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.