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Foam dampers were a standard feature on Precisions untill well into the sixties as mentioned elsewhere. I have seen video of Queen showing John Deacon with a duster/rag stuffed under the strings. You can get away without it with flat wound strings but in my opinion for our type of music,not with round wounds.

Des.

In the era we're talking about, flatwounds were normal.

That said, Alan Jones always used roundwounds and sounded terrific with the Shads.

I guess roundwounds with the felt damper would have sounded pretty much like flats.

Remember The Peddlars' Tab Martin, with his Gibson EB2 bass?

It had two added DeArmond 1000 model pickups near the bridge and a permanent addition in the form of a yellow duster under the strings at the bridge end. I remember seeing the trio at the old Shakespeare theatre club in Fraser Street c. 1969. Tab's bass sounded wonderful with flats and played through an Ampex Portaflex B15.

EDIT: Sorry, should have said that the Fraser Street in question was and is off London Road in Liverpool, not far from the old Odeon and Gaumont cinemas and the Empire Theatre.



JN

A good example of Tab Martins dampened bass sound would be on The Saints version of Wipeout
produced by Joe Meek in 1963. This production is also noteable for the outstanding drumming on
a cardboard shoebox allegedly!!!!!
Had Gene Krupa been asked to do this you could imagine his reply!!!

Mike

abstamaria wrote:Very interesting all this. Anna left her Customshop PBass in the studio, so I plan now to experiment with it over the holidays, trying various density foam strips under the ashtray or the bridge cover (she keeps those on), and comparing the result with the early sound.

From observation of other players (especially Bob Babbitt with the Motown Funk Brothers Orchestra a couple of years back) the place to put the foam rubber is immediately in front of the bridge cover - you may need to take off the ash tray (temporarily!) to make enough room to play, unless you pick on the neck side of it - I would suggest it needs to press reasonably hard against the strings - I will be interested to hear your view on the sound difference.

Iain_P wrote:In the era we're talking about, flatwounds were normal.

That said, Alan Jones always used roundwounds and sounded terrific with the Shads.

I guess roundwounds with the felt damper would have sounded pretty much like flats.

This is true to an extent - however the likes of John Entwhistle seemed to be using roundwounds quite early on - I'm pretty sure some of the other blues rockers did judging by the livlier bass sounds in the later 60s. Use of palm muting and other left hand/right hand muting techniques is often the means for players of genres post 1960s to 'calm' the sound of roundwounds on songs calling for old school thump - roundwound strings can be essential to get modern sounds (modern being anything post early 70s), dependent on what bass you play. As many bass players will know, part of the challenge of playing bass is keeping the strings you're not playing silent (especially the lower ones - eg the B on a 5 string).......by some form of muting - so I'm guessing we all do this to one degree or another.

Iain - thanks for your advice on use of a pick - I will try that.

Happy holidays folks.

As I understand it, Jon Entwistle was one of the early 'names' to pioneer roundwound bass strings. His solo on My Generation was done with them. I think it was Rotosound who brought out the first roundwounds in the early 60s. But the Shads weren't using them. Listen to Jet's Nivram or Lic's Shazam and you're hearing flats

Iain_P wrote:As I understand it, Jon Entwistle was one of the early 'names' to pioneer roundwound bass strings. His solo on My Generation was done with them. I think it was Rotosound who brought out the first roundwounds in the early 60s. But the Shads weren't using them. Listen to Jet's Nivram or Lic's Shazam and you're hearing flats

The story of the My Generation session has John Entwistle buying up every Danelectro bass he could find (Selmer distributed them at the time) in order to get the round wound strings that Nat Daniels had pioneered on the Longhorn basses, both four-string and six-string. This, of course, was in mid-1965. James How didn't introduce the Swing Bass round wound Rotosound set until 1966, but The Who were immediate and avid endorsers straightaway.

As a matter of interest, what guage flat wounds would have been on Jet's P Bass in the sixties?

JimN wrote:
The story of the My Generation session has John Entwistle buying up every Danelectro bass he could find (Selmer distributed them at the time) in order to get the round wound strings that Nat Daniels had pioneered on the Longhorn basses, both four-string and six-string. This, of course, was in mid-1965. James How didn't introduce the Swing Bass round wound Rotosound set until 1966, but The Who were immediate and avid endorsers straightaway.

The stories I've read about this (Bass Guitar Magazine did a feature a few years back with transcriptions) suggests Entwhistle kept breaking strings and they had to go and get another bass each time because there were no 'spare' strings available. I'm pretty sure the story has it that he completed the job on a Fender Jazz, having run out of Longhorns, which clearly couldn't stand up to his playing technique (or maybe it was the strings that coudln't!!)

I too would be interested to hear what strings Jet (and also Licorice) used - these late 50s/early 60s Fenders seemed to have heavy guage La Bella flats (eg Jamerson; Babbitt) - presumably as much as anything to stand up to upright player technique and attack!!

I seem to remember reading somewhere that Fenders String Provider was a company called
Vc Squier, CBS bought the company after aquiring Fender
hence The later use of the name for the squier range.
i wouldnt have thought that back in the late 50,s early 60,s that there would have been much of a choice string wise.
so Fender basses would all probably be supplied with the same Flatwounds provided by vc squier.

regards
Jay