I've never once switched basses during a set. I'm a BEAD guy, no fives, no EADG basses... I'll bring two basses with me, and play the one that feels right and the other one stays in the bag.
Do you bust out your 5 for a song or two? Or do you keep the same bass on all night?
My 1982 Olympic White Jazz, that I bought in 1985 is my primary bass. It's mellowed to a light cream color over the last 40-years. When I play with a group that does songs where I need to do stuff on that low B string, then I'll swap it out for my 5-string. MY 5-string is a cheap 5-string that looks good and sounds fine, but it doesn't sound as good as my Jazz. So I don't use it for everything.
My Jazz is unusual because it has an all-maple neck and has the 70's era pickup spacing of 4" center to center. It has a LOT more sustain than my '65 Jazz that I bought in 1966 did. I toured for 3 years with that Jazz and loved the neck on it and the sound. Then all my touring gear was stolen in 1976. In 1985 I bought my '82 Jazz specifically because it felt the same as my '65 did. As soon as I started playing it, it felt like coming home. I didn't expect it to sound better than my '65, but it does. Because the bridge pickup is almost 1/2" closer to the bridge (0.4" to be exact), it has a little brighter sound and if I want it to growl, I'll just dig into the strings over the bridge pickup and it will growl all day long.
As far as the sustain goes, my '65 had almost none until I decided to give everything a good cleaning when I first started touring and found there was a strip of open cell phone glued to the inside of the big ashtray pickup guard/cover. I scraped that sucker off and then lo and behold I had some sustain. One of the songs we did in our 5-pc group was "Eminence Front" by The Who. The beginning of that son has the bass hitting a low F and letting it ring for two measures (8-beats) before hitting the next note, a Db (C#), and letting it ring out for two measures. My '65 had a maple neck with a rosewood fret board and at least that last measure may as well have been a rest. My '82 Jazz has al all-maple neck and it rings out that lone with no problem.
I could be wrong, but I attribute that much better sustain to that all-maple neck. I run the controls on my jazz maxed and only boost the low mids at ~250Hz up to 1:30 with my Eden amps and it sounds golden. With my DNA amp I also boost the bass EQ up to 1 o'clock because It is a shelving control at 35Hz whereas the Eden Bass EQ shelves at 30Hz. In any case, I just love the sound I get from my '82 Jazz and always play it unless the song we're playing needs notes on that B-string. I played with one group that had about 5 songs that called for use on the B string and I'd drop my E-string down to get the note I needed. It's a pain to keep tuning it down and then back up though and more than once I've forgotten to tune it back up before playing the next song...and transposing on the fly with it dropped down a full step or more is no fun! So I bought a 5-string
My 5-string is an old Rogue LX405 Pro that I bought in 2009 when they were still made in Korea. Fit and finish on it is spectacular and sound is good. Not great mind you, but good. Unfortunately they've changed factories twice since then and the ones that are made in China can have as nice of a fit and finish as mine, but I wouldn't buy it without looking it over first. I bought mine sight unseen and was very pleasantly surprised with it. As a 5-string it has a much wider neck than Jazz, but it's not a thicker neck. It has a 12" radius on the neck compared to the 7.25" radius on my Jazz so it's super flat by comparison. But with its slim neck I found I could get around on it just fine.
My 5-string is an active bass that can be played in either active or passive mode and I play it in passive mode. That way I don't have to change the gain on my amp to compensate for its much hotter active signal. In passive mode the EQ knobs don't work but the volume and the blend knob both do (has both a neck and bridge pickups). I typically just turn the blend knob about 1/4 trun towards the bridge pickup and I've got a good sound. That makes swapping basses must faster. Plus I use a wireless that I just unplug from my Jazz and plug into 5-string. I might replace my 5-string somewhere down the road, but I'll never let go of my '82 Jazz.
