hi it's Geoff here from discoverdoublebass.com i am joined by one of our incredible
tutors who's presented an in-depth course on slap bass technique over at the website so if
you want to learn uh all about slap bass from the basics to advanced playing please go and check out
our course by today's guest it's Joe Fick Joe welcome hey Geoff okay we need to talk
about your bass that's what you pulled this out of the bag and i was like what's going on
what's going on with this bass and we get so many questions about equipment and setup so
what we'll do today if you're cool with this it's also about you know the strings the setup how you
approach playing live sure first of all let's just start with the bass like what is this from about
you know 1812 or something it looks like it's been close close uh 2004 right so this is a
new bass yeah you've been playing this hard yes i brought it brand new and 04 which yeah or actually
i got it in 03 it's an 04 so i guess they're like they're like cars they come out the year before
yeah and uh when i bought it it was or when it came came out of the box it was pretty much just
white like this color right here okay didn't have a scratch on it the fingerboard was perfect
and uh have you got any scratches on it now oh just uh there's one little one down here yeah
so and what kind of so what's the manufacturer of Joe where's the uh who made it hard so yeah it's
an Engelhardt swing master just a just a plywood bass and i've had several of these over the last
25 years and i finally decided to settle down with one yeah so what what drew you to this particular
one why did you think because you play you know we talk about basses you play loads of bases and
what right why this one um you know i think i i just decided to hold on to this and after a
while it kind of became sentimental and um i i i've lived i lived in Memphis for 11 years
and i've lived in Nashville for 11 years and about the last five or six years of living in Memphis
and then when i came to Nashville this was the bass and and the longer the longer it went on
and it and it you know it stayed together and and it was just every everything i was
every gig I played was on this bass and the longer i had it i was like well maybe I better take care
of this thing you know obviously this is uh this is here to stay and uh so really i everything that
i've kind of learned in the last 15 years about slap bass and country bass and rockabilly bass
uh is is because of this instrument right here so um for better or worse i'm i'm holding on
to her oh it's awesome can we hear a few notes so we can check out what it sounds like yeah
so i will warn you before i play this that it's got a double sound post in it and that's to
fight feedback so it's not the most resonant bass acoustically but it does the job and um especially
in a live situation where i have to get it up super loud it's it's pretty feedback resistant so
yeah it sounds amazing it really does and also you you just mentioned really offhand i asked
you about a mark on it you said oh there's a mark where we rub our boots on yes i've been meaning to
ask you a week what we what are you talking about oh it's it's this right here yeah we sometimes
just jokingly for good luck we'll do we'll do this whole thing and it's you know when we're trying to
a lot of the gigs that we play down on broadway are four hours with no breaks
matter of fact they're all four hours so you and the boys get together
yeah and we'll just you know what sometimes the sometimes the spirits are a little bit down or
you know even we're about two hours and we're like come on guys let's get it together and i'll
just do this and the other guy will come over and do this and well you know so it's it's just
to keep the momentum going and then obviously you've been wearing a patch through where you
do you think you're ever gonna see daylight on the other side well i'll let you know
it feels pretty solid right now but uh i mean it's we're only we're only 18 years in on this
thing so it's absolutely awesome what about the bat oh hang on a sec you've got to show us this uh
crack the c bout yeah look at this oh yeah this is like the c bouts busted i broke i
fell through that back in 09 and i'm meant to have it fixed but i've just gotten so busy though
you know i've got a recommendation from you our friend Randy Hunt is just around the corner
he's a great luthier and that's great Randy Hunt is the last the last gentleman to touch
this fingerboard about eight years ago i had it planed i've only had this plane one time
yeah so uh i'm embarrassed to say that but at the same time um you know it's i guess it's part of my
sound so yeah well it's an awesome instrument and okay so slap bass one of the key things
sound wise the sound wall it's really about the gut strings isn't it and like so do you have to
have gut strings for slap bass no you don't uh and i think some people would actually argue
that that you don't have to have gut strings some some players are very actually adamant on steel
strings yeah and um a lot of uh there's a lot of opinions about gut and about um intonation
pitch and all that yeah um for me it's kind of an old habits die hard kind of thing i
made the transition from uh guts or from steel strings rather to gut strings in 1998
okay and um i touched we touched a little bit about this on the course uh where we talk about
the the articulations of some of the slaps coming out clearly and one thing i noticed
when i made that transition from steel to gut was how much more things like the drag triplet
how much more you could hear that and just the little things the quadruplets
you know and these might be small things to some people but to me it's it's a big part of
my playing and so having that gut string having the strings that are a little more low tension to me
uh is uh it's it's a big part of it for me so and i like the tone of it i just i mean that's
this is the sound of this is Bob Moore you know this is the sound of Bill Black and all those
all those players from back in the day but you but you've got a double sound post so
yes uh with a double sound post to deaden the sound yeah you don't have to put a towel down
there or anything like this right and then the gut strings give you that thwack and that kind of
attack that you want yeah comfortable on the hands i think so yeah i mean compared to yeah definitely
compared to uh to steel strings yeah i mean i have it plus you know i play every day and that's the
key yeah that's really the key to this this kind of technique is not laying off of it you know you
have to you have to really put in the time um and i mean i'm putting in at least three and a half
hours a day on stage yeah and that doesn't even take into consideration what i'm doing at home so
in order to keep those calluses and and all that and i mean even if you even if you have gut
strings you don't play all the time you're still gonna get blisters so it's not really a matter of
of you know guts versus steel it's just more about the amount of time you put into it and what about
the tuning do you have any issues and so i mean your tuning sounds great i mean i haven't noticed
you're having to tune up much as well well it's pretty stable what's your experience yeah you
know i was telling you the other day i just put a brand new brand new g on here yeah for the for the
course i would have expected that to be slipping like crazy well you know what i do and this is
kind of i've learned over the years um is i i basically put the string on get it up to pitch and
then seriously if you just get really aggressive with it yeah and just tug on it for 10-15 minutes
and just keep tuning it keep tuning it you'll you'll get it stretched a lot a lot of guys say
oh it takes a couple weeks and i'm like man you just got to get in there and dig in and really
because within a couple days i can get this thing to pretty pretty much stay to pitch
absolutely that's amazing you don't find over the longer gigs because i always think that
that's one of the reasons why people move to steals is because the you know the guts losing
their you know losing their pitch but well i mean let's face it gut strings have their issues
and and that's you know i've been fortunate enough for the last 10 years to pretty much
every gig i play as indoor when i lived in Memphis i was playing a lot of festivals rooftop parties
and i mean the humidity down there is crazy i mean it is here in Nashville as well but you
know the strings start to fall apart and and uh you know the price of these and replacing them so
it's definitely there are definitely some issues yeah where'd you get the i mean you've got just
pure guts there you don't even they're not even wrapped are they on the e maybe right so so my
ideal set is is three so three in one set so it's a plain g plain d plain a yeah and then i like the
i like the uh the wrap d now i have i've had a plain gut e before but it's just like ...
it sounds like someone knocking on a door there's there's nothing to it yeah and and with the a i
get away with it because like i said like 99 percent of what i do is a live situation with an amp
and so i'm getting like sustained just through volume of the amp so you're playing at Robert's
Western World right and that's a that's a serious gig you are pumping out the music it's loud
you have any problems with feedback or anything i mean there's always going to be problems with
feedback yeah and i mean i i get creative with with left-hand muting and i mean anybody that
says they don't have problems with feedback is just probably not playing super loud you know
i mean we are really pushing it down there i mean this is this is a long shotgun style building
with a balcony and we're trying to we're trying to communicate with the last person in the room and
the only way to do that really is to not play loud all the time but you do have to be dynamic and so
at times we're very loud and so you know yeah there's there's going to be feedback issues but
um you know i've got it down to where i know exactly how to mute i know how to creatively do
things with my left hand than i need to and also i got the amp kind of dialed into how i need it so
so what kind of pickups and amps are you using to amplify yourself then okay so this is uh this is
cool this is uh this is a barbera pickup made by a guy named Rich Barbera out of Staten Island New
York now it um i think it's loosely based upon the Wilson pickup that was so that's your tuner
in your hand though yeah that's my tuner yeah yeah yeah ignore that yeah and then it's actually built
into the bridge isn't it yes yeah yes so this is there's a graft underneath here yeah and it it
it's uh you can't remove it you'd have to actually send this back to him to do it but you trace your
bridge yeah the top of your bridge he builds you a new top you keep your feet and then inside the
bridge is two pickups per string and so you get to side to side motion if you bow and then you get
obviously the other pizzicato and what's what i like about it um you can't tell now because i'm
not plugged in but what i like about it is it's super even so you know where sometimes with other
pickups you'll hit like a this and you might get a blend of c and c sharp at the same time
or or just be a real woofy kind of tone this is literally any note you hit anywhere on the board
is really even and um it's pretty feedback resistant i mean obviously nothing is going
to be ultimately feedback resistant but i i kind of equate it to like a uh a
underwood pickup on steroids cool it's just a really just a really loud pickup and do you
have any amp preferences when you're on your gigs well i i've really kind of been anti-gear
over the last 10 years i settled in on a on a peavey pro 500 and a peavey 410 cabinet that i bought
i bought all of it from Dave Rowe actually yeah and uh when Dave Rowe was kind of on his way out
of Roberts i was kind of on my way in he said hey man do you want to buy this cabinet from me
i said okay so i'm literally 10 years later i'm still using that 410 cabinet that's got
he actually changed out the speakers to from 8 ohm to 4 ohms so it's got a little extra
turbo in there it's just a 300 watt amp and it's really powerful it's got a really cool sound and
what i like about it at this pickup with that amp is that you don't need a separate pickup
to go under the fingerboard to pick up the slap now a lot of guys would argue that it would say
oh no you absolutely have to have that pickup underneath but i'm telling you that my my amp
like i'm just able to dial it in with the treble and it comes out clearly and you can hear all the
little articulations and it's really great so that's amazing well Joe just before we finish off
what about people at home we've just got like myself who are interested in learning slap bass
but they don't have like this gut string setup yeah and apply can you do it on any instrument
i think so i mean i started on steel strings and i played steel strings for five years um there's
a lot of affordable strings out there there's there's nylon strings there's super nil strings
there's roto sound strings and these are strings you can get a whole set underneath under 100 dollars
you know i mean guts are expensive the other thing I recommend too is if you are going to get gut you
can always do a mixing and matching you can always just get two the g and the d if you can't afford a
full set you can keep your a and e uh steel maybe your spirocores if you have those and you can put
a g and d plain gut on there and you kind of get the best of both worlds so what are you getting
the strings on your bass from what brand are they uh okay so i'm not too picky about the brand i
usually get them from the string emporium uh and if they're out uh i call lemur [music] and if they're out
uh maybe hammond ashley out of Seattle but uh uh i usually just try to order maybe one or two at a
time as I need them i they can get pretty pricey the full sets are getting up into the threes now
so so you're just saying some any kind of playing gut you just want something i think so i i
somebody told me years ago that that they're actually all made at the same place and they
just put different brand names on it but i don't know if that's true or not who knows yeah
that's so cool to hear i'm trying to think if there's any other little questions i had about
gear oh the last one that i knew people would want to know in terms of setup yes it's quite
it doesn't look too high to me you know how how how's it looking in terms of the string heights
so that's a good question because i never i i am not one of those guys that goes by measurement
and yeah i have an adjustable bridge but i can't even tell you the last time i probably
even adjusted it for me it's it's it's a it's the matter of being able to get your fingers
obviously comfortably underneath the string uh but not having to work super hard at it okay
and the way you're gonna know this is when you get doing some of these more complex things like
or you know if those articulations aren't coming out
and if you're really struggling to get that and and it's just too much work then obviously
you're too high okay if you're slipping out then it's too low so i i can't tell i can't
tell anybody what height to put it at because i don't even know for myself but what i know that
basically it's definitely a personal preference so comfort comfort is really is is the ultimate key
for me yeah that's awesome well Joe thank you so much for joining me it's been so exciting to learn
all about this incredible like style that you take so far there's so much to it and you do it with
such artistry and care and thanks the lessons are incredible that you've presented so if you
want to learn all about Joe's course please go and check that out and joe's been working
really hard but i'm going to ask him to work even harder i'm just going to put it on the spot and
see if you could play us out with just a couple of moments of music go on Joe take it away you got it
all right thank you Joe thank you