Key Variations on Electric Bass?

[DocTrucker]

Feel like I need to find myself a book on the bass guitar to go alongside my tutor books!

 

Ok, so the prime two types of bass guitar that I'm aware of is the Precision and Jazz. On the Jazz front I've seen them with split coils, single coils, humbuckers, and occasionally a mix of split and single. The precisions are far less varied but I have seen guitars with a split in the precision position and an additional coil close to the bridge.

 

So what are the key types (extra strings aside for the time being) to look for with the Blues Rock through to Metal spectrum?

 

I've currently a twin single coil Squire Jazz and a Precision bass with a single split coil. Do the Jazz basses with two Humbuckers sound different enough to the Squire Jazz to warrant an early inclusion, or are they more often pulled out when noise issues plague the single coil instruments?

 

I'm expecting a lot of it to be personal taste, but interested to hear what the key types are considered to be.

[Delberthot]

I've owned probably upwards of 150 basses over the past 32 years and I would say that you can pretty much play any genre on any bass.

 

I've done rock and wedding gigs on 12 string bass which is possibly as extreme as it gets.

 

I've also gigged 4, 5, 6 & 8 strings, fretted, fretless, acoustic, semi-acoustic which were all chosen purely on what I fancied playing at the time

[Bass Culture]

I'd agree with @Delberthoton this one.  In my 40+ years of playing I've owned probably 50 or so basses, from budget through to boutique.  I've had seven basses built for me and to my specification - every one different.  Whatever the number or combination of types of pickups and tone controls or preamps I've always managed to dial in 'my' sound to each and every one - to a great extent making every one sound 'the same' in the process.  There'll have been very slight variations, I guess, but they have all ended up there or thereabouts and certainly no one but myself would have detected any.  I play with my fingers and the old adage that tone is in the fingers is, I feel, something of a truism.  Or at least it is in my case!  Personally I've heard more difference between amps than I ever have with basses.

Edited October 20, 2021 by Bass Culture

[DocTrucker]

Great to hear, thanks. So get the basses you have playing well and tackle niggles that arise.

[Frank Blank]

6 minutes ago, DocTrucker said:

Great to hear, thanks. So get the basses you have playing well and tackle niggles that arise.

^^^Absolutely this^^^ buy the bass you like/feel comfortable with, @Delberthot is right on the money. Trying to play/feel comfortable on a bass you dislike is going to be extremely difficult, probably impossible but to tweak the bass you love to make the sound you want is much, much easier. My first ‘serious’ bass was a Jaydee Supenatural, I played it in a nasty, noisy thrash metal band and got lots of puzzled looks from other bass players but it was a bass I felt really at home with so that’s what I used, you’d never know from recordings what bass it was.

[LeftyJ]

18 hours ago, Frank Blank said:

Trying to play/feel comfortable on a bass you dislike is going to be extremely difficult, probably impossible

This reminds me of the thread earlier this year by a bassist who was asked by his fellow band members to "go buy a Dingwall" because it suited their band better in their opinion. Crazy! 

[Downunderwonder]

Most basses are some variant of P, J, PJ, and Stingray single humbucker.

 

Having been messed around by noise from single coil pickups I favour humbuckers.

 

My mainstay is twin humbuckers that can be switched to single coils. It has a dip switch for the neck that emulates the best of the J snarl, one pickup turned down a little, but with extra fat from the humbuckers, so single coil setting doesn't get a look in.

[Skybone]

9 hours ago, Downunderwonder said:

Most basses are some variant of P, J, PJ, and Stingray single humbucker.

 

 

Most, but not all. There is some variation out there, but predominantly, the many Leo Fender designed instruments are the most readily available.

 

FWIW, I would try as many different basses as you can, be it in shops, music shows (when they start up again), or at friends / acquaintances. You'll play basses you'll like, you'll play basses you don't like. You'll more than likely start the eternal quest for "the one".

 

Welcome.   

[DocTrucker]

Thanks all. For once chatting on online forums has resulted in a relative reduction in the desire to hemorrhage cash!

 

Just got an urge to move the guts of my BC Tich Warlock p bass to a standard fender style precision bass body body & neck. The former isn't  quite right. Nice feel on the neck, but action is too high, and the body shape is a pain. Standard bass stands don't don't work!

[Nail Soup]

On 20/10/2021 at 12:02, DocTrucker said:

So what are the key types (extra strings aside for the time being) to look for with the Blues Rock through to Metal spectrum?

The two biggest camps in bass would be fretted and fretless IMO. But for the genres you mention (and indeed most) no need for fretless.

[Doctor J]

The curse of the internet age is too many of us overthink these things where, before, we used to just get on with it. "Key types" for genres just ends up with people trying to live up to tired and boring clichés because it's the safe option.

 

@Delberthotis bang on the money. Find a bass you like and learn to play it. It's that simple. Be yourself, play like yourself and flip the begrudgers. Be interesting.

[neepheid]

What are you learning bass for?  What I mean is - are you learning it purely for its own sake and will be playing solo to yourself, or do you intend to play in bands with other people and other instruments?

 

If it's the former, then knock yourself out getting lost in the minutae of "this bass sounds like that".  If it's the latter, then just get a bass you like the sound AND ergonomics of and get playing with others.  Once you are creating a whole sound with other people, as long as it sounds bassy then it'll work.  I am also of the opinion that most punters won't give a hoot what kind of bass you're playing, it will be mostly other bass players who notice (or care) about that kind of thing.

 

Having played for around 15 years (seriously for 13) and gone through I don't want to know how many basses - it's at least 40, for shame, it has taken me far too long to come around to what I like.

 

Single, central pickup (I find bridge pickups utterly pointless - useless on their own and just suck the mids out of the bass when used in conjunction with a neck pickup - will ignore it for the right 2 pickup bass)

Humbucker over single coil

Fat, wide (or both) neck

Erring towards passive over active (no battery worries, no array of controls I rarely touch)

Prefer dark fingerboards (rosewood/ebony) over light ones (maple etc.) but purely as an aesthetic choice as I believe whatever differences in the 5mm thick strip of wood glued over the top of the neck make are so inconsequential in a band setting that I simply do not care.

 

Sounds like I should have a P bass, right?