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Bass designers are trying to hard ...?

#61
kcole4001 said:
Most guitar players just can't grasp the incredible variety of options available to any bass player with a few thousand dollars, let alone why anyone would need such a wide array of choices.
To them it's pretty much a 'Strat or Les Paul' world.

Think about it, what's out there in the up to $5000 range is pretty staggering.
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I don't think you're considering the amps and effects, which is arguably where most guitarists would say their tone comes from. Many will have a couple different heads and cabs, a sea of pedals (often custom or boutique), and their favorite Strat or Les Paul.

They love and appreciate their sonic variety as well, but tend to approach it differently than bassists.
 
#63
Kidding (sorta). I dunno, I agree that if I were auditioning bass players, I'd be more likely to judge a tappy, slappy 9 string kid to someone playing a 'classic,' but that's just my own silly bias...horses for courses, I say. There are some different designs over the years that work very well...A Rick 4001 is a pretty different beast from a P-Bass, but I love 'em both...Heck, I'm a big Ripper/G3/Grabber fan...T-Birds, Wal's...lots of cool rethinks without tossing the baby out with the bathwater. But My current fave bass is a 1983 Peavey T-40...all black, rosewood fingerboard...freakin' awesome, to me...but some folks hate those...I get a sorta p/ric/ripper combo out of that bass. Also some hollowbodies have a 'classic' thing, but do something very different...I just added nothing to this thread :)
 
#64
dukeorock said:
Kidding (sorta). I dunno, I agree that if I were auditioning bass players, I'd be more likely to judge a tappy, slappy 9 string kid to someone playing a 'classic,' but that's just my own silly bias...horses for courses, I say. There are some different designs over the years that work very well...A Rick 4001 is a pretty different beast from a P-Bass, but I love 'em both...Heck, I'm a big Ripper/G3/Grabber fan...T-Birds, Wal's...lots of cool rethinks without tossing the baby out with the bathwater. But My current fave bass is a 1983 Peavey T-40...all black, rosewood fingerboard...freakin' awesome, to me...but some folks hate those...I get a sorta p/ric/ripper combo out of that bass. Also some hollowbodies have a 'classic' thing, but do something very different...I just added nothing to this thread :)
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Nonsense, you added the notion of a, "tappy, slappy, 9 string kid"..I thought slappy and tappy kids only came in six strings..who knew.
 
#66
FunkMetalBass said:
I don't think you're considering the amps and effects, which is arguably where most guitarists would say their tone comes from. Many will have a couple different heads and cabs, a sea of pedals (often custom or boutique), and their favorite Strat or Les Paul.

They love and appreciate their sonic variety as well, but tend to approach it differently than bassists.
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Really, I think we're all (guitarists and bassists) pretty equal when it comes to effects and amps.
Just as some are here, a good number of guitarists are 'straight into the amp' guys, while many like effects to varying degrees.
As amps go, both groups have their solid state vs tube camps.

The big difference as I see it is the exotic woods, passive vs active (and then which preamp), neck through vs set neck vs bolt on debates which crop up here almost every day.

I know guitarists don't obsess about 'tone woods' anywhere near as much as many bassists.
Also, the amount of players using active guitars is pretty small compared to active basses in use out there.

A guitarist is more likely to obsess about which pickups he's using rather than the type of wood used in his guitar.
 
#67
kevteop said:
Can I just be clear: I was making a point about what bass guitars look like, because appearances are important. And I find it a bit incongruous (to say the least) when the instrument that plays the most low-key role in the band is the most ostentatious-looking.
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I think you might be on the wrong forum to be telling a bunch of bassists that they play the most low-key instrument in the band... to quote a fellow bassist from another forum "without bass and drums, all you have is saturday morning at guitar center..." - adouglas

profoundly true.
 
#69
LowBstring said:
Funny. I am totally that guy.

The way I look at is that I'll be dead in 20 years, or close to it, so enjoy life. I enjoy playing, so the wallet is open. I know I have no right to the kind of rig I'm using, and I feel bad for the talented musicians who deserve it but can't afford similar gear, but... still... eat your heart out.
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Me too.

I will admit to having played "Mustang Sally" on my burl maple-topped Sadowsky. Why? Because the audience begged us to play it and tipped us heavily.

We ended up playing it as a funk song and it wasn't horrible.

I see no reason to apologize for my gear. Everyone else is welcome to their P bass or whatever works for them. I'd rather spend my money on basses than clothes or cars or whatever. As a stay-at-home dad for a medically fragile child with special needs, clothes and cars don't do anything for me. The only time I ever get away from it all is when I'm gigging, and when that's happening i'll play whatever I damn well want, and nobody in the audience notices anyway (we have a hot female lead singer).
 
#70
I spoke with Randall Fullmer of Wyn Basses last year and he said that guitar players achieve different tones with pedals, which I talked about earlier in this thread and that bass players try to find "that" tone in the bass itself.

If you can work with a good luthier, they can get you very, very close to the sound in your head. But you have to trust that they know what they are doing and not "interfere" with the good juju.
 
#71
kevteop said:
Well, in all honesty, if I wasn't a bass player and I was auditioning bass players and a guy showed up with a Dingwall, it would ring alarm bells.

I would be thinking "This guy is going to want to fit in a slap solo somewhere" or "This guy is going to play harmonics in between all the songs" or "This guy's got a tapping version of the Jetsons theme he's going to try to shoehorn into the set".

Rightly or wrongly, that is what I'd think.
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LOL. Yeah if Leeland Sklar or any of the other endorsers on this page showed up, the "alarm bells" would ring. Then again, maybe not. ;)

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#74
So, as long as this thread has become, the one thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is that all music sounds different. Even a company like Fender makes different models of Jazz basses that sound different. If there were only 1 or 2 basses that people thought were 'worthy' then the bass in all music would sound exactly the same. So, there would be no 'Marcus' sound or no 'Victor' sound or no 'Patitucci' sound or no.....you get the idea. These sounds were all the result of people not becoming complacent with the 1 'bass' sound.

As for companies like Dingwall, aside from the 'fanned' fret design (which is not even Dingwall's design...it belongs to a company named Novax which, incedentally does the same thing for guitars), the instruments produced have their own tone as well. I don't see anyone bitchin about the ergonomic computer keyboards or those silly knee chairs which, (oddly enough), is what Novax was trying to do...make the instrument morecomfortable to play.

That all being said, if a bassist wants to achieve a particular tone by changing the bass he/she plays rather than or along with pedals/electronics, more power to them! I don't see guitar players saying other guitar players should just play a basic strat and that pedals/electronics are not needed or keyboard players saying other keyboard players should only play pianos and nobody needs synths.
 
#75
ivbenaplayin said:
I think you might be on the wrong forum to be telling a bunch of bassists that they play the most low-key instrument in the band...
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You're right it's going to be a hard sell in here. Doesn't make it any less true. Not that there's anything wrong with subtlety and understatement of course, which brings us back to the basses themselves...

WoodyG3 said:
LOL. Yeah if Leeland Sklar or any of the other endorsers on this page showed up, the "alarm bells" would ring. Then again, maybe not. ;)

Invalid Link Removed
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I don't know who 99% of those people are, but if you're guaranteeing to me that none of them will do anything awful like tapping then I am willing to give them a try.
 
#76
kcole4001 said:
The big difference as I see it is the exotic woods, passive vs active (and then which preamp), neck through vs set neck vs bolt on debates which crop up here almost every day.

I know guitarists don't obsess about 'tone woods' anywhere near as much as many bassists.
Also, the amount of players using active guitars is pretty small compared to active basses in use out there.

A guitarist is more likely to obsess about which pickups he's using rather than the type of wood used in his guitar.
Click to expand...

I have no idea whether this is true in general. I know that the serious guitarists I know all fuss about wood, strings, pickups, etc just as much as bass players. But maybe the guys I know aren't typical.
 
#78
Technology has never been advanced by those who have said, "now, that's perfect" or "now, that's good enough". The wheel, the car, the double bass, the electric guitar, etc. were all created by people who thought, "hrmmm, maybe I can do better". It appears that your guitarist is of the former group and would be happier walking to his gigs and banging on rocks.
 
#80
kcole4001 said:
Really, I think we're all (guitarists and bassists) pretty equal when it comes to effects and amps.

The big difference as I see it is the exotic woods, passive vs active (and then which preamp), neck through vs set neck vs bolt on debates which crop up here almost every day.

I know guitarists don't obsess about 'tone woods' anywhere near as much as many bassists.
Also, the amount of players using active guitars is pretty small compared to active basses in use out there.

A guitarist is more likely to obsess about which pickups he's using rather than the type of wood used in his guitar.
Click to expand...


IMO it's more like a different philosophy regarding tone:

1. most of the bassists I know try to keep their tone chain as minimal as possible, because they know the more pieces you add, the more you lose the natural voice of the instrument. Guitarists on the other hand tend to process their tone a lot more.

2. a lot of bassists prefer to get most of the EQ settings out of the instrument itself and less from the amp; I've seen a lot of folks keeping most of the amp's knobs at noon and only a specific frequency boosted here and there. Guitarists on the other hand tend to go wild on their amp settings and they like to tweak those knobs every 5 minutes or so :)

3. when your tone is soaked in distorsion (and various other effects), "tone woods" don't matter that much :) But since most bassists use a clean & amplified signal, then the natural voice of the instrument is very important - and how you obtain that (woods combo, pickup placing, etc) - is equally important.

4. last, but not least: we have the specific and difficult job of being the "mortar" between 2 (often very stubborn) "bricks": the drums and the guitar. It's our job to tighten them up, lay a good sound foundation and keep 'em in harmony. And when you have to cut through a wall of sound and still sound good, you need some very special tools - that's why we tend to spend a lot more time on analysing every piece of gear and trying to figure out what's best for the job ;) Ultimately we do this so they'd be able to go wild and have fun ;)
 

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