I kind of hate that this is true because I'm such a p-bass fan. The simplicity and the body shape win for the P for me though. Hmm...could I make a P with just a jazz pickup? I guess I should just buy a 50s style p with a straight single at that point.
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Awesome jazz bass tone
- Thread starter Simon Ferocious
- Start date
I kind of hate that this is true because I'm such a p-bass fan. The simplicity and the body shape win for the P for me though. Hmm...could I make a P with just a jazz pickup? I guess I should just buy a 50s style p with a straight single at that point.
Try turning the tone knob down on the Jazz when you're looking for the P sound.
Oh yes, I was P + flats player last 4 years, from this year I play Jazz + TI flats and I'm in heaven.
i will never not share this video:
i will never not share this video:
I have a couple P basses including a 73 and three Jazz basses. When I started my band I thought for sure my sound would be a grindy overdriven 73 P Bass like the tone you hear on The Who Live at Leeds or Nomeansno or JJ Burnell. It turned out that in my punk rock power trio it was too overpowering and clashed with the sonic space of the guitars. I ended up favoring the overdriven Geddy Lee jazz bass as it cut through without sounding messy and has it's own sonic space. It's crazy how things work out.
I have EB cobalt flat on my J and PJ bass. I found J bass sometimes sound too sweet in band mix. PJ just easily fill better in any band mix .
Stayed with MM and never love a J, until I learnt to roll the neck PU down a little.
sounds cool as I like similar music - I'd be curious in your pickup/tone settings in jazz and any OD/eq settings you use to get this
Two other pieces to the puzzle are my amps. I use three different Gallien Kruger heads, an 88 800RB, 82 400RB, or a 2009 700RB II. All have that nice GK grindy tone but my overdrive comes from a Digitech Hard Wire Tube overdrive. This is the best, IME overdrive that I have ever used. It's very transparent and loses no low end. I keep the drive at 12:00. I favor boosting the high and low mids on my amps and the treble at 12-2:00 and bass at 12:00. My Jazz basses have both pickups and tone dimed. I only favor the neck pickup for two Ramones songs amd Automatic by The Jabbers. I always play fingerstyle and never use a pick, even with the Ramones covers. However, if I covered Nomeansno, I would probably use a pick for that.
yep, on my jazz basses, I have 3, one of which is a 2006/2008 CIJ Geddy Lee that is my current #1 as well, I roll the tone all the way up, bridge pup all the way, and then the neck pup around 3/4 or a little more, but never all the way.
In Andy Summer's book about The Police he talks about being backstage in a boiler room and leaning his iconic Telecaster up against a boiler for a little bit while they waited to go on stage and they went on stage, he plugged his Tele in and something was very amiss, Summers claimed that his pickup had lost its magnetic properties... he took it to somebody and they rewired it but as far as Andy is concerned it's not the same sound as the original pickup that came with the tele (he had purchased it second hand in LA some years before).
I don't know if this tele pickup had a loss of DC resistance but it's an odd story nonetheless...
TBH I don't even know what a pick up losing DC resistance really is, or if the phenomena exists at all.
It is very possible to lessen the magnetic field of a magnet.
Not sure how a boiler could do that but I'm sure there was a "theory"!
Not sure how a boiler could do that but I'm sure there was a "theory"!
IME, it always depends on the type of band you're playing with and the rest of the bands mix. I love both the P and the J even though my main player is an ATK 300. The ATK fits my bands mix/sound the best. But I played with a drummer a few weeks back and he's mainly a pop/blues type of player. I brought my ATK with me and even just playing with a drummer, I could tell my ATK was too aggressive sounding (the way I have it set up) for playing with this particular drummer and for the stuff he wants/knows how to play. I'll be bringing my J bass next time we jam. Maybe even the P. I've had this exp a couple times over the years where I bring my ATK with me to play with a new project/band and find out quickly that it simply didn't fit in their mix. So I'd bring a P bass the next week and it would fit wonderfully.
So IMO, it really just depends.
So IMO, it really just depends.
Maybe the most astute and poetic post ever featured on this forum.
Has anyone had great experience with stacked / humbucking J pups that sounded really close to single coils?
I thought Fender 55's would be the solution but not all that impressed.
I really like the tone on many 70's J pups as well as Duncan SJB-1's.
I thought Fender 55's would be the solution but not all that impressed.
I really like the tone on many 70's J pups as well as Duncan SJB-1's.
I have had great experience with Fender Super 55 pickups. But that seemingly isn't going to do you any good.
The J has a little more articulation, because it's got less inductance in the pickup - this difference is often attributed to the slight tallier and thinner bobbin in of the KJ pickup - that's because people have eyes and not impedance meters to correlate results with. If you wire a P pickup in parallel, it will have less inductance, and more articulation than a J (which disproves that bobbin geometry theory); you can dial that back a bit if you want with capacitive loading to get exactly what you want, and....it won't hum.
Dimarzio Area J's (not model J's) are probably your ticket - good, low inductance J hum cancelling pickups that'll "clink" with the best of 'em.
I've been messing with the tone know and like what it brings to the tone. Also, rolling back the neck to about 85-95%, sounds sweeter just on it's own as well.
My 3rd bass in an Aria pro rudy sarzo that has twin p bass style pickups, with a series/ parallel switch as well that I keep with rounds and it's really powerful.
My 3rd bass in an Aria pro rudy sarzo that has twin p bass style pickups, with a series/ parallel switch as well that I keep with rounds and it's really powerful.
Depends on one's definition of the Classic Jazz Bass tone. Joe Osborn was the exact opposite of all of this.
