Improve Your Bass Tone With One Simple Fix

So I get asked quite regularly over at the Talkingbass live hangs about tone. The questions are quite varied in nature so people might complain about getting a slap tone, or they might find it hard to hear themselves on stage or the bass might be farting out as they increase volume but most of the time they all boil down to one general question about how to set the tone controls on a bass or an amp. Well, today I’m going to give you one simple answer that can then act as a foundation for everything else going forward and it’s something I wish I’d learned much, much earlier than I did.

Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
0:35 The Basic Fix
0:56 The Biggest Mistake
2:11 Importance Of The Instrument
3:13 Amp Consideration
4:42 Technique
5:08 Setup
5:29 Tone In The Hands
5:53 Technique/Position Examples
8:20 Tone Controls
10:17 Frequency Examples
13:05 Tone Advice
13:56 Slap Sound

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[talkingbasslessons]

Just for clarification: Flat eq means 12 o'clock on most tone controls. It means no boost and no cut. Mid way on a tone control (12 o clock) is the natural sound received from the bass. Below 12 o clock will cut and above 12 o clock will boost. I've noticed some people thinking I mean totally cut.

[andrewsalthousesalthouse]

I've been playing for years, have a music degree and this video was still humbling to watch. No BS 'Hacks' just good advice. Thanks Mark. 👍

[TooMuchInfoToTrust]

Dude. You are THE GOAT. Low ego, low spam, just quality.

[NICUofficial]

damn the isolation of frequencies part of this video is MINDBLOWING

[NelsonMontana]

I spent so many years dealing with engineers who thoguht that bass meant "low end." And then guess what happens? The bass wound up booming out and consequently, they mixed the bass lower and lower -- until it was gone.

[Synequanon]

Been playing for more than 30 years and I learned as much today as if I'd just picked my first bass guitar ! I am pretty sure many musicians I played with thought at some point that I boosted way too much certain frequencies and then some. Even though I always began by setting everything at 12 o'clock I probably should have been a little more aware not to crank my bass control too much and use more midrange. Thank you a ton Mark !

[iutchube]

Great lesson. Please send this to me in 1991, when I first started 😆

[virgilrytaar]

Great advice, I'm in year 43 of gigging and the best sound I've ever had was using my original 1969 Marshall Superbass 100 watt valve amp, the tone controls did very little if anything when it was at gig level. Sounded quite horrible on it's own but once the band kicked in it was perfect. The mids were INSANE, I remember doing a gig supporting Leo Sayer, bizarrely the Fourmost were just below us on the bill, Billy said 'can I use your amp, it's the best I've ever heard'. I stood out front and the mic'd up sound was astounding for 40k people. Mids are where its at

[keithrobinson]

Yep, I've played with flat EQ on both my bass and amp for over 25 years. Always use just volume to balance out with rest of band. Nice one Mark. One of the best bits of advice for bass in a band mix.

[salatellez]

Fantastic Video. I'm a sound engineer, not a bassist, but this gives me an understanding of where the bassist should be in a live setup. Such well presented information. Thank you!

[deviantmultimedia]

This is great advice for audio engineers too! Most bassists way overshoot the low end in their tone and it can make mixing the song a nightmare if you don't know how things work down there. It's definitely a trap for young players. I fell into it, and got stuck there for a while. Until my ear became a little better trained. But then I wished I had taken the blue pill because I knew my mixes sucked and I knew it was because of the bass, but on the list of things I knew there wasn't anything written after that. I tried thousands of EQ and compression settings until I got fed up and decided I needed to hear exactly how pro-mixed bass sounded. Soloed. If I could find a couple good examples of that, I could compare them to my soloed bass tracks and hopefully the problems would reveal themselves. That ended up being a pretty good idea and I didn't even need to A/B them with my tracks because the difference was so clear. The pro tracks all had A LOT less low end energy. And by a lot I mean A-fucking-LOT. I remember saying "are you kidding me?" and re-playing them over and over. All 3 bass tracks I chose sounded so tame and not aggressive outside of the mix. They sounded like... just some dude playing bass, not the enormous bass flamethrower that it sounds like in the mix. It was difficult to wrap my head around but it started to make sense because I had always heard my mentors talk about how low frequencies carry a lot more energy than mids and highs but I didn't realize the degree of truth behind that statement until then. It's like putting drop of ink into a 5 gallon bucket of water. It definitely won't go un-noticed. If you're an engineer and you can't get your low end right, definitely listen to the guy in this video, and also do what I did and listen to isolated bass tracks. If you're interested, the 3 tracks I used were Incubus - "Stellar", The Beatles - "Hey Bulldog" and Nirvana - "In bloom" . Just add "isolated bass" to any of those in the search and you'll find all 3 here on YouTube. Out of the 3, the one that drives the concept home the most is the Incubus one because that song is like THE BASS AND VOCAL SHOW all day long. The bass is a huge commanding force in the mix but then you hear it by itself and it sounds like he's practicing in his bedroom. It's insane. Listening to the finished song and then thinking back on how that bass sounded soloed is very educational. I highly HIGHLY recommend it.

[thegroovetube]

I've been a bass player since 1970 and I learned a lot from watching this video. I play in a band and will apply this advice immediately.

[themadcam]

Man.. Your videos are always my favorite. Always providing clarity in a musician's world of convoluted "tips and tricks"

[flatsharp]

Man, I've been playing bass for 35 years and never "got" this! Thank you!

[jeffwoods]

I’ve been playing bass as well as guitar most of my life. I’m 49 now and have been thinking and dwelling on tone and sound like never before. This has been very helpful on my sonic journey. Thanks!

[ghosttownreview]

Well done! My #1 bass is a Fender Jazz American Elite. Run the bass controls flat into an Ampeg preamp with all the settings flat into a mixing board for the house and my in-ear monitors. 90% of the time it sounds like a perfect Jazz bass sound blending perfectly with the mix. If it's not cutting through I adjust my picking hand first. If that's not it then it's always the mids that need a little boost.

[dalrok]

I 100% agree! Playing for almost over 50 years I almost never use the tone controls on my amps. Only if there are resonances in the room I use the parametric EQ to eliminate them.
On my JBs I only use the tone control with the bridge PU to get that nasal 'Jaco' tone. Most of the time the EQ on my Glock is off. On some active basses (esp. my Yamahas) I have a minimal boost in the mids and that's it. Even when playing with very loud metal bands (2 guitars w. 2 Marshall stacks each) I only had my 350 Watts Glock BassArt with very clean cabs and always cut through the mix.
The worst one can do (and I always see/saw it out there when I work as FOH engineer) is having a 1000 Watts amp with monster cabs, bass at 4 o'clock, mids cut and it's guaranteed the bass is not to be heard.

[findingfreedom-definingtru]

Excellent! I am a 61 y.o. beginner on the bass (though also a professional singer since forever) who started playing acoustic bass guitar last september. After plugging into a few amps recently, I now am eagerly awaiting my first (small) amp. This video already answered so many questions that arose in those few amplified session, I am super grateful for the info. THANK YOU!!!

[berlihe]

Wow, the part where you isolate the different frequencies was really eye-opening!

[bluesdawg]

Room size, acoustics in the room, volume and live mix are all critical for bassists. I use a 400 watt Ampeg with 2 10's. I use my fingers and a pick for some sounds. This is a great video, good stuff.
I forgot how long I've been playing at this pointed, 72 years old, gigging and recording every week still.
Los Angeles