Studio Bassist Paul Ill's Setup - Warren Huart: Produce Like A Pro

hi it's Warren Huard here I'd be doing my obviously well and with a great pool hmm and we every are we've been recording at Jen's yeah well she's wearing shoes I am we've been recording Daniel Powter and he's been playing bass of course with Victor playing drums and Daniel coastal piano so I'm having a lot of fun and what I wanted to do was ask Paul a little bit about is setup okay because you have a couple of beautiful bases today this is one we've used many times before I know you use this on Daniels happy Christmas more as over cover that's correct this is a 1962 fender Precision body with a 66 neck that was sold in 1966 to someone and I'm the third owner it's a documented bass it was bought at a guitar show in Dallas by a guitar trader friend of mine and then offered to me because he knew I needed in old people's four sessions I'm using one of a flat-wound strings set is I think D 140 F there are a lot lighter than the set that you would get back in the 60s on on a Fender bass but they're the you know the James Jamerson flat-wound strings that that run were all accustomed to hearing they're very la-2a friendly it's an alder bass but it's very light it's like as light as an ash bass and it's one piece body and it was a factory ii that when CBS bought fender they said hey let's get all those seconds out of the store and and it's it's it's the rareness of it is it's one piece body and it's very light and I find that the lighter the instrument the easier it is to record people like the sound of the lighter insurance better whether they're alder or ash and so this is busy how they put it together they had an old neck sitting around and they're stuck in on Susan well they had a 66 neck because it was 1966 and they have these little bodies those are the old applauding yes the old body was up because it was Deb blemish turret didn't take a finish correctly and the finish checking that's a nitrocellulose and when I first got it it smelled like cigars either the first or second owner was a big cigar smoker and it is set up by my friends had true tone music in Santa Monica they do all my setups I set my action a little higher than most people for record but I also play a little bit upright bass so enjoy most of the fight yeah and also I find that when I play I usually anchor my finger there you can see the thumb where there for most up or here and I do play this instrument the pic I use felt picks occasionally but it noticed and and I use of picks I'm about seventy thirty now on tracking gates fingers to pick it used to be 99% fingers but right in the past five years I've been playing a lot more with a pick and tell us why is this beautiful okay this instrument is it was basically an amalgamation of parts that I would collect on ebay the body is somewhere between 1970 and 73 I had a 73 P bass neck on it with a maple fingerboard the pickup is a 71 fender pickup that I bought online and then had Lindy frail and rewind twice to match this particular la-2a has been to Perry studio she's like I love this bass it's great with round ones it's a little too hot said they pick up back to Lindy when everyone did another track she goes oh it's so close man asked me to take it down again setup and assembly by a guy named Mattie Bharata who works at Ibanez for a long time but he moved on and he has since returned to being a luthier but for a while he was just traveling the world being a world traveler and this instrument I didn't want any finish on it right so it just has a wood seal on it and the net is a jazz bass Custom Shop neck if you notice it's got the Custom Shop logo what happened was it's a 73 now on this body and this net on another bass that I didn't bring with me a Custom Shop jazz bass both of them had a dead spot of at E flat right around here you had a wolf tone which is very common on Fender bass is because this is 34 inches and it's very common on cellos on the high string on a cello tuning you'll get a bad note here it's just the physics of the instrument and let any and the diameter of the string so my friends at Troodon said hey let's do an experiment if you don't mind swap the necks and let's see if the dead spots go away and they got much better if you didn't complain at all and I did play quite a few E flats where the spot is and I can feel it in here because I'm very sensitive to it but it's an interesting trick to arrest a problem that's caught on the fender bases so and I never bothered to have it refinished because initially my thinking was this was going to be like John Whetton bass like King Crimson 71 to 74 one finish and you know and brighter round wound strings I use steel strings when I use round one strings I'm a d'addario strings person and I use standard 105 245 gauge and the setups are true tone has a lot to do with it this setup site for example how they articulate the nut and when they do an intonation for me like we rarely we had a little intonation problem tables because I was hitting too hard I got excited nice what happened probably having fun we are having fun but the instruments generally the lighter they are the better they sound in the booth over there there's a 1974 MPEG b15 so we're here with the b15 we'd go to FET 47 making it up which is probably 99% of the time what this is probably might with I mean it's it's the sound of the kick drum or a bass guitar and northern fat 47 so this is a beautiful lamp we have it in channel 1 I know we messed around a little bit I put your low and your high in put the bass up or travel down a little bit and when you Nestle set up it had a nice grind to it which I loved but then what was it the second track we did it was like super super clean no no it wasn't it was the first one when the rocks will remain nameless right the first track we were doing second track for us because we do piano this morning um and we just pulled it down just a little bit so there's still a little bit of grit coming from the amp and it's still got that beautiful tube sound that we love but it also sounds really fat it's really really warm sounding amp so what did you find this well this came from California vintage and I told them that I was looking for a B 15 it didn't have to be really old checker board from the 60s or anything that had any XLR input from the speaker I'm shocked it's funny it's interesting I just said I need a good be 15 this had been closeted literally it had been stored for 20 years and somebody was doing a you know sell stuff they weren't using anymore and I they're very reasonable at califor vintage its maintained by gentleman by the name of Steve deacon at rock-and-roll doctor in Burbank California Greg and he does great work he biases the amp and he checks my tubes for me because you will wear out your power tubes in an ampeg amplifier as fast as you will like a marshall guitar amplifier oh well for example by other amplifiers I have they don't they don't wear as fast but something about the circuitry of an ampeg does that your settings are very interesting I have a rule where I don't yeah I learned it from reading a Brian Eno book I just unplug my unpack I plug in and wait and I don't touch anything but it's like maybe somebody will change something if they want to change it I'll just leave it where it is even if it's very strange Nakano moved around just leave it it's like a mojo thing like a superstition of my show and they tweaked very interestingly like I this is what I like about the recording process and the creative synergy between musicians and producers and songwriters and stuff I would have never set my amp like that and I'm not going this is awesome not now I can you know take it back to my studio I've memorized the settings you know and write jam with my friends or cut a track and I'll try these settings and I've never used it now it's voiced there's a couple of cool tricks with the amp it it's voiced to do two things because the reason these were flip tops it's one of the great designs of the 20th century like innovative like like we've got a little spare time let's show them pop it open right this pops open if you've never seen one of these before right and we're going to leave the speaker plugged in and everything but we're just going to demonstrate to you this pops open and you fold it in like this to travel and then there's a handle on the best right now interestingly enough you can go like this and get a totally different tone right okay and that's the original speaker it's just a Jensen fifteen and I think these answer like 35 watts or something they're not particularly efficient basis they reissued the app a few years ago and they didn't sell very many of them because the only people that love them of people like us who wanted for recording right and then the other one ever loud enough the shows the other cool thing about these that I learned from my friend Randy ray Mitchell who is a very prominent studio guitar player and producer here in LA is that these actually do make for good tari amps too legit you can because it's kind of like if you'll surprise yourself because these are all voiced differently right right and if you do a little experimenting you'd be surprised what you the channels extensively are identical voicings right right they respond to them but the reason you have multiple inputs wasn't so four people could play at the same time oh it was so that the app would have multi purposes for sale right right oh I can buy this amp and maybe you know play guitar through a damn bass through it that kind of stuff and I've never experimented with jumping the channels or any of that stuff because generally the application for this is like what we're doing today where I have to show up and happily so to be of service to the song and I and I bring this in a bass with flat well in a bass with round wounds a standard pack like when we were doing exchanging information about the session like what do you think hmm and he said you know flat wounds and round Mountain and check the track out and I tried to track and I don't have enough discernment as a recording artist to go oh that's just di so I always bring an amp just in case yesterday and if Warren would have said to me Oh Paul it's just er we're not going to use the amp you got no problem you just plug in in stark I'll show you start you just keep embracing the creative process and because you have to get a really good bass sound to I'd know I've learned and we had epic bass down here today it was really good this is an old API and I I don't know what you were using the la-2a or whatever but it just it was just a lot of fun for everybody listened to and it was very naked it was just bass piano and drums you're saying was kind of like Elton 11/10 70 and then I want to show you a couple of chill just a couple quickly watt factor basis that I brought that we didn't get to thing on sessions were I always bring I learned this from my dear dear friend Brian McLeod always bring one thing just in case you have a little extra time or for a conversation with your friends like Brian would bring a Stylophone like the first time I saw the style phone show size or the drummer on a session goes hey look what I got no ended up on the track but I tend to bring extra instruments lots of funds well Nicole's right and just in case we have time to experiment or also just for people to go oh that's cool that like that's difficult to talk about it so you want to go in there real good any music to have fun yeah okay so tell us about these beautiful bases here okay these two are brought just incase we were going to go outside the standard P base flat-wound Rama model that isn't most of what I do when I'm called to make a record with somebody oh these are my Telecaster bases that beautiful better boom this one is a 1968 custom order fender telecaster bass very rare it's a heaviest bass I own it's like an old Les Paul well it's pretty heavy and it's pretty heavy and if you notice it's got the nitrocellulose finish to checking it's a 68 this bridge was hand tool by fender for this guy this instrument I got from Ken at true tone because he did an intervention on me I was going to buy a Telecaster but made by a modern person who copies vintage Telecasters and he said no I've got something for you and he went to his storage and godness it its string through so it has a different sound this instrument I use slightly lighter gauge strings on again I had this is a Linda frail and replacement pickup for this because on these versions of the Telecaster basis these were made in 67 68 and 69 with all P bass parts from the early 50s so this body may be an old 50's body before they beveled it maybe not if it's probably made in 68 on the blank you know when they showed it and cut it but let's make telecaster basis and it I don't know the history of its ownership I do know that it was made for someone in Bakersfield ordered by fender because we checked Ken's got enough mojo offender we check the serial number and said yeah it was a natural finished bass made by fender with four these are usually just like a Telecaster guitar two strings per saddle remaining s4 and this is hand tool if you feel it you can see the tooling cuts on it that they go animal they kind of made this forward because they have string through and everything well it's different than a standard a bridge from them so this instrument is really kind of growly you know if I ZZ top instrument basically right with the pickup it matches the output of a standard Fender bass I could Quentin bass or a jazz bass instead of being a lot lower now this instrument was made by a luthier named Manuel Gare and he's a bass player and this is swamp ass you can feel like this is this thing is very distinctive right and very resonant can he made this base and then decided he he got over it and I was like okay it's mine if you want to sell me this is one of my secret weapons I have this on four or five bases well I have it on come many bases in and I also play a lot of piccolo base in the gem world and I have a double-neck base which is a 34 inch scale base and a 30 inch scale base that has darkstar pickups these are made by Fred Hammond they're exact replicas of the guild pickups that were on Starfire bases that Jack Cassidy and Phil Lesh used in San Francisco and also very open from the Allman Brothers put these on his jazz basses so I have a jazz bass with one of these on like a clone of Barry spaces and I've got five other bases that have these pickups on if they're very very loud output very distinctive i'm incredibly robust like wait a minute man what are you playing at it's good completely unlike it Gibson base or Fender bass and this instrument is a very very popular instrument with my friends when I play live they really like the way this kind of fills up because this sound is especially in smaller ensembles like power trios with my band just reputable few since it's just two guitars and bass and drums at this time the guys really like this bass right and so these are sent a snap using the magic Telecaster is it so for you guys out there it's the effector I brought these just in case my dad managed a permit or or or four from Warren or said hey you got something different you know can we my well what do you got I definitely want to hear this now all the bass is the subject sizing eight that I you know there's been an interesting move with guitars people are putting Gretsch pickups in Telecasters and and the guild pickups it's you know we just get used to hearing sounds and then somebody comes along and does something slightly different right the guitarist and rising suns a really really good van the type opera in the UK and europe but they're from America I believe he uses Firebirds with three of those filter tron pictures on it so which is a wonderful exposure but thank you for having me man thanks master piece alright so thanks to pull please as usual go to produce like a pro calm and sign up for the email list subscribe below and thank you ever so much for watching

Channel: Produce Like A Pro

Views: 72,329

Keywords: Paul Ill, Bassist (Profession), warren huart, produce like a pro, home recording, home studio, how to record, Sunset Sound Recorders (Business Operation), Recording Studio (Industry), Bass Guitar (Musical Instrument), music production, Record Producer (Profession)

Id: ocF6S8sMCVU

Length: 15min 21sec (921 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 01 2015