marijan_barach's music gear

This is my latest 'Cliff Burton inspired' chain for Aria Pro II SB-600. Aria is an overall great effects platform with a very balanced sound, partly due to the pickup itself and its position in the middle of the body, just slightly closer to the bridge(all the top end and midrange you would expect from a bridge pickup, without being honky, but also some hefty grunt of a neck pickup as well, without being boomy or truly bassy, tonally very simmilar to a 'heavier Stingray') so it has more than one setup.

Classic 80s Pop music tone. My bass of choice for anything Heavy Metal as well.

7ply walnut and maple middle section with ash wings, somewhat rare, Piano Black finish for this particular model, often associated with John Taylor of Duran Duran. Clear gloss 3 ply maple set neck with rosewood fingerboard and 24 frets. MB-II epoxy sealed soapbar pickup, single rotary volume and tone control with a coil tap mini switch. Aria is strung with Rotosound Swing Bass 66 roundwound steel strings. More setups with this bass to follow.

This particular setup is inspired by Cliff's 1984/Ride the Lightning era sounds.

Ibanez TS9 is the same overdrive source he used for his regular, 'rhythm' overdriven sound, featured on virtually every song from a RTL album.

Paired with other two pedals you also get the 'lead tone' as well for his solos; Morley Cliff Burton signature PWF1(I only use the wah side of the pedal, Cliff used Tel-Ray Morley PWB most of the times anyways but even in the early days when he used PWF he never really used the fuzz part) and a Boss CS3(Cliff owned CS1 and CS2). Excellent combo for 'Call of Ktulu' like sounds. Cliff also used couple different Ampeg SVT amps at the time(80s MTI, Curved Line and Blue Line) so my amp is quite fitting for that particular version of his sound as well. While he used this setup with Rickenbacker at the time, he kept using at least the TS9 and Morley with his custom Aria SB-1000 well into 1985(if not later as well, but there is insufficient data to confirm it just yet), so it is not a bad combo still. Worth mentioning is his passive Aria Elite 1 Black N Gold features the same pickup type and controls as those found in my bass.

Oftentimes I use this chain with some delay pedal but I've yet to find one which complements the sound the most, so none is included in the diagram here. Cliff used Washburn AAD9 and later used delay from his rack processor HD1500. I might also add a Boss BF-3 Flanger from time to time for Orion intro inspired by Trujillo live renditions. One more thing is the Pitch Shifter which I seldom use but will throw onto this sometimes to get those crazy sounds he sometimes displayed live during solos in late 84(in his case again from the HD1500 unit).

I've had many different Cliff tone setups over the years. Most can be heared on my rather poor YouTube profile but currently I've been enjoying this one for a change and will probably use it for a while.