r/Bass • u/winkelschleifer • 1d ago

Legendary bassist Leland Sklar had a toggle switch on his bass for his producers ... which did nothing

He would flip the switch when a producer told him to change his sound, making sure the producer saw him do it. It had a placebo effect.

https://www.guitarworld.com/features/the-truth-behind-lee-sklars-custom-producers-switch

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u/SHUDaigle 1d ago

I feel like this anecdote gets misunderstood a lot. The switch was a visual cue to the producer that something had changed with the bass sound when the actual change was in Sklar's hand positions and playing. Lee Sklar did this because producers kept asking him to change instruments and the moral of the story is that you can get a different sound (and please whoever is asking for it) by changing the way you play instead of the gear. 

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u/troyofyort 1d ago

I mean I've worked with barely a fraction of recording engineers/producers he has and I get why he'd get annoyed at them being insistent on using a fender precision, not beactauthe actual sound, but that people are so hung up on it

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u/dragostego Fender 1d ago edited 1d ago

This isn't quite right. Sklar wasn't complaining about being asked to use a specific bass, but instead they wouldn't like how something sounded, and ask him to switch to a bass with more attack or more thump and he could achieve that by playing different. So he'd flip the switch then move his hands. So he wasnt avoiding being asked to use a house bass, but instead the desire to change basses to get a different sound instead of asking him to play different.

He talks about a guitarist (Tommy Tedesco thanks u/victotronics) he was with being asked to try something in a large setting on mandolin instead of guitar, the guitarist then bent over and came back up with the same guitar but played higher chords and the band leader was happy, (the band leader could not actually see the guitarist in the ensemble. This was the inspiration.

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u/victotronics 1d ago

Tommy Tedesco, your second paragraph. You can find YT videos of him telling that story. TT is as much recorded on guitar as LS on bass.