Enjoy the benefits of a premium membership!
Upgrade Account
-
TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
Join free Log in
Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.
Fender jazz or bongo
- Thread starter Peter bassman
- Start date
I've never seen Fender as a good choice for 5 string basses. Those I played were okay at best, but I've never played a Fender 5 where the B string felt great.
The Bongo on the other hand, is great as 4, 5 or 6.
The Bongo on the other hand, is great as 4, 5 or 6.
If you cannot play both first, the Fender Jazz is the safer bet. Given what you're going to spend for a US Jazz or MM Bongo though, you might want to consider Sandberg.
MusicMan HS configuration I probable the best combo. Love my Bongo HS Piezo.
Isn't this like comparing a bath towel to a laptop? They're completely different animals.
Last edited:
Peter,
These are very different basses. Neither one is necessarily better, what's more important is what you want from a bass.
Bongos have a very unique, modern look that some people love, while others don't. Do you like the look of it? The jazz bass is a more traditional look that more people are familiar with. Neither one is wrong, it's a matter of which one you like.
The pickups in a jazz bass are single coils, which are brighter (more treble/high frequency in the sound) and also may produce some hum, depending on how you use them. The HS Bongo Bass has one single coil and one humbucker pickup - the humbucker has a darker (less treble) tone and won't hum.
The bongo is also an active bass, meaning that it requires a battery to operate a small preamp built into the bass which allows you to adjust some EQ from the instrument itself. I think Bongos have an 18v preamp which means it actually requires two 9v batteries. The preamp also affects the sound in terms of clarity.
If you can find some demos to listen to on YouTube, this will give you a better sense of which one has the sound you prefer. If it were me, I'd go with the Jazz, but I'm not the one buying the bass. Only you will know which one suits you best.
Good luck!
These are very different basses. Neither one is necessarily better, what's more important is what you want from a bass.
Bongos have a very unique, modern look that some people love, while others don't. Do you like the look of it? The jazz bass is a more traditional look that more people are familiar with. Neither one is wrong, it's a matter of which one you like.
The pickups in a jazz bass are single coils, which are brighter (more treble/high frequency in the sound) and also may produce some hum, depending on how you use them. The HS Bongo Bass has one single coil and one humbucker pickup - the humbucker has a darker (less treble) tone and won't hum.
The bongo is also an active bass, meaning that it requires a battery to operate a small preamp built into the bass which allows you to adjust some EQ from the instrument itself. I think Bongos have an 18v preamp which means it actually requires two 9v batteries. The preamp also affects the sound in terms of clarity.
If you can find some demos to listen to on YouTube, this will give you a better sense of which one has the sound you prefer. If it were me, I'd go with the Jazz, but I'm not the one buying the bass. Only you will know which one suits you best.
Good luck!
Play them both if you can. I prefer the Bongo over any Fender 5, Fender B string is anywhere from bad to just ok. Bongo B string is one of the best. I love it!
I love a jazz bass too but for a 5 string I'd take Bongo everytime.
This B string continues to blow me away.
I love a jazz bass too but for a 5 string I'd take Bongo everytime.
This B string continues to blow me away.
You can basically just become enamored with both a jazz bass and a bongo bass and find yourself wondering which one to actually buy. It doesn't particularly matter that they're very different. You still need to choose. So it can be helpful to have some people with experience spell out the differences, especially the less obvious ones that might only reveal themselves in live playing.
Basically I would say go with the Jazz bass. I've owned and gigged both quite a bit. The Jazz bass has the natural, inherent Fender midrange that makes it always work. It'll stay in the pocket but you'll be able to hear it and it'll punch without having to literally boost the midrange using EQ. It'll work equally well with fingers or pick with no knob turning needed. The Bongo is not quite so easy. I'll paraphrase some thoughts I've posted in the past. I would describe the Bongo as having a fundamentally weak sound that relies heavily on the preamp to cover for it. With a Stingray it's the perfect marriage of preamp and pickup. Each needs the other and they contribute equally. With the Bongo there is a sense that it's nearly all preamp with not much substance behind it. The pickups are not positioned such that they are viable when soloed. So you always need to be working with a blend of the two. I always found that the Bongo was either a bit too woofy and EB0-like, or a bit too Jaco. It was tough to find the optimal sweet spot. I believe I ended up settling on favoring the neck pickup about 75%, simply because anything else was either too scooped or too nasal and thin.
I have theorized that part of the issue I have with the Bongo comes from the high headroom of the preamp. You can sort of saturate a Stingray by playing hard, but that doesn't happen with the Bongo. It's the feeling of needing to turn up the gain on your amp, or raise the pickups closer to the strings. I could never get it to deliver the rich, intense digging in sound that I wanted, and had to simply compensate by turning up the preamp EQ. That's my big critique of the Bongo, it always felt and sounded like the pickups were too far away from the strings, even though they weren't.
I'll also say that the midrange on the Bongo is odd. It's one of the few basses where I reliably dislike the sound when I hear it on YouTube and elsewhere. It's like the midrange sounds like it's being pushed, but the effects of scooping the mids remain. For example, playing with a pick doesn't achieve the same volume as playing with fingers on the Bongo generally. Or it takes on a more underlying type of presence in the mix than you would expect given what sounds like adequate midrange. The only way to get it out of that would be to boost the mids to an exaggerated degree or favor one pickup, in which case you quickly start to run into the too woofy/too Jaco dilemma.
I'm not sure I'd be persuaded that the Bongo's B string is that much better than the Fender's would be. My Bongo 5 had the same exact B string problems that every 34" B string has. Namely that it needs almost a completely different setup just for that one string to make it ring out, sustain, and sound as rich, powerful and present as the other strings. I think that's pretty inescapable at 34". It can be made to work fairly well but it's not somehow magically immune to physics. And don't forget, with the Bongo 5 comes the slipping off the fretboard G string thing. Yep, that's in the Bongo too.
Obviously this sounds fairly harsh toward the Bongo, but it's a bass I gigged for about 50 shows. I'm fairly familiar with it and have no bias. I think it's one of the coolest looking basses ever. With a different preamp and pickups it would probably transform entirely. Also, if it were a single H Bongo, that's a different story entirely as that one pickup is in the Stingray spot. That's a much stronger position than the ones chosen for the HH.
The original post specified an HS configuration, how does the pickup placement work on that?
To the "play them both and decide" team.
Where does a guy go these days to find a Music Man Bongo - or really anything more obscure than a Fender, Schecter, or Ibanez - at a music store?
Where does a guy go these days to find a Music Man Bongo - or really anything more obscure than a Fender, Schecter, or Ibanez - at a music store?
Bongo HS model hasn't been made for years, so assuming OP is referring to two used basses. Which may be local to them
I just got a Bongo 6 and I love it. I played Fender Jazz for years (but never a 5ver) and they are a good solid workhorse. (Fender is kindof the gold standard for a reason). Mais j'adore EBMM. Le manche d'un Fender ne battra jamais un manche de Music Man en enable torrefie. IMO.
I think the general thinking on TB is that we all live near a guitar store that has every brand and model of bass made.
That would be essentially the same as the HH placement I believe. I'm not sure exactly where the neck S pickup is placed but I think it's closer to the neck than a P pickup. In my opinion it would have been better on the HS to use the extra space freed up by the S to move the H into the Stingray position. That would be killer. But, it is pushed closer to the bridge like in the HH.
Believe it or not, I've seen one in a Guitar Center, and I don't even live in a very big city. It didn't stay long though.
You're right that it's not always possible to test drive the basses we want, so threads like this can be helpful in those cases.
Je choisirais le Fender Jazz. Ne serait-ce que parce que « jazz » sonne mieux en français que « bongo ». 
Yeah, it's best to try them both out, to see which feels better, plays better, sounds better to you. Ideally, you'd need to try them in your band, to see which works best for your music.
Fenders are more popular, so if you bought it, then changed your mind, you'd be able to onsell it easier. Be prepared, if you choose the Bongo, as they generally get a bad rap, just from their look. So, if the Bongo doesn't work, in your band, it may take longer to on sell.
I find the Bongo to be a versatile, modern sounding, powerhouse. Off hand I'd say, don't be a drongo, get the Bongo.
Fenders are more popular, so if you bought it, then changed your mind, you'd be able to onsell it easier. Be prepared, if you choose the Bongo, as they generally get a bad rap, just from their look. So, if the Bongo doesn't work, in your band, it may take longer to on sell.
I find the Bongo to be a versatile, modern sounding, powerhouse. Off hand I'd say, don't be a drongo, get the Bongo.
