Incidentally, I finally got to play the bass amplified today. It disguises itself as a refined, almost genteel instrument, but there's a growling beast hiding in there! It responds extremely well to distortion - I tried it with five different distortion pedals of varying ferocity and it loved them all.
It's a bit of a cliché but it's a very honest tone - it sounds just like it's acoustic sound, only... amplified. My '51 Precision was similar but that had a looser tone, spiky and a bit wild.
Absolute joy of a bass. I picked up my Rickenbacker after and it felt like a brick.