Are people who say "my bass never goes out of tune" crazy?

[thepurpleblob]

Slightly tongue in cheek, but I've read one or two postings in the for sale forum recently were vendors claim that their instrument "stays in tune for months" or something similar. I've had a quite a few different basses and some never leave my house for weeks or months and I am quite sure they never stay in tune. Just playing the thing knocks it out of tune a bit after all.

Is this "first to see will buy" talk, or is there some magic around that I'm missing?

[AntLockyer]

My Aria never goes out of tune. Everything else moves a little when they get taken somewhere or the temperature changes a lot.

[wateroftyne]

My P stays in tune for months.

I check it before every gig, but sometimes I wonder why I bother.

[thepurpleblob]

So you're saying that you plug it into a chromatic tuner with flashing lights and it's bang-on in the middle always?

[wateroftyne]

Yip. Unless the tuners have been knocked.

[thepurpleblob]

Wow - so what is it about me then. Leave any bass for 24 hours and it's a bit out of tune. Usually the whole thing has gone a bit flat or a bit sharp.

[iconic]

Most of mine seem to be fine, maybe mearest tweak and i always check before playing....my headless hohner really doesnt go out of tune and ive had it 6 months a very, very stable bass

[thepurpleblob]

It's probably Scotland. The cold and the damp

[TimR]

Mine was tuned at the factory by experts. I'm not messing with it.

[deanovw]

I tune my bass every week whether it needs it or not!

[Ziphoblat]

The only time mine get tuned is at rehearsals or gigs; I check on my TC Polytune to make sure, nearly every time it'll be perfect, even if the last time I checked was a couple of weeks ago and it's been played constantly since.

[Ian Savage]

I've cut the elephant ears off my tuners so that they don't get knocked.

[thepurpleblob]

Ok - I'm crying now

[borisbrain]

I have a MIM Jazz that, um, never goes out of tune. I also have a CIJ P bass which never seems to stay in tune for more than 5 minutes...

BB

[nottswarwick]

I check whenever I'm gigging, and usually it needs a tweak. It's not you.
But compared to guitars, they are stable.

[thepurpleblob]

I get to learn a lot of covers so I'm possibly more sensitive. It all goes horribly wrong if I'm not in tune with the record I'm learning.

[LukeFRC]

[quote name='thepurpleblob' timestamp='1377812049' post='2192370']
It's probably Scotland. The cold and the damp
[/quote] i lived in bargeddie for a bit a few years ago and most my basses were fine. The surprise with my bitsa jazz is that it doesn't keep tune like the JV or warwick do.

[gjones]

If you carry your bass in a hard case, never change your strings and have decades of accumulated gunk clogging up the gears of the machineheads (like my 30 year old P/J) your bass will very rarely go out of tune.

[Ghosts Over Japan]

My old Musicman sub stayed in tune forever, I always checked but it was very rare I'd ever have to tune it, the Sandberg I've just traded could stay in very long periods of time as well! I've had a fair share of basses that lasted about 20 minutes of play before being slightly out of tune though.
Cai

[cybertect]

[quote name='wateroftyne' timestamp='1377811260' post='2192352']
My P stays in tune for months.

I check it before every gig, but sometimes I wonder why I bother.
[/quote]

Likewise with my Musicman Sabre (I'm afraid for the OP).

[barkin]

My '82 Westone Thunder, except if it's got newish strings on it, stays perfectly in tune.

Shame it's so heavy that I hardly use it these days.

[icastle]

[quote name='wateroftyne' timestamp='1377811260' post='2192352']
I check it before every gig, but sometimes I wonder why I bother.
[/quote]

Same here.
My main 'go to' bass stays in tune for months at a time despite getting used most days.

[Muzz]

Yup, you could play baseball with my Dingwall and it'd still be in tune after four innings. Ditto my old BB3000. A couple of the others tend to wander very slightly over a period of weeks, but not by much. Don't think I could live with a bass which went out of tune as much as some on here seem to do.

[cloudburst]

My Steinies (as expected) stay in tune.
However, more surprisingly, my Jazz rarely needs tuned. Probably because the strings are quite stable, now that they are 39 years old.

CB

[thepurpleblob]

Hmmm... it doesn't really trouble me. I always have a tuner in the signal chain, so the first thing I do is to check the tuning. If I go to a gig, I try to get the bass on a stand out of it's case quite quickly. By the time we gig it will need a bit of a tweak. This is any bass I have ever owned, which is quite a reasonable sample size now.