Looking for Punk Bass tone like NOFX/Fat Mike

  • The only thing I pluck with fingers are booger in my noose. I tried with fingers on bass but nah. So much easier with a pick. But maybe I should try with a softer pick for bass and not use jazz III I use for guitars.

    Think for yourself, or others will think for you wihout thinking of you

    Henry David Thoreau

  • I'm looking for a bass rig with a sound like Skate Punk bassists:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-8skzQCH0c

    Any recommendations?

    I believe he uses a mesa boogie head (I would literally not even know that mesa boogie makes bass amp heads if it wasn't for him. I don't think I've ever seen/heard anyone else play through one) through an ampeg cab. It's just the typical SVT 8x10. I can get pretty much the same tone through the UAD SVT-3 Pro amp sim or the SVT-CL profiles from Rock Profiles. Specifically, it's the profile called "RP SVT-CL ULT LH3 T2".

    OK, so... let me preface this by saying that I appreciate everyone who has taken the time to profile their amps and provide them for free or for sale. But that one specific profile is the only bass profile of an SVT (any model) that sounds passable to me. I have tried well over 100 profiles over the last 4 years. I have spent at least $50 on bass profiles. I can't dial in anything that sounds acceptable to my ears on any SVT profiles except for that one in particular. I am probably bat shit crazy and hella rigid, so take this for what it's worth. I do have a few orange profiles that I think sound great. And I have some B15 profiles that I think are amazing. But out of the 100+ SVT profiles that I have, this is the only one that I can actually use. And it can get you pretty close to that 90s punk sound that I heard as a kid and made me go, "oh shit! bass is like super important! That sounds pretty rad!"


    Even then, it's about 50/50.... I mostly use my kemper for home studio stuff. I always just record a DI track of my bass. Then, I print that track twice: once through the kemper, and once with the UAD amp sim that I mentioned. About half the time, the amp sim wins. That's just how it goes with bass, tbh. I would never use a guitar amp sim ever again, but bass amp sims still sound really good compared to a kemper profile.


    The pick is pretty much mandatory. You already have that covered. But here's the thing.... this is pretty crucial.... Fat Mike's sound has a lot to do with the strumming pattern that he frequently uses. He almost always starts each measure with an upstroke. Give it a shot. The first time I tried it like 20 years ago, my teenage mind was blown away.