“I’ve told people, ‘If you let anyone know what you’ve done to my ‘board, I’m coming back!’”: Why Tim Commerford calls himself the “Pablo Escobar of bass”
He could tell you his pedalboard secrets, but then he would have to kill you. We’re talking about Tim Commerford, the iconic Rage Against The Machine bassist, who’s as obsessed with keeping his rig under wraps as he is with perfecting it.
“I’m like the Pablo Escobar of bass,” Commerford jokes in a new interview with Bass Player. “If a dude works on my pedalboard, it’s almost like I have to kill him after he’s done. I don’t, but a few times I’ve told people, ‘If you let anyone know what you’ve done to my ‘board, I’m coming back!’”
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Commerford’s journey on developing his signature sound started early, beginning with a Marshall Guv’nor pedal to add distortion to his basslines. Over the years, he has refined his approach, though his setup remains a closely guarded secret.
“My setup is my shit,” he says “I spent 10 years getting it to be the way it is, and for me to just break it down and tell everyone exactly what I’ve done, is just blowing it.”
Despite his secrecy, Commerford did reveal a few key components of his rig. It all begins with pickups — his go-to bass for years a BEAD-tuned Fender Jazz with an ash body, maple Precision neck, and Leo Quann Badass bridge.
“I smashed that bass on MTV and I regret it to this day. It had these ‘70s Jazz pickups I got in England. When I’m on tour I’ll go to all these luthier shops and look for Jazz pickups.”
The musician explains that he’d wind those pickups by hand to achieve more sustain and feedback.
“You have to take your time and slowly stack the wires. It’s not the kind of thing you can do in one day; it took me about two weeks,” he says, likening the process to winding the winch on his four-wheel-drive truck: “You don’t want to just hit the rewind button and let it stack up wherever it wants. You want it to stack perfectly so it almost looks brand-new.”
“I don’t look for the cleanest sound. I like that edgy, dirty tone. If you use different wire on your pickups, you’ll absolutely get a different sound.”
To create his sound, Commerford employs a three-rig setup: one amp and cabinet for clean sound, one for a moderate overdrive, and one for full distortion. The clean rig is always on, while the other layers of distortion are activated via a custom pedalboard switching system.
“You can try to figure it out, but there’s no way you ever will. I even have cords on my shit that don’t do anything,” the bassist teases.
His distortion philosophy is equally particular: “I always shoot for distortion that sounds like a saw blade without a lot of teeth. It’s not like a guitar distortion that goes sshhhhh; it’s more like a gritty a-a-a-gghhh! As of late, though, l’ve been getting more of my distortion by turning up the amp gain and the master volume. That’s the best distortion.”
As for his ultimate secret weapon? A custom distortion box based on a pedal he built from parts of an old wah pedal. “My distortion comes before everything else,” says Commerford. “If you have a good distortion box, then all the other pedals work great.”
The post “I’ve told people, ‘If you let anyone know what you’ve done to my ‘board, I’m coming back!’”: Why Tim Commerford calls himself the “Pablo Escobar of bass” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
