EQ.


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## isispelican (Apr 30, 2015)

grab the tse bod plugin (free) and put it before guitar rig in the chain, works very nice!


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## TheEmptyCell (Apr 30, 2015)

RobbYoung said:


> It looks ridiculous, I know  The set is 175, 130, 105, 85, and tuned to F# B E A.
> 
> I've been considering finding a company that'd make me a 37" neck to replace the current one, as this guitar's a bit of a beater anyway, and I've got a nicer Fender P Bass which I keep in standard.
> 
> I'll try and post a sound clip of the bass with the 5150/Ampeg idea up asap, It feels great, but the tension's a little lower than I was hoping for.



A custom neck like that will cost, and then you're just ....ting all over the ergonomics of the instrument. It's like trying to polish diarrhea.


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## House74 (May 4, 2015)

Idiotbox Blower Box. I just added one of these into my chain and holy hell does it sound awesome!!


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## FretSpider (May 17, 2015)

RobbYoung said:


> It looks ridiculous, I know  The set is 175, 130, 105, 85, and tuned to F# B E A.
> 
> I've been considering finding a company that'd make me a 37" neck to replace the current one, as this guitar's a bit of a beater anyway, and I've got a nicer Fender P Bass which I keep in standard.
> 
> I'll try and post a sound clip of the bass with the 5150/Ampeg idea up asap, It feels great, but the tension's a little lower than I was hoping for.



You'd need a bass built from scratch to go to a 37" scale. The pickup won't be in the right spot and it'll throw your tone off. 

Other than that, what kind of strings are you currently using?


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## noUser01 (May 17, 2015)

My band tunes to Eb and there's plenty of bite. Just gotta know what you're doing.

1) Have good pickups. The Squire doesn't, not for our purposes.
2) Thick strings.
3) Higher tension (longer scale if you can swing it, otherwise just thick strings).
4) Distortion, notably for the 2kHz-4kHz range. That's where the bite and grind lies.
5) Setup is important too. You don't want "fret buzz" in the traditional sense, but you want a bit of "fret noise", to get that bite going and get that metallic "clackiness" to it. Not too high, not too low.
6) Technique. Play firmly. Not hugely heavy picking or anything, just aggressive and firm.

Start with that and let me know if you have more questions.


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## giantchris (May 18, 2015)

The new Agile fanned fret with a 37" scale are only like 700-800$ish and ibanez is now makinga fanned fret prestige so its a lot more affordable then it used to be. Also you can find that Warwick dark lords used for 400-500 sometimes.


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## RobbYoung (May 18, 2015)

Gotta link for that Agile? Can't seem to find anything online about them making basses with FF or beyond 35"..


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## boobstastegreat (May 18, 2015)

If you are able to split your signal, try to keep the low end very clean up to around 150-200hz. You will get most of the attack between 1k-2.5k or so. In this upper mid range you should try a light overdrive that will give you a lot of bite and cut through the mix a bit.

Clean low end and gritty high mids is the key to making things sound great in a mix.

New strings really help and playing with a pick will also give you more bite.


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## Devyn Eclipse Nav (May 18, 2015)

Oh not to mention, you're using a P pickup - that's not a pickup made for clarity, it's all about boom and punch. If you want bight and clarity, you gotta have Jazz pickups.


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## noUser01 (May 18, 2015)

boobstastegreat said:


> If you are able to split your signal, try to keep the low end very clean up to around 150-200hz. You will get most of the attack between 1k-2.5k or so. In this upper mid range you should try a light overdrive that will give you a lot of bite and cut through the mix a bit.
> 
> Clean low end and gritty high mids is the key to making things sound great in a mix.
> 
> New strings really help and playing with a pick will also give you more bite.



The easy way to split the signal that way would be to use a Brimstone Audio Crossover Distortion.

Other options would be using the Darkglass B7K which has an overall blend and a low end saturation switch called a Grunt switch (from what I can tell you can't get the low end 100% clean, but close to it) or a Sansamp which doesn't split the signal but it has a clean blend for the entire frequency range.


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## TemjinStrife (May 18, 2015)

Zeno said:


> Oh not to mention, you're using a P pickup - that's not a pickup made for clarity, it's all about boom and punch. If you want bight and clarity, you gotta have Jazz pickups.



Completely disagree.


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## giantchris (May 19, 2015)

RobbYoung said:


> Gotta link for that Agile? Can't seem to find anything online about them making basses with FF or beyond 35"..


They had a 37" 5 string on there for a bit but it looks like all their fanned fret basses are sold out right now so I can't find anything to link you. I could have sworn I did see a 5er with a 37" for a couple weeks on the site maybe it was a test run. Email the rondo guy hes usually very prompt in responding.


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## vansinn (May 19, 2015)

Just shop an A/DA MB-1 programmable bass preamp 
Dual pre's, one fully tube'ified for clean/distortion, the other, clean one, part tube part solid state, both having several voicings, gain and level controls.
Set clean channel to either linear or scooped for a clean low foundation and highs, distortion channel to shelving to primarily distort the mids.

It of course also has compressor, chorus, dual semi-parametric EQ, two send-returns (programmable on/off), full-range out plus split-stack outs.
Only problem is locating one  - I won't sell mine


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## ikarus (May 19, 2015)

RobbYoung said:


> I've been considering finding a company that'd make me a 37" neck to replace the current one, as this guitar's a bit of a beater anyway, and I've got a nicer Fender P Bass which I keep in standard.



Tom Drinkwater from Oakland Axe Factory offers conversion necks for P and Jazzbass. His prices are very reasonable.


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## jerm (May 19, 2015)

Listen to my most recent mix, i think the bass tone is pretty biting:

[SC]https://soundcloud.com/ezerath/tomorrows-sun-may-17-2015-mix[/SC]

If you like it I can describe a bit of what I did to get the tone.


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## Systolic (May 22, 2015)

First and foremost. Those strings are not even remotely close to fitting that nut properly. It needs to be filed to fit that massive of a string.

Secondly, 34" scale is just not conducive to that low of a tuning. Generally, you'll need _at least _a 35" scale bass. Most 34's even have problems with a B.

Thirdly, that being said, a 37" neck will not fix your problem...in fact it will make it worse. As your pups will be in the wrong spot and your intonation is gonna go all wonky.

Fourth, now this one is just my opinion, but a lot of that cutting metal tone is in the mids and the upper mids. Stainless strings are generally fairly scooped. Great lows and highs though. For normal strings, my go to strings are the EB Cobalts. For crazy gauges, I'd definitely go Circle K.


Overall, once these issues are dealt with, then you can start venturing into pedal territory.

My $0.02


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