Getting Chris Wolstenholme's bass tone is challenging, since he uses loads of gear, some of it is pretty much un-obtanium. But we can definitely get in the ballpark, and get the vibe he’s going for on some of his most iconic songs with Muse.

His tone has changed throughout the years. He doesn't stick to one tone, it has evolved throughout the Muse discography, and some songs have pretty unique tones. So it would be impossible to cover them all. Having said that, we can do an approximation of his four core tones.

Photo: “Chris Wolstenholme performing at Lollapalooza 2007” by Octavio Ruiz Cervera, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Understanding His Four Gain Stages

A more practical way of looking at it is that he uses four different gain stages. His clean tone, though only used occasionally, is big and full-bodied—kind of what you would get from a DI signal.

Next up is his core overdriven tone. Lots of high-mid bite, a big low end, scooped in the 400Hz region, and overall pretty dirty. But here's a key detail: it has a very healthy amount of clean signal blended in. You can hear this in "Knights of Cydonia" and "Resistance."

The mid-gain sound is heavier in the mids, most likely due to his use of the Animato pedal. This Japanese-made pedal is a bit of a unicorn, very few were made, and if they do come up, they're pretty expensive. The key characteristic is the mid-forward character voice and its unique distortion/gated fuzz drive. You can hear this in "Starlight." Add in a Mutron-style filter, and you get "Plug in Baby."

His high-gain tone is clearly fuzzy in nature. He's been known to use the EHX Big Muff and a Wooly Mammoth by Zvex. You can hear this in "Uprising," "Bliss," and "Supermassive Black Hole" (with some octave added).

Building a Practical Muse-Inspired Pedalboard

We're going to choose some key pedals and put together a Muse-inspired pedalboard for a live setting. We'll choose three drive stages, EQ, and a compressor to glue it all together. The idea is to get in the ballpark without having a spaceship of a pedalboard.

Core Overdriven Bass Tone

Here we'll go with something that has a lot of harmonic content and the ever-so-critical clean blend. Then we need some EQ that can help us cut out some mids in the 400 hz range and emphasize the upper mids.

• Genzler Amplification Crashbox Distortion: This pedal gives you high and low pass filters that let you choose at what frequency the pedal will start distorting your signal.
• Trickfish Minnow: To get that midrange scoop and shape the tone. The Minnow gives you all the control you need in the midrange.
• Alternative: Darkglass Microtubes B3K: This classic Darkglass overdrive will get you in the ballpark with its mid-scooped character and upper-mid focus.

Mid-Gain Tone

The closest we can get in practical terms is the Jam Pedals Lucid Dreamer. Inspired by the Tube Screamer, it delivers the midrange bump we’re after while retaining plenty of low end. It also has a clean blend, which is critical to keeping your low end intact. You can run this into either of the previous gain stages and get pretty close to the Animato tone.

Fuzz Tone

We're going to go with the Jam Pedals Red Muck. The Red Muck is Jam Pedals' interpretation of the classic Big Muff, but made to work really well with bass. It allows you to have plenty of mid presence so it doesn't disappear in a mix, and with the clean blend, you keep your tone punchy.

The Glue: Compression

I would recommend using a compressor towards the end of your signal chain, right before you hit the Trickfish Minnow. For this, we're going to use the Trickfish VCA Compressor because it's super transparent. Aim for just 2-3 dB of compression with a small amount of clean blend to "glue" the clean and effected signals together.

Optional Extras

If you want to throw extra spice in there, you could bring in some sort of filter pedal, which resembles what he uses in "Plug in Baby." Also, in a bunch of the songs, especially the ones with heavy fuzz, you could throw in an octaver to give it that extra synthy kind of feel.

The Bass

Mr. Wolstenholme has used a variety of basses: Pedulla, Jazz basses, and custom-made Manson basses. Since we have such a long signal chain, we would recommend using any bass with an onboard preamp. Having that high-end definition is pretty key to getting his tone.

Supermassive Tones

So there you have it. Even though it will probably be impossible to sound just like Mr. Wolstenholme because of his stadium-sized rig, you can come pretty close. As long as you have a healthy amount of clean signal blended in, these three drive stages, the compressor, and some powerful EQ, you'll get pretty close to the vibe of all these epic Muse tracks.

The speed of Chris Wolstenholme

Chris has some fast hands. His speed on songs like Stockholm Syndrome and Hysteria really define the pulse of these songs.

Nate Navarro did a play along with Tab in the below video on YouTube. Using the Playback Speed in the YT player settings, you can give this song a try at 50 and 75% speed. The bassline is really fun to play and it will likely help your right hand chops :)