William "Billy" Sheehan (born March 19, 1953), is an American bassist known for his work with Talas, Steve Vai, David Lee Roth, Mr. Big, Niacin, and The Winery Dogs. Sheehan has won the "Best Rock Bass Player" readers\' poll from Guitar Player magazine five times for his "lead bass" playing style. Sheehan\'s repertoire includes the use of chording, two-handed tapping, right-hand "three-finger picking" technique and controlled feedback.\n', '

Billy Sheehan\'s first electric bass was a Hagström FB[lw 1], which was soon joined by a Precision bass similar to Tim Bogert\'s. After acquiring the Precision bass, he removed the frets from the Hagström.[lw 2] Over the years, he heavily modified the Precision bass as well, scalloping the five highest frets, adding a neck pickup and additional support for the bolt-on neck, which Sheehan considers its greatest weakness. The neck pickup was added for what Sheehan referred to as "super deep low end" modelled after Paul Samwell-Smith of the Yardbirds and Mel Schacher of Grand Funk Railroad. The Gibson EB-0 type pickup in the neck and the original split Precision bass pickup each have their own separate output jacks on the bass itself, allowing for control of the tone via the bass. The Precision bass has since been retired, but Sheehan still affectionately refers to it as "The Wife". Sheehan\'s signature Yamaha Attitude bass is patterned after this instrument. Sheehan also 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.\n', '

Sheehan's first full-time band was Talas, a power trio with Dave Constantino on guitar and Paul Varga on drums. The band played a mixture of cover songs and original material, and all three instrumentalists alternated on lead vocals.\n", '

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