Want bass tone like Geddy? or Flea? or Jamerson? Here’s why your sound isn’t cutting it, and how to make it perfect.
If you’re doing the Beginner to Badass course, this lesson would fit any ol’ time… just know that it’s totally okay to NOT THINK ABOUT BASS TONE at all when you’re first learning. I didn’t learn any of these knobs for an embarrassing long number of years. 
Let me know if your dwarf mastery helps you solve a tone problem you’ve been struggling with!
Awesome video! “Tone” has always been an elusive and somewhat abstract concept to me. This is making it so much clearer!
Thank you Josh! Learned a lot from this video.
Thanks! Now I know how to defeat the dwarves with a parametric EQ plugin on my MOD Dwarf 
I’m always amazed at the difference people seem to get with their passive tone knobs. The tone on my Squire CV P doesn’t seem to do much at all. Do I need to have the highs turned up on my amp to hear that drastic shaping?
Great stuff, Josh!
Chasing tone is a great past-time! And it never stops as it is so context-dependent (and context here means: music style, playing style, other musicians, room/venue, signal chain, lunar phase, …)
Quote from a sound engineer (way back when I played drums): “Your snare sounds like sh#t, and I can’t make vanilla pudding from sh#t!”
…ah, but what a wonderful world it would be
Well, I might stop eating vanilla pudding then… probably 
We have a different take on that statement around here:
You can’t make chicken salad out of chicken s#it.
This has to be the best video on tone and EQ ever done! I’ve been looking for an explanation like this for years. Perfect!!
I’m bewildered how many hi-mid and high tone controls on bass gear are placed above the dwarves’ heads. While I always appreciate the degassing nature of you can do this too with gear you have, it is pretty easy to get that Darkglass EQ section equivalent.
My progression went:
And then finally the everything box which was just total GAS
IMHO the best video on the YT channel so far (and there were plenty of great videos already).
Unfortunately, a couple of weeks too late to save me from the GAS guy 
Jokes aside, I think playing - consistently, in the “right” setting - different instruments can help a lot to understand how to harness the dwarfs’ powers correctly.
In my limited experience, I liked a lot the TRBX sound playing fingerstyle but it never quite felt right with a pick (too guitar-like, somehow), no matter the effects, pick-up selection, strings, or even the pre-amp settings. I got close there, but never 100%. I played around a little with the amp EQ, but didn’t want to “waste” time during rehearsals adjusting volumes all the time (because alone and in the mix are ofc wildly different) and could never quite put my finger on the cause of my dissatisfaction.
In comparison, the new Schecter has pickups that emphasize the low frequencies way more… and it is much more satisfying in the mix with the pick, in my ears.
After that, I was playing around just yesterday with an EQ pedal, hopeful to replicate the Schecter’s tone on the TRBX… And with that, the B string sounds more even with the rest, too. Win-win.
But the Schecter is not going anywhere
And the comparison of the spectrum of finger vs pick is just the cherry on top. I googled more than once for that info (obviously without success) and tried to do it myself on Reaper - in theory not too difficult, but in practice didn’t work too well 
Josh: Sound engineers have learned to master the whole sound spectrum to make s**t sound good.
aka Turd Polishers
Very cool video, my only note is the freq spectrum parts were very hard to see on my screen when watching
As it happens my phone actually is a nokia but I would never watch any video on it as I only use dumb phone functions (txt, call, and camera)
If all you want is a phone those things are great!
I went the other route. If I could get a data-only plan with no voice I would do it in a heartbeat.
One of the big problems is that people EQ how they think they should instead of listening and ignoring what number the knobs are turned to. Before playing bass i spent quite a bit of time EQin headphones and mixes and i only care what sounds good 
On my sire M7 I usually reduce the treble, reduce the bass and sweep the mid to find what i need to reduce/boost. On my PBass i mostly just turn the treble knob and ignore how bad the G string sounds 
Is this based on empirical evidence or a feeling? You know like a sort of vibe you get about people?
Well I have not conducted a proper study 
but I’ve seen enough posts on reddit and other forums to know that there are reoccurring trends… many people think “I play bass so that means they have to turn up the bass”. Also, the very popular recommendation of “set all the knobs to 12 o’clock”. For electric guitar it’s extremely popular to “scoop the mids”. Headphone forums are even worse
If one was to experiment using their ears, they’d discover exactly what Josh said in the video 
Bass too; many amps are scooped out of the box, Fenders especially so.
Just boosting the bass will add mud in any mix no matter how good it sounds solo. In fact it’s a common mixing shortcut to just HPF the bass guitar track at around 30-40Hz.
That’s usually the first thing i do I got most of my tricks from Warren at Produce Like a Pro.
I always think that one of the best first pedals anyone can buy is an EQ pedal.
I was looking at some posts on basschat.co.uk re. amps with HPF and someone said: “The problem with capable adjustable HPF onboard amps is in the selling. The average bassist isn’t well informed so when asking what the HPF knob does the sales guy says ‘it cuts off low end’ and the next words out of the shopper are ‘show me something else’.” 
