What makes a P-Bass growl?!

[Steve Conner]

Hi all,

I'm hoping people more knowledgeable than me about basses and bass pickups will have an opinion on this. I'm trying to figure out how the Fender Precision bass got that great midrange-heavy attacking tone that works so well in everything from funk to punk. I think the Music Man Stingray can do it too.

For years I played a Peavey Cirrus (the cheapest budget model) that seems to do it well, but I just recently picked up a used Westone Super Headless that plain refuses to growl. No matter how I mess with it or EQ it, it just makes a polite twanging noise that belongs on a Suzanne Vega record.

So, I'm looking for your thoughts on what causes this tone, and how I could mod my Peavey to make it growl even more and turn it into a snarling monster of funk rock It's a neck through body design, so all I can really change is strings, pickups and electronics.

[Earl Norton]

What strings are on it now? Try round wound if they are not on it. Give a try with Rotosound. Is the bass full scale? less than 34 inch scale seems to sound timid...not much you can do about that.

[Soapbarstrat]

Rickenbackers have more growl than Fenders, and the scale is a little shorter.

[David Schwab]

The tricky thing is what you define as growl. I call that P-bass thing growl.. almost like an upright. It goes "Grrrg".

I used to play Ricks exclusively. That's more of a treble crunch. Ricks go "Gink"... my drummer used to call it a "ginky bass"

Jazz basses "burp" ... well at least the treble pickup.

Having said all that... it's not all just the pickups, but it's a lot of it. I put a P-bass pickup on a Rick, and it still sounded like a Rick, just deeper.

But if you put two P-bass pickups on a Jazz bass, it wont sound exactly like either, but still will sound like a Fender.

So.... changing pickups could help, but the bass might just have it's own sound.

What kind of pickups does it have?

[Steve Conner]

Hi folks, thanks for the replies.

First off, I don't want to mod my Super Headless to sound like a P bass. I don't think it would ever work. The two basses sound totally different even unplugged. My old Peavey kind of sounds like one though, so I want to mod the Peavey to sound even more P-funky, and save the other bass for the coffee house end of the spectrum

It has some pickups that were probably custom made for Peavey somewhere in the Far East. They just look like black oblongs with screw holes in the corners, and are held to the body with woodscrews and a slab of foam plastic underneath.

From what I've read, a good place to start would be to try and find a fairly hot humbucker for the bridge, assuming I can get one that fits those cutouts. I think the pickups in it have some kind of humbucking thing going on, but could probably do with being hotter...

[David Schwab]

It has some pickups that were probably custom made for Peavey somewhere in the Far East. They just look like black oblongs with screw holes in the corners, and are held to the body with woodscrews and a slab of foam plastic underneath.

Knowing Peavey, they were made in the US. Jeff Berlin used to play a Peavey, and I thought he got a great tone with that bass... although he usualy uses custom Bartolini pickups, all the photos look like the stock Peavey pickups.

From what I've read, a good place to start would be to try and find a fairly hot humbucker for the bridge, assuming I can get one that fits those cutouts. I think the pickups in it have some kind of humbucking thing going on, but could probably do with being hotter...

I like using a hotter bridge pickup on my basses. But for the P-bass tone, it's the neck pickup. The bridge pickup will give you a burpy Jazzbass tone.

Also, P-bass pickups are essentially single coil pickups, tone wise. They aren't very hot either. Everyone thinks of a P-bass tone, and they think of that thick Motown sound. But to get that you also need really old and dead flat wounds, and the foam rubber string mute on the bridge cover.. and turn your tone control almost all the way off. Same recipe that Chuck Rainey used. All those guys would rub stuff like bacon grease or BBQ sauce on their strings to make them dead!

Otherwise P-basses are actually quite bright sounding.

Bartolini makes split coil pickups in a soap bar case, as do others like Duncan and EMG. An EMG 35P would more or less fit in there, and they are very P sounding (well like a P in parallel anyway).

But, because the construction is so different on the Peavey, I'd bet if you put a real P-bass pickup on it, it still wouldn't sound like a P-bass.

[bob p]

Same recipe that Chuck Rainey used. All those guys would rub stuff like bacon grease or BBQ sauce on their strings to make them dead!

that reminds me of those stories about Jaco greasing up his fingers by eating fried chicken right before going onstage.

[Steve Conner]

I'm ROTFL here, how long before Fender bring out a Motown Relic P-bass with the strings and fretboard covered in bacon grease at the factory

David, you reckon the stock pickups on it could be good already? I've never tried measuring them to see how they compare to other pickups in terms of DCR and whatever. They don't seem to pick up much hum, but they just have a single core screened cable, so I'm guessing they could be some sort of humbucker without the coil tap brought out.

I did try rewiring it so the pickups were combined in series instead of parallel in the middle position of the toggle switch. That gave it quite a boom, but the output was so high that it made my favourite amp sound a bit too dirty.

If you fancy hearing what this bass sounds like just now, try this mp3:

http://tentofiveproject.com/secret/03-Mothers-Pride.mp3

I believe it's a combination of a DI going through a compressor, and my homemade tube amp driving a dummy load which was then DI'd.