What elements contribute to a growly bass?

Z

zionstrat

New member
I've played quite a few growley bases over the years.. Rickenbacker's easily growl and some J basses get there.

By far the growliest base of ever played was the Ovation Magnum.. think Don't stop believing.

One of the wonderful things about the Magnum was it maintained a very heavy low end along with the growl. Trying to get growl on other basses, I usually end up with a compromise where I can get the growl but have to do a lot of shifting to get back to a strong bottom end.

The reason I'm asking, is I'm selling off practically all my basses due to space and finances and want to put together a do-everything mutt.

So I'm giving up five and six string and will probably use my sterling.. it's got a great bridge humbucker and can get lots of different tones but it doesn't naturally growl.

Open to any and all ideas!

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70s Jazz basses with that repositioned bridge pickup tend to growl. So does a P bass with a Quarter Pound.
 
Yeah I've always had the best growl off of the bridge on Js. Same with Rickenbacker.

Considering the Sterling has a pretty robust bridge I don't think I can switch it out. But I've never thought of p basses as growly.. in theory I could do a p bass route above the bridge and try a quarter pound..

So much thanks Mincer... right off the starting line I've got one idea to play with.
 
I've found the key to growl is that the EQ of the bass has a prominent high-midrange and a deep thud to it. It also doesn't hurt if you split the signal and put part of it through an edge-of-breakup pedal or amp, and put the clean part through a deep thumping bass amp and cab.
 
I guess it depends on what you mean by "growl". But I associate that sound with the middle position on a two pickup bass. My J bass has it to a degree. But my favorite is the middle position on a bass with two humbuckers. That slightly scooped out sound, combined with the mid-forward tone of humbuckers, just does it for me. I have a long scale Epiphone EB-3 with two custom humbuckers and it really brings the thunder in the middle position. I love it.
 
My bass player uses a J with a tube screamer giving a slight boost. Lots of mid growl.
 
Thanks all, and I might have to resort to the overdriving mid-range thing to some degree but prefer to get as much of my tone from the bass itself as possible.

As far as the growl I'm talking about, it's not distortion and it's not string rattle. Don't get me wrong I love Geddy, but a lot of his tone is smashing the string against the fretboard much like Entwistle. It's a great tone but not what I'm talking about.

The growl I'm talking about is as much about attack as it is the tone. It's a Bwaaah like sound where the fundamental blooms into a mid-range peak well after the initial attack.

To reinforce what I'm talking about, it's exactly the bass sound on Don't stop believing.
 
"Growl" to me is roughly the same frequency as the string slapping, but it is not that. I do think at least a little bit of overdrive is required to get it.
 
Yeah I understand that some people hear it that way. But I keep going back to the Magnum opus that I wish I had bought way back in the day. It growled on an entirely clean channel and still had a lot of bottom end.

I hear warwicks are often the same, but I'm not going to be able to afford either one :-)
 
Also I've expanded my search to pretty much all of the groups and it's interesting to see all the different definitions of growl.

A lot of slap players perceive a very bright tone, that I think of as string rattle, as growl.

What I'm talking about is a far less bright tone that can be played very quietly.

Interesting enough, a lot of people attributed entirely to the base itself saying that their base is growl unplugged.. I really wonder which type of growl they're talking about.
 
I like to run two DIs for bass. One with tons of low end and the other with a little distortion dialed in to add that growl. Incredibly simple and not particularly expensive; buffered split, tech21 VT Bass, MXR Bass DI and done. Also works for having a bright tone with tons of definition on the MXR and tons of thump on the VT Bass
 
That makes a lot of sense. If I don't end up getting it on the bass side, that certainly is easy to do and I've got all the stuff to do it!
 
When I had my Sterling SUB Ray4 I was able to get some growl by adding just a bit of dirt and running the EQ flat on the amp and the controls flat on the bass, maybe the bass knob up a little past the flat notch. My Jazz bass can growl really good. Again, a little bit of dirt, not a lot, and not distortion, but smooth overdrive. Think adding a tubescreamer in to the path and having it set low.
 
Got some excellent growl at a recent gig..

So I took a lot of our thinking put it together and got some great ground...

I've got an old rogue six string, one of the heaviest bases I've ever played... Big extremely wide neck and active J style pups.

It's spent most of its life just sitting in the studio.. The bass to go low when nothing else can get there... and I never really thought of it as growly.. really kind of clean piano like.

But I had a gig with a big gospel group and needed to go way low so I took the old rogue and spent a lot of time playing with EQ. With compression and a low mid spike, it started to growl pretty good. I rolled off quite a bit of treuble and it would have been happy at that point but decided to throw on a bass pass flanger.

That turned out to be the magic for long slow growly lines... The flanger didn't sound like a flanger at all cuz it was very slow... It added more of a acoustic bass tone.. A little hard to describe but it worked!

In retrospect heavy certainly helped with the sustain and mixed with the compressor gave each note plenty of time to bloom...

So thanks again for input I'm happy with what I got!
 
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