Vintage Sound Bar

[Melchior Dow]

PutFlat wounds on the Sire. That bass will do anything you want it to do. Its a jazz with a very powerful comprehensive pre, super versatile. Ive had 3 and you can get a really old school tone out of it. Marcus Miller knew this when he had input in designing it.

For someone who is starting out, flatwounds may be a good idea because they'll get rid of the clank (which you don't want for the crusaders type of sound). But they are expensive and are not really necessary. All you need to do is turn the treble down/tone down and the mid up a bit on your bass.

I'm a bit surprised to hear people talking about the bass sound with the Crusaders as being vintage, with flatwounds, particularly as late as 1979. I saw them several times and the bass sound was anything but this. The player they had with them on tour in the late 70s was Robert 'Pops' Popwell whose sound (on a Fender Jazz) was anything but 60s flatwound vintage. He was also a stunning slap player (and played it a lot with the Crusaders).

So I would say this sound is Fender Jazz with roundwounds with the bridge pick up favoured (but not soloed), or also a 2 band Stingray with either flats (treble up) or rounds (treble not full). The line should be played with sufficient muting to control but not completely eliminate clank.

Sorry but I think you're going down the wrong route if you're thinking flat wound, vintage thud. Favour the bridge pick up on your Sire or other basses (mixing in a bit of neck) and strike the strings with authority - round wounds are fine - I would suggest you'll need some left hand muting also. It should sound fine, especially in the mix.

For someone who is starting out, flatwounds may be a good idea because they'll get rid of the clank (which you don't want for the crusaders type of sound). But they are expensive and are not really necessary. All you need to do is turn the treble down/tone down and the mid up a bit on your bass.

I believe Wilton Felder played a Fender Precision with flats on Street Life. I get a great vintage sound with my Aguilar TH500. Flatwound strings are a must. I use TI's but LaBella's would also sound pretty good. For a fuller sound, play with your thumb on the neck pickup for maximum vintage thump without too much woolliness.

I'd disagree that using full bass and no treble would make your bass sound like it has flatwound strings on. Flats do not just sound bassy, they have a greater frequency range than that. They have a life of their own and an authority in their sound that EQ on its own couldn't emulate.

I would not worry too much about what bass and strings are used in the original - we will never know what studio interfaces were used or overall enhancers in the production, all of which would move the bass sound away from a 60s type of thing - and it's certainly a far more 'hi fi' sounding production than that.

I have used roundwounds since about 1979 and would describe my ideal sound as this era of funk and jazz rock. In fact I've only put flatwounds on a couple of basses ever, one to see what the fuss was about, and one because it's Fretless and I didn't want to wreck the fretboard.

Like chris_b, I use a modern class D set up (MarkBass LM3), and can get a decent sound for that era with it, and a Stingray bass in combination with playing technique. I used to use an Ashdown ABM which was also fine for this (there is a thread currently running on Ashdown in General Discussion). The key, in my opinion for playing in a band with this type of thing is a clean bass sound at the required volume. I would say a key to playing the Street Life bass part is the groove and the note lengths - some are staccato, some not.

By the way I also have short fingers - you can learn to get around disadvantages of this, such as stretching across notes, by left hand placement on back of the neck - the other disadvantage I've found is fretting hand slapping in 80s onwards style pop and slap - long fingers give you more leverage and a stronger slap - however you can even get around that!

Looking at equipment again, it's interesting that for Level 42s first single, Love Meeting Love, Mark King said he borrowed a bass, a Gibson EB2 IIRC. It sounds like a standard generic bass sound. The point of mentioning this being that you don't need necessarily to be using the same equipment as used in a studio to achieve the sound - there are so many other variables in studio recordings.

Going back to my original comments, The Crusaders used a more modern type of bass sound live - whilst the sound on Street Life would be like the recording other songs would have slap etc. All played on a Jazz. I saw them three times in the late 70s, live , using two different bass players and they were like this on all three occasions.

I'd love to know where you guys think you could either buy a bass with flatwound strings as new, or flatwound bass strings in shops in the late 70s. Certainly in the UK they'd been out of fashion since the 60s and people would generally not be seen dead with them......

For that sound I bet that player could get there on your Yamaha with the tone half way down. For something more like the record (I just looked it up on youtube to listen) @drTStingray's advice would probably get you there.

My guess, and this is a guess is that if you cannot get somewhere near that tone with your Yamaha bass and strings... then make sure the action isn't too low, turn the amp gain up and practice playing with a wee bit softer touch to see if that gets you there...

When it comes to convenience, digital multitrack recording has it all over its predecessor, analog tape. You can record with a wider frequency range and lower noise. You can make copies without degrading the quality. You can slice, dice, cut, copy and paste your audio at will, with incredible precision and without affecting the original recording. You can record an unlimited number of tracks in a session, as long as you have a fast-enough computer and sufficient hard drive space to store the data.

In the era before digital recording, many audio engineers discovered that overloading analog gear could often make their recorded tracks sound better. For example, it became commonplace to intentionally overload drums when recording them to tape to get a saturated sound.

When you plug a mic or instrument into the AXR4, you can turn on the SILK process with the press of a button, allowing you to imbue your digital tracks with classic analog-saturated sound. As a result, you get the best of both worlds: the convenience and flexibility of digital recording, along with the warmth of analog.

I recently started watching Mad Men, the AMC series, and really enjoy the way they present the show - accurate set design, sound, even the cuts and fades are dead on with the style of the time period they are portraying.

The LA3A is an optical compressor...meaning it has a light sensor/attenuator inside of it which controls the gain reduction circuit. They usually sound vintage because they have a gentle release time. I'm sure opto compressors were used on older film dialog mixes.

Optical film sound is much different from optical compression. It is a strip printed on a film that is hit with a lamp on one side and a photodetector on the other. The photodector translates the light into sound. These photodetectors weren't all that well designed and often led to a warbled lofi sound.

On the film Up, the Skywalker crew took the newsreel narration, music etc. and recorded it to an optical track, then recorded back to digital. It sounded great and spot on. I would think you could fake the sound or come pretty close using Audio Ease's Speakerphone or Izotope Vinyl.

Back in the day, it was an all analogue path - recording on Nagra 1/4" tape, transferring to 35mm sep mag and then sound editing via cutting that mag (I know a semi-retired local who was infamous for doing fades either by scratching off the mag, or using sweeps with a head demagnetizer to erase some of the signal!) All those rolls of sep mag feeding an analogue desk, using lots of very high quality analogue outboard... all with no automation!But apart from technology it was also a very different creative process, decision making could not be put off until the mix - priorities had to be established early on....

Before buying different mics which is still a great idea I'd say +1 for Audioease Speakerphone I bought it in 2008 and use it daily at work and it's just amazing! as is Altiverb also from Audioease, this is the best reverb suite there is! try their stuff - send Aram an email ask if you can give these a go and if you have an iLOK he'll likely give you a 30 day demo (full working demo) try it in your projects and you might even want to buy it, I did but atleast you get to use it for 30 days.He has another indespensible piece of software called Snapper this is a 100 day demo - which you can get right now it won't give you a Mad Men sound but will help out your workflow.Who gives a 100 day demo?......someone selling something they know you will absolutely want to own, Audioease are amazing!

There was also an issue with generation loss. Sometimes by the end of the re-recording session you could be on anything up to the 7th generation of the sound, I've also heard of higher figures. That means that there were multiple chances for the sound to be altered by the medium it was stored on, such as saturation, print through or even physical damage. This effect was cumulative and gives films that used analogue sound a "colouration" that is not present with modern digital sound.

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