best pickups and/or bass guitars for jazz

I have played jazz with Fender Precisions and Fender Jazz basses. Either works fine.

 

any.

fender-ish axes are sort of 'traditional'.

i'm a jazz player all of my life and i settled on PJ pickup configurations decades ago.

you can play jazz on any ax --- if it's competent. good luck!

 

if everyone used the same "best bass for jazz" or any genre that would be pretty boring. i use this for jazz.

 

No bass (or pickup) is clinically the best for any style. Conversely, most every bass can sound good in every style if you know what you're doing. Find a bass that you can really connect with, and the rest will follow.

 

What???? No gratuitous pictures of Jaco????

But yeah, about any bass can be used for jazz. One of the cool things about jazz is it is a very broad category.

 

There is a best bass for metal, but we're not sure what it is. There is no best bass for jazz.

 

We already established the best bass made of metal.

 

For various reasons, I own a lot of basses (24 at last count). Why doesn't really matter here, but because I do? I have very little need for versatile basses; I tend to set them up to play one kind of music very well - which means that quite often, they don't do other kinds of music quite so well... So, even though a Precision Bass can work very well for Jazz, my Precision Bass doesn't. It's set up to be a Motown Funk machine... This Alembic Epic, OTOH, is set up for Jazz. And, with a set of TI Jazz Flats on it, IMO it works very well, too...

 

"Jazz" covers a lot of territory. Is there a particular player whose sound you admire?

 

I play Jazz with one of these, rock and blues, too...very versatile, best stock pickups and electronics made.
I'm seriously considering buying another one.
G&L L2000
Depending on how much money you're planning on spending, you can go with the Tribute...

Or a USA-made model.

If you want something really different, you might like this. I missed out on one last year and still regret it.

 

You should consider if you need a 5-string (I suggest you don't) and if you want a lot of frets for reaching up the higher registers (for soloing?). Then you could decide whether you need a low string (which depends not only on the deepest note you will be playing, but mainly on the convenience for your fretting hand) and if you want 24 frets or will be content with "traditional" 21 or 22 frets. Maybe this can be relevant for the style of music you want to play.

 

Definitely the best bass for a boat anchor!