Any good Bass presets made by Bassists?

Slammin Mofo

Inspired
I'm not a bassist myself, so I really don't know how to achieve a good Marcus Miller or Nathan East type of sound... but if someone more experienced in all things bass could provide a good bass preset for a Passive Pickups Jazz Bass, I'd definitely appreciate it!
 
I'm not a bassist myself, so I really don't know how to achieve a good Marcus Miller or Nathan East type of sound... but if someone more experienced in all things bass could provide a good bass preset for a Passive Pickups Jazz Bass, I'd definitely appreciate it!

For that type of tone, making sure you have a fresh set of stainless strings (fairly light guage) is probably most important. Tone control on the bass should be wide open.

The patch would probably be faily simple. Maybe a comp block (studio) first. Use the tube pre in the amp block. No cab. Definitely use a MBC block near the end of the chain (set it to say, 250 hz and 1500hz). After that, it would probably just be setting the amp controls to taste. You might need a GEQ or PEQ to bump up some of the highs (that's a bright bass tone).
 
I'm not a bassist myself, so I really don't know how to achieve a good Marcus Miller or Nathan East type of sound... but if someone more experienced in all things bass could provide a good bass preset for a Passive Pickups Jazz Bass, I'd definitely appreciate it!

Well, for the MM sound, things are generally pretty clean. In the real world, you'd plug into an SWR MM head or an EBS HD360 bass head into a couple of 4x10+tweeter cabinets and be done with it. Here are a couple of links that may be helpful as guides:

DoctorBass.net / your bass shop / SWR Marcus Miller Preamp

How can i get the Marcus Miller tone? @ Ultimate-Guitar.Com Forum Archive

Marcus Miller | EBS Professional Bass Equipment - Official Blog

To be honest, and from what I know about bass tones in that genre, this is a fairly clean tone. The preamp may be used for subtle tube overdrive or to flavor the sound a little, but there's really not much going on with the amp sound beyond a clean signal path. This being the case, I'd start with perhaps the tube pre type in the amp block, though a clean setting on the SVT amp could also be used. This would be mainly for subtle B/M/T tone shaping and to add some tube simulation to the sound, and that's about it. Try a 4x10 alum or the new 4x10 + tweeter cabinet model, or perhaps no cabinet at all for an ultra-clean tone.

You may also want to put a compressor in there before the amp block for very subtle smoothing, and again after the amp block and before the cab block. Since this is clean tone, with lots of pop/slap, etc., you may want to use a multi-band compressor, especially with respect to zeroing in on the low frequency band in the MBC, to help the low freqs behave with pop/slap, but without pumping for straight finger style playing, so fairly low ratio settings, and very subtle (if any) compression on the mid/high band. This is tricky unless you've spent a bit of time with it, and you may even want to put this before the amp block to keep the e string notes from pushing the amp pre into "fart". For that matter, a Para or Graphic EQ may do you just as well, along with a drive pedal set to tape type, for some nice, subtle tape saturation emulation and smoothing.

Also, much of this depends on your proficiency on bass, your technique, attack, etc. etc. You've chosen a couple of monsters to emulate in MM and Nathan East, and these guys have incredible skill and technique. But IMO, in the end, it is fundamentally a clean tone. I'd love to see something like the EBS HD360 modeled for the AxeFx (yeah, I'm a broken record on this).

[edit: just saw Der JD covered much of the same...so...yeah, what HE said. LOL]
 
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