LukeFRC Posted May 31, 2020 Share Posted May 31, 2020 Here’s a question- to the folk who have lots of basses, do you have darker and lighter sounding basses in your arsenal? Do you use them for different things? reason I ask. My main bass for years was a Japanese ‘57ri, I’ve a fairly strong right hand finger style technique and digging in harder would unlock this wonderful grindy sound. (it’s not the strings hitting the frets clank as I have the action higher than that) I use this for a more aggressive louder sound and then hit softer for a less aggressive sound. my latest bass, an old Lakland 55-94 is a darker sounding bass, with supposedly “darker” sounding pickups and preamp... when I dig in the tone doesn’t change much, just gets louder! Now that could be a positive, but it’s a bit unnerving at the moment. I guess the question is how do people approach different sounding basses? Pickup swapping to get similar response vs enjoying instruments for their differences.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cuzzie Posted May 31, 2020 Share Posted May 31, 2020 Love them for their differences. My graphite neck basses sound different to the wood necked basses pick ups aside and lend themselves to different things 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dudewheresmybass Posted May 31, 2020 Share Posted May 31, 2020 (edited) Each bass I own has its own character, which will determine where it gets used. I have basses that suit differing tunings, and ones that suit pick playing over fingerstyle. Edited May 31, 2020 by dudewheresmybass 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silvia Bluejay Posted May 31, 2020 Share Posted May 31, 2020 My basses all sound different from each other, but I'm damned if I can say for sure that's due to the pickup/strings, active/passive combination as opposed to the actual woods they're made of... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
P-Belly Evans Posted May 31, 2020 Share Posted May 31, 2020 The only reason I have seven (not Gas honestly😎) is coz they all sound different and are great at different things. Output levels on a couple are a bit lower (I'm looking at you Mr Mustang) , but I can take that for the awesome tonal qualities. Well that's my excuse to the missus...... works a charm doesn't it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fretmeister Posted May 31, 2020 Share Posted May 31, 2020 Sort of. I have basses that stick with flats and rounds and I have some where I change the strings. My P is always Monel flats and I use it for old proper RnB, big band etc, and of course Iron Maiden! My PJ-Ray5 has rounds because I’ve never found a Flatwound B that was worth having. It’s quite bright and needs a lot of EQ adjustment to make it work right in a 25 piece big band. But it’s fantastic for anything more modern. It’s also the bass that I will use if I need to tune down with some heavier strings. I do find that the lower tuning I use, the brighter I want the natural tone of the bass / strings to be to lower the chances of flub. My Sandberg TT4 (Jazz) is very string dependent. With rounds it’s very Marcus Miller. With flats it’s got a great old tone. If I want to play it with the big band I put flats on it. For anything else it gets rounds. Fortunately it has a slotted bridge so swapping strings and saving the older ones is dead easy and I don’t have to thread the coiled string part from the headstock through a bridge hole. Sometimes the big band set has some modern funk arrangements where the the Monel flats don’t really work for slap parts so I might experiment with some Pressurewounds so see if I can get a good compromise. Those are the 3 that I use the most. If we ever get to rehearse or pay live again I expect my new Ibby medium scale to feature a lot too. Until then I’ll just have to imagine what it sounds like in a live mix. 😢 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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