best way to get the phil lesh rubber bandy tone

[drewphishes]

I just love the way phils tone is so plucky like a rubber band.  Ive come close before but never can quite nail it,  what do you all use?

I have an alembic epic, and eden wt550 rig

[5a quilt top]

My recipe for value engineered Lesh-tone:


Use Thomastick Jazz (or any) flatwound strings.


Using a Series bass will get you closer, but any Alembic should have enough clarity to do the job.


Favor the bridge PU slightly on your bass and roll the treble frequencies off to about 1/3 up. Leave the treble up a bit on the neck PU, but don't let that tone dominate, use it as needed to add a bit of clarity and note definition.



Boost the mids on your amp and don't use too much bass or treble. Use a fair amount of compression.


Use a heavy pick, or develop really precise finger technique.

[edwardofhuncote]

I've simply accepted that Phil is a space alien sent here to inspire the bass playing populus at large. I'm pretty well convinced that Mica and her folks were in on the plot from the get-go too. I mean... have you guys never noticed all the spacey references around here?  They were doing integrated circuit boards out there when NASA was still trying to fake a decent moon shot. Mothership, indeed.

 

Formula is simple. Listen to Phil play, over and over... plug up your Alembic and try to play what you thought you just heard. Repeat as necessary. TI Jazz Flats and Golden Gate picks help me.

[elwoodblue]

I've simply accepted that Phil is a space alien sent here to inspire the bass playing populus at large. I'm pretty well convinced that Mica and her folks were in on the plot from the get-go too. I mean... have you guys never noticed all the spacey references around here?  They were doing integrated circuit boards out there when NASA was still trying to fake a decent moon shot. Mothership, indeed.
 

yup...

[edwin]

To my ear, the real rubber band sound is from the 70s, so a short scale bass with Pyramid flats is a sure way to start. Play with a pick and experiment with where along the string you pick the notes. He spent a bunch of time picking down by the end of the fingerboard.

His sound got different in the 80s and 90s, more sustained.

[sonicus]

Edwin nailed it   . I concur . We both observed what you wrote .
Hello Edwin ! I hope that all is well with you !

Wolf

[glocke]

I just love the way phils tone is so plucky like a rubber band.  Ive come close before but never can quite nail it,  what do you all use?

I have an alembic epic, and eden wt550 rig

What era are you talking about?  I've never thought of Phils tone as rubber bandy like, at least for the eras I generally listen to (which is generally up to 82 or so but mostly the 70's).

I've always considered it to be more of a hi/fi/dry/woody sound thats overdriven at times.

Funny how we all hear different things.

[cozmik_cowboy]

And don't forget the other end of the equation:  He wasn't trying to do the impossible & get bass tone out of 6" or 10" drivers; ya needs ta gets yerself some bigazz speakers. Phil, at least in the '70s, leaned hard toward a mix of 15" & 18".
Edwin gets a fine Leshtone from his fEARful 15/6-12/6 stack.



Peter (who must insist that 4X10" does not give you a 40" air column; it gives you 4 10" air columns)

[lbpesq]

Of course it also helps when those 15" and 18" speakers are stacked 32' high! 

I preferred Phil's tone in the 70's and early 80's.  As the years passed, and Phil got away from Alembics, to me his tone got bassier and bassier to the point that it seemed I could feel him rather than hearing him.  I never liked the sound of those Dr. Suess Ritter things.  These days, when I see him at TXR on his new Alembics, he sounds great.

Bill, tgo

[cozmik_cowboy]

Naw - the WoS stacks were all 15s.  But he used both 15s & 18s before that, and according to Blair Jackson, in '76 he was using a 3X15; by '77 he'd added a 4X12 & a 2X18 (now that's a bass stack!)¹


Peter


¹Grateful Dead Gear, p. 170

[rv_bass]

Interesting, Bill.  I always thought his tone got thinner and thinner through the 80s and 90s.  He's back to a nice rich bass tone with his Alembics again.

[StephenR]

I didn't think Phil's tone in the 80s and 90s was thin, the Phil bombs were much more intense with the Meyer PAs and Modulus basses, but for whatever reason the band started using a more conventional sounding rock and roll mix. In the 70s you could hear each individual instrument clearly and the way they played then had much more of the thing going where the parts wove together with one or more instruments finishing a phrase started by someone else. Especially as the 80s progressed everything sounded a lot more mushed together sonically and due to a number of reasons the interplay between the instruments they used to get going in the 70s started to largely dry up.

I found Bill's comment about the bass mainly being felt not heard clearly once he ditched the Alembics interesting because when I asked a friend how Phil's bass sounded at one of the 76 Beacon shows he said you could feel it more than hear it and that was with an Alembic and in a small room. The one thing that has been constant about Phil's tone is that is always mutating as he continues to experiment with basses, rigs, pickups and strings.

Personally the only of Phil's basses I thought sounded awful were the Irwin in the early 80s and the Eye of the Horus Ritter he was playing around 2010, the one that looks like he is strangling a swan when he plays it.

[sonicus]

Stephen , your observations make sense to me in many regards . I have a long story to tell in those regards and will not digress at this time in an effort of not hijacking this thread  with my long winded story of several paragraphs. . Perhaps that will be for another time .   It is however directly product relevant with my personal experience of a product and variations of such  .

Wolf

[edwin]

I can relate to both descriptions of Phil's 80s tones. I think it took a while to dial in the graphite thing, and also it sounded like there were experiments with strings. There were times when the low end was intense, but only during the bomb drops. A lot of times, the bass came across as kind of clanky, like round wounds with the action too low. But, I would imagine it sounded very different on stage. As time went on, I think there was a bigger and bigger disconnect from the stage sound to the room sound. Why that was, I can't say, but maybe a lot of factors. Their PA got more and more high tech and capable of really changing the tones of the instruments drastically. My guess is that Phil's perception of his tone hasn't changed all that much over the years and the biggest difference is how it was presented to the room.

I definitely agree with Stephen's assessment of how they interacted. My personal view is that having a much busier keyboardist with a more limited vocabulary was a big factor there.

I keep trying to play my Modulus at gigs, but it's just never as satisfying as the Starfire.

It also seemed that as the 70s wore on, he got quieter. At a certain point, the bass stopped carrying the mix.

Weirdly, that's all such ancient history now!

[cozmik_cowboy]

Edwin, are you saying Brent had a more limited vocabulary than Keith?  If so, I need to sit down and do a heavy listen with that in mind to see if i agree; I never found Brent limited - but than, I never thought about it in those terms, either.

Peter