Hipshot Kickass on '74 P bass - is it worth it?

[Misdee]

3 hours ago, NancyJohnson said:

My dad used to go fishing on Sundays.  Different rods, different reels, different lines, different bait.  All that really mattered was the little hook at the end of the line with the maggot on it.  He could have used a bit of copper pipe or an extending umbrella, garden string or a bit of cheese.  .

 

 

What is Fenderish tone?  Geddy?  Lynott?  Harris?  Kaye?  Deacon? Flea?  Hoppus?  JPJ?  JM-J?  Wire, Simonon, Sting, Jameson, Jacko or Duff?  

Fenderish tone is the unadorned sound of a Fender bass, it's characteristic sound. Lots of the players you reference have made very good use of it. To my ears, you get a little bit more of it with a vintage-style Fender bridge.

[Longwheelbass]

I’m an absolute Fender snob/junkie and have been since walking past the pawn shop next to Chasers disco in Prahran, Melbourne in 1984 and spotted a stripped and relacquered 1969 Jazz Bass hanging on the wall. I busted the shop owner down from 500 bucks to 450, and it was the happiest day of my life. It replaced my mutilated 76 Mustang and it was with me for almost 1000 shows and multiple recordings with multiple dubious outfits. 
It was all original except for the paint, and studio engineers loved it. 
And the 80’s was muso marketing scam season - with the magic word being SUSTAIN. Ears and eyes are personal things, and everyone’s perceptions differ, but the high mass bridge hysteria that began with aftermarket parts advertising departments doing a hatchet job on Fender Bass tone all to liberate 100 bucks out of hard working (or dole bludging) bass players was one of the best scams in bass playin’ history. Science and physics aside, if you wanted your old Fender bass to get heavier, look fugly and maybe give you a few micro-seconds of tinnier sounding “sustain” then a high mass bridge was for you. 
Being a fool, I never managed to hang onto the Jazz Bass, nor the literal dozens of pre-73 P Basses I’ve owned for short or long periods - but if they came with a BadAss/Kickass/dumbass/fatass/heavyass bridge the first thing I did was bin it and scrounge up an old Fender bridge. Nowadays, I sell those aftermarket bridges in order to go towards paying the outrageous sums asked for by vintage parts sellers for vintage Fender bridges. 
I miss the 90’s when my favourite tech at my favourite music shop always had at least 6 old Fender bridges in a box and he’d extort 20 bucks from me every time I walked through the door with an unfamiliar to him case in my hand. 
There’s a great vid on YouTube called P Bass shootout and the dude starts with a 68 P and runs through about 7 different models of P including a Nate and a couple of reissues etc, but he does London Calling seamlessly on all the P’s - which is of course Paul Simenon’s masterclass in fat vintage Fender tone. You do notice the Nate P is noticeably brighter, probably brought on by that huge hideous thing bolted to the body -  but for the cost of a high mass bridge, I’d rather keep the money and just turn up the treble knob on the amp.  It’s a funny old bass world, there’s people jamming foam under their strings to kill the bright, there’s people wrapping what look like Andy Murray’s discarded wrist-worn sweatbands around the nut to kill the bright (is that still a thing??), and there’s the guys pushing the pot metal more sustain hi mass line still, all these years later…

Meanwhile, the Great Satan of Bass Aftermarket Machinations, Leo Quan (who is actually a genetic fusion of two dudes, Leo Malliaris and Glen Quan which occurred during the alchemy phase of these two Californian guitar repair guys mixing metals in their mom’s garage in the 70’s to come up with what was going to originally be called the Bass Weightgainizer, but eventually got changed to BadAss, for obvious marketing reasons) - sits atop of a pile of gold so tall in the backyard of his/their Laurel Canyon mansion that the reflection of the sun’s rays off of all the gold is slowly being recognised by leading US climatologists as one the emerging drivers of global climate change. 
The takeaway from all this drivel? Well might you ask! Spend your money wisely, and remember, Fender basses from 1955 to the late 70’s got played millions- nay billions of times, sat beautifully in mixes on vinyl and sounded fabulous onstage, fat and proud  through crappy car stereos and still do to this day. But you are still free as a bass player to choose to mod or not to mod, but it’s not always an UPGRADE…and you may well be contributing to Climate Change! 

Footnote: there is NO WAY I could ever fault any of Nate’s tones on any Foo Fighter recording ever either…in fact there’s a rumour Dave said to Nate when he showed up with his BadAss equipped 70’s P: “Nice tone dude, just don’t point that thing at me!”

 

 

Edited May 7, 2022 by Turbineclimber
Bad spelling

[NancyJohnson]

Out of curiosity, if the 1950s/60s Precision and Jazz basses came with high-mass bridges as standard 60 years ago, would the reaction to installing a BBOT unit right now be derisive?

[Lozz196]

3 hours ago, Turbineclimber said:

I’m an absolute Fender snob/junkie and have been since walking past the pawn shop next to Chasers disco in Prahran, Melbourne in 1984 and spotted a stripped and relacquered 1969 Jazz Bass hanging on the wall. I busted the shop owner down from 500 bucks to 450, and it was the happiest day of my life. It replaced my mutilated 76 Mustang and it was with me for almost 1000 shows and multiple recordings with multiple dubious outfits. 
It was all original except for the paint, and studio engineers loved it. 
And the 80’s was muso marketing scam season - with the magic word being SUSTAIN. Ears and eyes are personal things, and everyone’s perceptions differ, but the high mass bridge hysteria that began with aftermarket parts advertising departments doing a hatchet job on Fender Bass tone all to liberate 100 bucks out of hard working (or dole bludging) bass players was one of the best scams in bass playin’ history. Science and physics aside, if you wanted your old Fender bass to get heavier, look fugly and maybe give you a few micro-seconds of tinnier sounding “sustain” then a high mass bridge was for you. 
Being a fool, I never managed to hang onto the Jazz Bass, nor the literal dozens of pre-73 P Basses I’ve owned for short or long periods - but if they came with a BadAss/Kickass/dumbass/fatass/heavyass bridge the first thing I did was bin it and scrounge up an old Fender bridge. Nowadays, I sell those aftermarket bridges in order to go towards paying the outrageous sums asked for by vintage parts sellers for vintage Fender bridges. 
I miss the 90’s when my favourite tech at my favourite music shop always had at least 6 old Fender bridges in a box and he’d extort 20 bucks from me every time I walked through the door with an unfamiliar to him case in my hand. 
There’s a great vid on YouTube called P Bass shootout and the dude starts with a 68 P and runs through about 7 different models of P including a Nate and a couple of reissues etc, but he does London Calling seamlessly on all the P’s - which is of course Paul Simenon’s masterclass in fat vintage Fender tone. You do notice the Nate P is noticeably brighter, probably brought on by that huge hideous thing bolted to the body -  but for the cost of a high mass bridge, I’d rather keep the money and just turn up the treble knob on the amp.  It’s a funny old bass world, there’s people jamming foam under their strings to kill the bright, there’s people wrapping what look like Andy Murray’s discarded wrist-worn sweatbands around the nut to kill the bright (is that still a thing??), and there’s the guys pushing the pot metal more sustain hi mass line still, all these years later…

Meanwhile, the Great Satan of Bass Aftermarket Machinations, Leo Quan (who is actually a genetic fusion of two dudes, Leo Malliaris and Glen Quan which occurred during the alchemy phase of these two Californian guitar repair guys mixing metals in their mom’s garage in the 70’s to come up with what was going to originally be called the Bass Weightgainizer, but eventually got changed to BadAss, for obvious marketing reasons) - sits atop of a pile of gold so tall in the backyard of his/their Laurel Canyon mansion that the reflection of the sun’s rays off of all the gold is slowly being recognised by leading US climatologists as one the emerging drivers of global climate change. 
The takeaway from all this drivel? Well might you ask! Spend your money wisely, and remember, Fender basses from 1955 to the late 70’s got played millions- nay billions of times, sat beautifully in mixes on vinyl and sounded fabulous onstage, fat and proud  through crappy car stereos and still do to this day. But you are still free as a bass player to choose to mod or not to mod, but it’s not always an UPGRADE…and you may well be contributing to Climate Change! 

Footnote: there is NO WAY I could ever fault any of Nate’s tones on any Foo Fighter recording ever either…in fact there’s a rumour Dave said to Nate when he showed up with his BadAss equipped 70’s P: “Nice tone dude, just don’t point that thing at me!”

 

 

That’s a great Pbass shootout, I think all sounded great, though I’d reckon the Seymour Duncan QP pickup in the Nate contributed a lot to the top end of that bass. I think my overall fave was the 68.

[Longwheelbass]

7 minutes ago, Lozz196 said:

That’s a great Pbass shootout, I think all sounded great, though I’d reckon the Seymour Duncan QP pickup in the Nate contributed a lot to the top end of that bass. I think my overall fave was the 68.

Yeah right I didn't know Nates model has QP's...which are pretty bitey huh?

The 68 P was my fave too having had a few of them...the natural late 70's sounded pretty beefy too.

[Longwheelbass]

46 minutes ago, NancyJohnson said:

Out of curiosity, if the 1950s/60s Precision and Jazz basses came with high-mass bridges as standard 60 years ago, would the reaction to installing a BBOT unit right now be derisive?

I don't think they would have sold as bass players were coming off of having to rent a van to get their DB's to and from shows, so all excess weight was a no-no! But you're probably right, we are a cantankerous sub-group of the music world, and there would have been endless fights in malt shops, backstage at sock hops and dive bars over the very same subject, Nancy. Apparently "it plays like butter" was often heatedly derided and defended in equal measures shortly after the arrival of the first P Bass in stores. All because some upright  jazz player in the dairy belt of Wisconsin swore his playing got faster after treating the fretboard with the dairy-based spread.

As for Rickenbacker purchasers who were often complaining loudly about the fact THEIR bridge weighed almost half of the gross weight of the bass...

[BigRedX]

Unfortunately the only way the OP will find out will be if they do it to their bass. 

 

All basses and all players are different.

 

Just because it works for one (or more) player(s) on their bass(es) doesn't mean it will work for the OP on their particular bass.