The John Myung bass sound is built on a decision most rock bassists never make: he stopped playing four strings. From the mid-1990s onwards almost everything he has recorded with Dream Theater has been played on a six-string instrument, and two manufacturers have built signature models to his specification. Here is the sequence, with the records each instrument belongs to.

The four-string years

The early instruments were conventional. A modified Music Man StingRay and a Fender Jazz Bass cover the debut album and the first tours; a Spector NS-2 four-string is the instrument of Images and Words (1992), the record that made the band. That is worth holding on to, because the bass tone most listeners associate with Dream Theater’s breakthrough was not made on the kind of instrument he later became identified with.

The move to six

He changed over for the touring that followed, playing several high-end Tobias “Basic” six-strings – visible in the Images and Words video material and heard on the live Live at the Marquee – and then Tobias Wingbass II variants around the Awake (1994) period. Yamaha TRB six-strings and John Patitucci models were also working instruments in that stretch.

The reason a six-string suits this band is structural rather than a matter of showing off. Two strings are added, one below the standard range and one above, and it is the high one that does most of the work: it lets the bass state a line in the same register as the guitar and the keyboards, in unison, without either dropping an octave. The unison passages that define Dream Theater’s writing are a good deal easier to play – and to play cleanly – on an instrument that reaches that far up.

The signature models

Three instruments have been built for him. The Yamaha RBX6JM arrived in 1997: a 35-inch scale six-string with an alder body and a flame maple top. The longer scale is the notable specification – the extra inch of string length raises tension, which keeps a low string from going slack, and on a six-string that is the difference between a usable bottom end and a rumble. The Yamaha RBX-JM2 followed from 2002, on a conventional 34-inch scale with an updated design.

From 2007 he moved to the Music Man Bongo 6, initially with prototypes that put a five-string neck against six-string body spacing – a narrower fingerboard than a six normally has, which is a personal adjustment rather than a general improvement. Ernie Ball Music Man released a John Myung signature Bongo in 2020.

The Chapman Stick

He has also used a twelve-string Grand Chapman Stick, on material from Falling into Infinity (1997), and has continued to bring it to sessions. It is a genuinely different instrument rather than a variation on the bass – played by tapping with both hands, tuned so that the two halves run outwards from the centre – and it is explained in my piece on the Chapman Stick. Its appearance in a band of this kind is the same impulse as the six-string: reach for the instrument that covers two parts rather than overdub a second player.

The rig

His amplification as of 2019 was built around an Ashdown ABM 600 EVO IV with a chain of preamps and processors. Beyond that headline the documentation thins quickly. Bass rigs of this complexity change between tours and are rarely published in full by anyone who was in the room, so the detailed signal-chain diagrams that circulate for players at this level should be read as enthusiast reconstructions rather than specification.

The instrument and the part

There is a long-running argument among listeners about how audible the bass is on Dream Theater records, and the equipment is part of the answer. A six-string bass playing unison lines with a guitar in the same register is, by definition, competing for the same frequency space, and in a dense mix one of the two has to give way. Choosing an instrument that can double the guitar exactly is a compositional decision with a mixing consequence attached. Whether it was the right trade is a matter of taste; that it is a trade, and a deliberate one, is not.

For the playing itself rather than the hardware, there is my piece on John Myung’s bass solos.

Where to hear each phase

The four-string Spector: Images and Words (1992), still the cleanest record of the band before the register problem set in. The Tobias six-strings: Awake (1994) and the live material of that period. The Chapman Stick: Falling into Infinity (1997). The Yamaha signature era: the albums from the late 1990s onwards. The Bongo 6: everything from 2007, including The Astonishing (2016) and A View from the Top of the World (2021).

Go deeper

The full instrument survey is in the guide to prog rock gear, and the players are covered in the best bass solos in prog rock. For the band, start with the best Dream Theater albums, and for the argument about its two eras there is the Portnoy era against the Mangini era. The story of North American progressive rock and metal, Dream Theater included, is the subject of Beyond the Atlantic, the fourth book in my Beyond the Sound series.

Want the full story behind Dream Theater and the American scene? The books map every era →

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