Recreating fretless bass tone from Sean Malone

M

motorhead9999

Member
Hey all,

I'm rather new to the world of fretless bass (and the modeling side of that spectrum as well). I'm looking to recreate the tone of Sean Malone's fretless bass like he used on Cynic. It's basically a very punchy sound.



I know that the only gear he had on his pedal board was an EBS micro bass II. So I guess I'm looking for advice as to how best to recreate his sound (outside of it being a result of using a fretless of course) in the axe fx 3. I presume use a drive like a black glass pedal?
 
Here's a little video I found (below). It states that he is playing an Ampeg SVT-4 with an Ampeg PN-210HLF cab.



Considering in this vid (below) he's playing through this comically tiny rig and still sounds like Sean Malone, I think it's more about playing over the bridge pickup for that puncy tone, having a lower action so you get that fretless mwaaah sound, and generally just being a master.



I do hear masterful compression and subtle overdrive. Two pedals associated with Sean in this realm are the EBS Multi Comp, a two-band comp, and the EBS Micro Bass (or Micro Bass II) which is some kind of preamp pedal.

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Looks like his bass has a 3 band eq, so if your bass doesn't have one I'd first try a PEq block to give a little mid focus > Comp or Multi comp block to fatten and even the lows and touch the mids > Drive block for some gentle saturation/warmth (mess with the Mix blend and eq) > Amp Block with one of the SV bass amps (Maybe some Compression on the output dynamics)> 2x10/4x10/8x10 cab block. Also, try experimenting by also running a completely dry DI signal to the output ( using a multi comp to control this signal instead might be more beneficial than spending it before it hits the amp block)

I'm sure some of my ideas are off-target. But hopefully, there's at least one idea that gets you closer to sounding like the masterful Sean Malone!
 
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