Have always been interested in the bass playing of Michael De Albuquerque...anybody else?

[Ivan May]

The first bassist for Electric Light Orchestra, Michael De Albuquerque played bass for ELO from 1972 to January 1975. His bass playing on tracks such as Ocean Breakup, Roll Over Beethoven and Showdown, for me, are some of his best examples. 

 

So I have been listening to ELO, and came upon this clip of Michael playing a Fender Jazz Bass:

 

 

 

 

Does anyone know what basses he used in ELO? I would have to guess it was a Fender Jazz and a EB-3 through some sort of Hiwatt amp. De Albuquerque eventually left ELO in 1974 during the recording of Eldorado, and was replaced by Kelly Groucutt, who, like De Albuqerque, was an excellent bassist and a huge part of ELO.

I also seem to remember Jeff Lynne played bass on most of the Eldorado album.

 

But if anyone has info please let me know.

[KuruPrionz]

While you may be able to ace Trivia questions by knowing who played what baas when, the cold, hard fact is that it does not matter in the slightest. 

 

The most important thing is "who is playing the bass?" You could duplicate every equipment related aspect of another bassist's signal chain and you will still sound like you, whille they will still sound like them. Beyond that, there are many things that affect the way a bass sounds on a recording. 

 

While one may not be able to make an  EB-3 sound exactly like a Jazz Bass, with round would strings and playing with a pick near the bridge one could get very close.

Making a Jazz Bass sound like an EB-3? Put flatwounds on it and play with your fingers up near the neck, more than close enough on a recording. 

 

Is the bass mic'ed up through an amp, running DI or both? If an amp, which amp, which speaker, which cabinet, which mic, mic placement, all of these things matter to a large degree.

If DI, which one? Passive, active, any built in features (like the Tech 21 Bass Driver DI or Para Driver?) 

 

This might be interesting:  https://www.talkbass.com/threads/sansamp-bass-driver-vs-para-driver.252178/

 

This is to say nothing of the audio signal processing that may have been used when recording and/or mixing. EQ  and compression/limiting can transform a tone. 

 

While details may be important to you for their own sake and that's fine, be aware that "brand phobia" of any sort is generally pointless. Choose what you like and get back to playing music, that's where the differences are notable. 

 

As an example, John Entwhistle played a variety of basses over time during his illustrious career as the bassist for The Who. That's a vintage Danelectro bass on My Generation, porbably Jazz Bass on the Who Sells Out album and later cuts are most likely custom built Alembic basses. The tones are different but so are the studios, engineers, mixers, etc. 

All of them sound just like John Entwhistle. 

[KuruPrionz]

I will add that Paul McCartney played a Hofner short scale hollow body bass and also later on he sometimes used a Rickenbacker long scale solid body bass. 

Those two basses could not be more different, the bassist and the producer (George Martin) were the same throughout most of the Beatles recording career. 

 

Can you tell with absolute certainty which bass is which, just by listening? 

 

I'm certain that somebody has attempted to catalog all the details of how the Beatles sounded like the Beatles but I haven't heard any records recorded by other bands that sounded just lke the Beatles - because they were the Beatles and nobody else was.