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How to get “Stoner Rock” bass tone

On the heavier, grittier side of bass tone is stoner rock. Definitely not a mainstream rock sound, not exactly grunge, not exactly heavy metal, not exactly blues… it’s just a decidedly “dark” hard driving sound. Stoner rock isn’t necessarily slow or fast tempo and it goes all over the place.

Early stoner tone

Some say the first stoner tone was from Black Sabbath. Others say it was Pink Floyd. Who was the first? Doesn’t matter, because they’re both great. But for this example, I’m using Pink Floyd’s One of These Days from Live at Pompeii.

This stoner tone is total Fender all the way through. To get it, just crank your bass knobs up to 10, use a pick, add some light drive (this pedal is a good choice) and you’ve basically got it.

1990s stoner tone version 1

In the 90s, grunge was king for a while. However, there were a few popular songs that slipped through the cracks that weren’t grunge but rather stoner-sounding. Rusty Cage by Soundgarden is one of them:

“That sounds Geezer-like…”

Yes, it does, but the difference is a more “thuddy” tone to it. Fingers are used here, and that used in combination with compression and drive get that 90s stoner sound.

1990s stoner tone version 2

One word described this: Fuzz. And one of the better examples of this is Fu Manchu’s The Falcon Has Landed:

Fuzz up with this, rock out, play slow.

Modern stoner tone

The modern stoner sound is tuned lower and cleaned up a bit; it’s basically like early ‘Floyd and ‘Sabbath with lower notes used – and that’s a good thing.

A great example of modern stoner tone is Down the Odyssey by Palm Desert:

The modern stoner sound uses the least amount of drive, mainly to let the lower notes be heard better. Basically what that means is to use the same rig you would for early stoner tone and just dial back the drive. Pick or fingers can be used.

Were there any variations of stoner tone I missed? I probably did. Probably missed a lot of them, but I have limited space here. 🙂 Feel free to post a comment or two on what you think “true stoner tone” is.

12 thoughts on “How to get “Stoner Rock” bass tone”

  1. Also: “One of These Days” was developed around an ostinato bassline created by Roger Waters, by feeding the output through a Binson Echorec. The bass line was performed by Waters and David Gilmour using two bass guitars, one on old strings.” Wikipedia

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  2. Dead Meadow:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTXf0Rtp98s

    Sleep:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-FjO3E8K-E

    Mammatus:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cpjxLcLULA

    A good fuzz box (Fender Sub Lime, Black Arts Tone Works Pharaoh Fuzz, etc.) and a wah or envelope filter if you’re keen on mixing it up a little. The biggest thing is knowing your bass and rig so that you can achieve the proper amount of drive so that the tone still maintains its natural characteristics and doesn’t turn into an over driven distorted mess like what you might find in some of the more unusable ranges of certain stomp boxes.

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