If you can get past the scary masks in the background, this is one of the better renditions of With a Little Help From My Friends by, of course, The Beatles. The tone is about as close to the original studio sound as you can get.
From a glance (and the fact you hear no string drag), it would appear that yes, the bass does have flatwounds on it.
Check out the video to see and hear for yourself:
Terrific tone and playing! Although my Höfner is not my primary bass, I truly love it! I like the combination of flatwounds, palm muting and a pick to get a McCartney-type bass tone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UA9DVTfD8vE&hd=1
Yepper. This sounds Hofner-ish.
My takeaway? That dude has a LOT of masks.
Great sound, what kind of amp and settings ?
Excellent refreshishing to see good timing melodic simplicity Mcartney was a master at melodic playing great tone too, pay attention all you guys who think slapping at a 90 mph is great playing not 1 of you can play like that.
Beautiful. Love flats……..
Amy Winehouse’s bassist played a Beatle bass, that sounded great, but this one sounds more like the original. Nice playing too.
I think that i remember reading somewhere that mccartney used tape wound flats on his bass. i believe he started using them on the abby road record.
Proving conclusively that while folks like Jaco and Claypool have certainly made their marks as bass innovators; Sir Paul was the ORIGINAL bass composition genius.
Excellent playing & super Hofner tone-
i play ( among others) a deluxe fretless with rotosound tru bass strings through an ampeg. the violin bass has as close to an upright sound as you will ever hear. but seriously…sir paul in the same sentence with jaco pastorius??? mccartney would be honored
Sounds like a Hofner to me. But with real respect, it doesn’t sound like a string bass.
anyone able to tell how the bass sound is processed. It sounds great is it compressed with reverb added?
Kinda close to the Paul tone – but certainly not the playing. Paul was a master of the smoothness of the groove – and certainly not choppy like this example! It is in his technique – he generally did not play with fingers like this (the ‘traditional’ electric bass way). Paul uses either a pick or his thumb and index finger – with the thumb doing most of those classic downbeat pulse riffs like in this particular song. It ain’t the equipment that will make you sound like John, Paul, George or Ringo – or any other fav musician for that matter. Originality is ALL in the feel and the technique.
I thought he played his Rickenbacker on this track. But then, I could be wrong…..