Hola hermano bajista! You're the one that posted a video of you playing Sharpen Your Mind Tools...? Very good I thought, not exact...haha, but well played man. Nice attention to the slides that give the fretless it's character in that song.
Anyway, I didn't use any effects at all on either album by Vintersorg. On my first one, Spiral Generator... I played the green ESP and straight in to the Ampeg and some direct signal. I think we abandoned my usual chorus pedal I use because the singular sound without chorus was more "fretlessy". On the song Spegelsfären there is a little part where it was a bassline for an acoustic guitar section that turned into a type of bass solo. On this section there is some liberal use of reverb, so that is about the extent of effects you hear. But all the rest is just really dry, but sweet natural tone and feel.
On Focusing Blur, I played the brown Carvin. I traveled to Norway to record this one, so I brought no pedals at all, and we used no effects in the studio again. We carried some borrowed amp they got for me in Oslo, poor Mr.V's arms on the walk to the train station! The amp wasn't the perfect sound so we used more the preamp and an amp simulator plugin. And again we decided together to not use any chorus to get that really smeary fretless voice. In fact on that song Mind Tools it is the most dry and passive sound I could find to highlight the wood of the bass, it is still to this day my favorite tone I have achieved on a recording. The harmonics on the other songs are totally natural, maybe boosted up a bit because they don't come out as loud as when I'm pounding away on the other stuff. Different bass, but again just natural sound of the strings on the neck and the luxury of having permission to let the creativity flow full force.
I thank you for your compliments about those being my best performances, I can pretty much agree. The music was totally inspiring and I was encouraged to make the most interesting and innovative bass lines I could find. In those conditions who wouldn't perform their ass off? Mr.V was a pleasure to work with and is an above and beyond musician and composer.
SDG
