Sustain Vs Attack

[timbledum]

Personally I love a nice bright attacky defined tone, but recently I've noticed that my favorite tones on recordings are sustained with round tube thickness. When I listen to these recordings, often I cannot even hear the attack of the bass note that much.

For your live tone do you love a snappy attack to your tone or are you content to be a little compressed or have a rounder tone and let the drums/other instruments define the note for you? Any thoughts?

[somegeezer]

I like to have a good attack with the ability to sustain...? I generally just damp the note to make it shorter? I don't really understand why you can't have both unless your definition of attack is different to mine. Entirely possible of course. =]

[Emibass]

Flats....

[MNAirHead]

with a good setup, quality strings, right technique etc and non fender you can get both above

Yes I own fenders

[Drop-the-One]

I like my highs... and lows... but not my 150-300hz.

but there needs to be some AAA Alberta beef in the middle there

[Phalex]

I like attack, and used to believe that attack and sustain were at odds until just recently.

A crappy compressor will leave you with one or the other, but a high quality compressor gives you both attack and sustain.

[Midfour]

I'd rather have both, but if I had to choose...

distinct attack, definitely

[reniwren]

I don't understand why you cant have both without EQing

[timbledum]

Yeah I guess you can have both, but I've read that when recording it can be best to assign some instruments to have more punch, and have some filling in the gaps. You can't have all instruments being punchy or else they lose their..... punch. So I guess my question was where do you fall in that spectrum, and a bit of both is a valid answer, but I'm interested in people who consciously choose one over the other.