A pair of David Ellefson interview videos have simultaneously appeared online, which is of key interest to those of you who are fans of Megadeth or bass or perhaps bass in Megadeth.
This first of the pair is Sweetwater’s interview with David and Anthrax’s Frank Bello, who have been BFFs since the Metal Masters Clinics and their Altitudes and Attitude project. It’s actually more informative than I’d expect from a video sponsored by a sales website. For example David likes 35″ scale basses but finds they don’t sound right with with Megadeth. He also finds the intro to “Peace Sells..” isn’t the easiest to play on every bass. And most notably, he doesn’t like the tone of Ampeg SVTs. Blasphemy! Unless he means the solid state ones. Then I can let it slide.
And for the other piece of Dave bread on the video sandwich, another episode of Metalhead to Head is online, also featuring Kings X’s Dug Pinnick, which has a charming interplay of “you’re in a metal band but I just like to groove.” Again I can’t get Fuse’s videos to embed, but I’ll forgive you for leaving the comfortable womb of gear gods and heading to their website to check it out.
Veldar / April 11, 2014 6:15 pm
I’m not a fan of SVTs, there pretty overrated.
/
dump wagon / April 11, 2014 6:48 pm
SVT’s are like Marshalls for bass. They’re everywhere, and just about any idiot can plug into one and dial in a half-decent tone pretty quickly. But the ubiquity basically makes them the “generic” bass tone.
/
Veldar / April 11, 2014 9:20 pm
Hence why I have a preamp on my pedal board to send to the PA.
/
Chris Alfano / April 11, 2014 9:48 pm
The thing though is that SVT covers such a wide swatch of amps. A solid-state SVT-4 sounds pretty different from an SVT-3, very different than an SVT-8, completely different than a tube SVT-2 or SVT-Classic, and nothing like a ’70s SVT or Reissue.
/
dump wagon / April 14, 2014 1:07 pm
I don’t know if I’d say “very different”, they’re all different but you can generally tell they’re “related”. Marshalls cover a lot of ground, too, but aside from the Valvestates and MG’s, they generally have a few characteristics that mark them as Marshalls. SVT’s are similar in that regard, there’s a family resemblance.
/