1. William Sheehan was born on March 19,1953 and is an American musician known for playing bass guitar with acts such as Talas, Steve Vai, David Lee Roth, Mr Big, Niacin, and The Winery Dogs.
10 Facts About Billy Sheehan
1. 2.
Billy Sheehan is known for his "lead bass" playing style, including the use of chording, two-handed tapping, "three-finger picking" technique and controlled feedback.
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Billy Sheehan has been voted "Best Rock Bass Player" five times in Guitar Player readers' polls.
4.
Billy Sheehan's first electric bass was a Hagstrom FB, which was joined by a Precision bass.
5.
The neck pickup was added for what Billy Sheehan referred to as "super deep low end" modelled after Paul Samwell-Smith of the Yardbirds and Mel Schacher of Grand Funk Railroad.
6.
Billy Sheehan uses two amps to achieve his signature tone, one with full distortion and high pass filtering to sound more guitar-like, and one super-clean for the low end of the neck pickup.
7.
Talas did briefly continue on under Phil Naro sans Billy Sheehan, enlisting Jimmy DeGrasso on drums, Al Pitrelli on guitar, Bruno Ravel on bass and Gary Bivona on keyboards but by this time Talas was dead and Ravel formed Danger Danger.
8.
In 1996, Billy Sheehan formed the jazz fusion band Niacin with drummer Dennis Chambers and keyboardist John Novello.
9.
Billy Sheehan toured with PSMS, an instrumental supergroup, in the second half of 2012.
10.
Billy Sheehan has been an active member of the Church of Scientology since 1971, having converted from Catholicism.