Defining great bass tone... if possible?

[David Schwab]

If bass tone is so highly evolved, how come it's always buried in the mix by too-loud guitars? 8)

Not on MY mixes! I guess it depends on the music you are listening too. If it's metal, bass often seems like an after thought, unless it's the old school stuff like Deep Purple.

Bass tone has evolved and bass is often brighter and more up front in the mix now. Listen to real old recordings and it was a vague thump in the background. Then listen to Motown, where it's often the featured instrument. Same with the Beatles. Then you had the advent of round wounds, Entwistle (although he used nylon tape wounds on My Generation), Squire, Clarke etc. That was a very new tone at the time.

I submit for your consideration: Tim Commerford? of Rage Against The Machine. Maybe not the greatest band, but he supposedly built his own amps. Sting and Flea, superstar bassists who must be doing something right.

Tim winds his own pickups too! I think RAtM is easily one of the greatest rock bands.

I take the point on Noel Redding. Probably the bass riffs I liked were all played by Hendrix.

Yeah, Noel didn't do anything too exciting, and I didn't like the spongy tone he got picking close to the neck on his Jazz bass.

6 degrees of: My bass once got borrowed by an engineer who had worked with Kim Deal. He thought it sounded great.

The Pixies are another great band.

[David King]

I think the bass sounds we all associate with the past were a product of both the great bass player and the great instrument they played on. It's hard to deny that James Jamerson's bass lines are as important a part of Motown's success as the singers who performed the songs. I'd say that it all revolves around great "taste". A great bassist instinctively knows what will fit the mood and the structure of a song. Of course a great producer will know who to call for a session in the first place. Let's not forget that Ray Manzarek's "bass" lines in the Doors or Bernie Worrell's tone on Flashlight were keyboard driven. It would be hard to imagine doing those songs justice on any stringed bass (though I'm sure many have tried). I think we tend to limit ourselves in a corporate music culture to what worked in the past but there's no end to the potential of bass tones to move and excite the senses as long as the material is compelling and the performance has an honest emotion driving it.

[Guitarist]

I was just looking at DiMarzio's Ω readings for their various bass pickups. Much of what I know about guitar pickups applies to bass it seems. So from strings, pups, then the tone pot. This already gives decisions of subjectivity to the player. Then you're one to the SS or tube preamp, eq'ing and those (I'm envious) crossovers and then dual amping. Then you're back to ceramic or AlNiCo magnets on the speakers. So bass tone is a still a big deal for low-playing brothers just as I'd hope it is—perhaps now more than ever with subs nearly everywhere.

BTW Any A2 or A8 choices for speakers?

[David Schwab]

I test all my pickups out without an amp first. Bass is recorded direct most of the time, and this is sort of like the ideal for an amp tone. If I don't like the tone direct I usually change the design. Amps and EQ can often make anything sound better. My idea for an amp is to reproduce the bass' tone as accurately as possible, and still within that you can enhance the tone with tubes or what ever. But overly colored amp tone obscures the tone of the bass/pickups.

Often bass speaker cabs have poor high frequency response. I've played through a number of high end cabs that sounded like mud to me, and they didn't have tweeters to compensate. It's fine if you are going for a Motown sound, but I'd rather turn the treble control down on my bass for that.

You forgot about neo magnets for speakers. These days most bass speakers are ceramic or neodymium. I think an A2 would produce an inefficient speaker.

I currently use an old Mesa 4X10 cab with Eden speakers which sounds very nice. The tweeter is blown, but it still has a bright tone. I also have a small 4X8 Seismic Audio cab with a tweeter. That's a nice clean sounding cab, but isn't as loud as the Mesa. I'm about to get a Hartke 4X10 to go with my Hartke head. I like the aluminum speakers.

One of the best sounding bass rigs I ever played through was a Hartke 3500 SS head and a Yamaha PA cab! It had a 12" and a horn. I contemplated getting a couple of those cabs after that.