Damn, I thought you were going to say, “the world doesn’t need more guitarists who think they can just pick up a bass and play like a bassist.” But since you didn’t, I just did.
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Damn, I thought you were going to say, “the world doesn’t need more guitarists who think they can just pick up a bass and play like a bassist.” But since you didn’t, I just did.
Most players using an 8 string are playing binary core ******** anyway rather than utilising any of their range at all, just hammering 11011000010010100001000 on the low string. Since you’re a guitar player first, just get something with 1 string so you can do what every bass playing guitarist does and play root notes.
Very swift reply as the pub beckons 
Got a Harley Benton 6, that low B is lovely and tight for me - I've gone down lower, but only for buggering round with metal and not as a serious thing, but again handled nicely down to A.
Got a Harley Benton 6, that low B is lovely and tight for me - I've gone down lower, but only for buggering round with metal and not as a serious thing, but again handled nicely down to A.
JeezyMcNuggles
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You're good to go with the 5er. It's not as massive as a 6, so you'll be able to make the transition easier. Plus, you be spend much, if any, time on the extra high string anyway.
Thank you guys for sugestions. I would try to answer some of your questions.
We will play modern prog metal. I dont need to be octave below guitar, I know that in this price range it would be pretty much stupid. Active electronic is plus. Actually, I want to play on it more like a guitarist rather than bassist, if that makes a sense
Something like Nolly from Periphery.
He has also the sound I really dig, tight and with some dirt and presence (I know that its because of Dingwall and darkglass that are very specific tonewise).
Currently, I can buy secondhand Ibanez SR500 BM 4er, he says it is super light (so big plus for me). Do you think it could be great choice? Still, I would like to have 5er more to be honest.
We will play modern prog metal. I dont need to be octave below guitar, I know that in this price range it would be pretty much stupid. Active electronic is plus. Actually, I want to play on it more like a guitarist rather than bassist, if that makes a sense
Something like Nolly from Periphery. He has also the sound I really dig, tight and with some dirt and presence (I know that its because of Dingwall and darkglass that are very specific tonewise).
Currently, I can buy secondhand Ibanez SR500 BM 4er, he says it is super light (so big plus for me). Do you think it could be great choice? Still, I would like to have 5er more to be honest.
This is true with one exception- for all these "doom" fill in the blank "metal" styles it is almost a biblical requirement that if the guitar is droning along in drop F# (or whatever is the flavor of the month), then the bass must also.
Maybe it would be cool if the guitars are playing in the bass register that the bass actually just do a 4-string and play an octave up or really high. Are there any bands that have standard tuned bass with downtuned guitars with heavier music? Just curious?
I take your point. Although you might agree that the scale matters less than the ability to think like a bassist. Myself as an example: I play a 31" scale, and sometimes I play guitar, but nobody's ever said I play bass like a guitarist.
Maybe they didn't notice you were playing a bass instead of a guitar
Maybe they didn't notice you were playing a bass instead of a guitar
I'm lucky if I get noticed at all.
Depending on what the guitarist is playing, I may recommend a 34” scale 6 string.
For 34”, yes, you are right, a longer scale will make a clearer low string, but a longer scale will also make a thin sounding high string, especially in the lower frets. Heck, I don’t even like the G string below the 7th fret on a 34” scale.
This is precisely why multi-scale basses exist (see Dingwalls, which may be out of your budget). 34” scale is a good compromise.
I’d recommend a 6 string not to go lower than the low B on a 5’er, but to go higher. If your guitarist is pounding the low notes they have access to, someone needs to add some treble back into the sound. I had a situation like this, and I would gladly go up to the upper registers on my bass and play melodies up there.
This should be a discussion between you and the guitarist before making a purchase though. Understand the role you each need to play to make the best music you can.
For 34”, yes, you are right, a longer scale will make a clearer low string, but a longer scale will also make a thin sounding high string, especially in the lower frets. Heck, I don’t even like the G string below the 7th fret on a 34” scale.
This is precisely why multi-scale basses exist (see Dingwalls, which may be out of your budget). 34” scale is a good compromise.
I’d recommend a 6 string not to go lower than the low B on a 5’er, but to go higher. If your guitarist is pounding the low notes they have access to, someone needs to add some treble back into the sound. I had a situation like this, and I would gladly go up to the upper registers on my bass and play melodies up there.
This should be a discussion between you and the guitarist before making a purchase though. Understand the role you each need to play to make the best music you can.
Thank you guys for sugestions. I would try to answer some of your questions.
We will play modern prog metal. I dont need to be octave below guitar, I know that in this price range it would be pretty much stupid. Active electronic is plus. Actually, I want to play on it more like a guitarist rather than bassist, if that makes a sense
He has also the sound I really dig, tight and with some dirt and presence (I know that its because of Dingwall and darkglass that are very specific tonewise).
Currently, I can buy secondhand Ibanez SR500 BM 4er, he says it is super light (so big plus for me). Do you think it could be great choice? Still, I would like to have 5er more to be honest.
What is your budget. Because there are some other brands which offer Multiscale basses like Ibanez and Cort. And although they aren't cheap, they cost much less than Dingwall.
The band Meshuggah's (who's responsible for the modern "djent" style) bassist plays a 4 string tuned *up* F, Bb, Eb, Ab IIRC....I haven't listened to them in years but I imagine he's buried under the guitars this way with their current super low tuning.
To the OP, just get a decent 5 string and then maybe look at a 35" scale if they need to downtuned even further. For a recording project I have I restrung my 34" BEAD and drop tune to A for the songs where that's needed, the low B is a 131 or 132 gauge and works fine....of course I bet a heavier gauge would be even better.
This topic really sets the alarm bells ringing. As a former guitarist of some 15 years, I've learned a lot about djent-core "progressive" metal and also about making the jump to bass.
First of all, I'd be wary of joining a band to play bass if you're actually a guitarist - why aren't you joining as a guitarist? Your understanding of things like scale, tunings, notes and string gauges sounds a bit lacking. You don't need a 5 or 6 string, you could get a 4 string and play it all. Remember that there are only 12 semitones in western music and having a 6 string bass doesn't give you any more notes than a 4 string, you just get the same notes in more octaves and more positioning options on the neck. The number of strings also isn't linked to the complexity of the music at all - especially important to remember since djent-core is harmonically and melodically very simple despite being called "progressive", it isn't really progressive at all.
If you want to sound like Nolly Getgood, you will a Dingwall or something else with a scale of >35" for the lowest strings. For a long time in the chase to get the Meshuggah sound, musicians used thick string guages, then longer scales with thick gauges. The issue here is that the thicker the string gauge, the less definition you get playing guick notes in the lower register. This ended up being a bit of a revelation when people discovered the secret for clarity and definition in low notes was actually best achieved by using thinner strings on a longer scale. The heavier gauges tend to give you a fatter, fuller sound but have less attack - think about twanging a thick rubber band and then twanging a thinner one. Especially helpful when you wash everything in a ton of distortion like many djent (surely the most cringe-worth name for a sub-genre of metal ever) bands do which can cause notes to get lost in the fizz.
This is counter-intuitive to common practice of using heavier strings on bass - heavy strings do give a very solid, deep and sustained fundamental, but this is of less value in djent where the riffs are usually played with a lot of staccato notes.
Getting the speakers and amp right will be a challenge too. You will need a lot of watts so a little lunchbox head probably isn't going to cut it and you'll need a lot of speakers specifically voiced for the job. getting the clarity in low notes played so rapidly is a challenge for any amp not specifically designed for the task. Buying a Behringer bass combo and a cheap distortion pedal won't get the result you're looking for. Most PAs in bars or clubs you will play might not have subs to get your sound out clean so you'll be relying on the amp.
Once you've got the gear sorted out, the next issue is that you'll be playing the bass like a guitarist on a bass. I did at first, any guitarist who jumps over does. I've been playing guitar for 15 years or so and I'd say it still took 6-8 months to really start to get the feel and groove of a bassist, and I say this as a musician who spent most of his musical development more interested in bassists and their approach than I was in guitarists. If you're not really going to throw yourself into it, you'll just end up playing boring guitar riffs on bass and it won't be great for the band. Don't expect to buy your gear and turn up to your first rehearsal and start pumping out awesome lines because it just won't happen unless you're really keen to put the homework in.
Forgive me if I'm jumping to conclusions but reading your posts it doesn't sound like you really want to be a bassist, it sounds like you want to be a Nolly clone so you can get into a band. There are enough lazy guitarists-on-bass in bands out there already, ask yourself if the band might be better served by getting a real bassist? If you really want to switch to bass, do it and practice, then join a band once you can really serve the music.
Finally on the note of 8 string guitars, it's interesting how they've fallen out of fashion. It used to be a case of "more is more" for guitarists and frankly those 8 strings sounded awful tuned to F# or whatever. At a scale where the high strings didn't sound shrill and painful to listen to, the F# would sound so flubby and loose.
At a scale where the F# would be tight enough to not sound flubby, all the other strings, particularly the G, B and E would sound so ice-picky and horrible. Meshuggah use something like 29.75" scale on their 8 strings and the high strings sound dire. Fanned frets are an option but still, tuning that low creates a nightmare when it comes to EQ. You can EQ the amp to get the bottom strings to sound tight with plenty of clarity and attack, but the top strings goes awful.
It's quite telling that Periphery barely use 8s any more and only seem to do one or two bits on each record with them to keep the fans happy. Animals as Leaders have moved away from it too, with Tosin Abasi using that Rick Toone bass / guitar hybrid thing for the low stuff and Javier Reyes just avoiding using the lowest notes. These guitars create a sort of technological and acoustic contradiction where it's very hard to make them sound good and the music suffers as it has to be written to make it fit. I remember a telling interview with Morten Hagstrom where he talked about not being able to play powerchords because they sounded like mush, so both guitars and bass had to play the riffs in unison to make them sound thick enough on stage. It just seems like such a way of tying your hands behind your back from a musical and sonic perspective and it was a compromise that 7 strings never really had to make when they weren't being tuned to such extremes.
Good luck in your endeavor though, let us know how you get on!
First of all, I'd be wary of joining a band to play bass if you're actually a guitarist - why aren't you joining as a guitarist? Your understanding of things like scale, tunings, notes and string gauges sounds a bit lacking. You don't need a 5 or 6 string, you could get a 4 string and play it all. Remember that there are only 12 semitones in western music and having a 6 string bass doesn't give you any more notes than a 4 string, you just get the same notes in more octaves and more positioning options on the neck. The number of strings also isn't linked to the complexity of the music at all - especially important to remember since djent-core is harmonically and melodically very simple despite being called "progressive", it isn't really progressive at all.
If you want to sound like Nolly Getgood, you will a Dingwall or something else with a scale of >35" for the lowest strings. For a long time in the chase to get the Meshuggah sound, musicians used thick string guages, then longer scales with thick gauges. The issue here is that the thicker the string gauge, the less definition you get playing guick notes in the lower register. This ended up being a bit of a revelation when people discovered the secret for clarity and definition in low notes was actually best achieved by using thinner strings on a longer scale. The heavier gauges tend to give you a fatter, fuller sound but have less attack - think about twanging a thick rubber band and then twanging a thinner one. Especially helpful when you wash everything in a ton of distortion like many djent (surely the most cringe-worth name for a sub-genre of metal ever) bands do which can cause notes to get lost in the fizz.
This is counter-intuitive to common practice of using heavier strings on bass - heavy strings do give a very solid, deep and sustained fundamental, but this is of less value in djent where the riffs are usually played with a lot of staccato notes.
Getting the speakers and amp right will be a challenge too. You will need a lot of watts so a little lunchbox head probably isn't going to cut it and you'll need a lot of speakers specifically voiced for the job. getting the clarity in low notes played so rapidly is a challenge for any amp not specifically designed for the task. Buying a Behringer bass combo and a cheap distortion pedal won't get the result you're looking for. Most PAs in bars or clubs you will play might not have subs to get your sound out clean so you'll be relying on the amp.
Once you've got the gear sorted out, the next issue is that you'll be playing the bass like a guitarist on a bass. I did at first, any guitarist who jumps over does. I've been playing guitar for 15 years or so and I'd say it still took 6-8 months to really start to get the feel and groove of a bassist, and I say this as a musician who spent most of his musical development more interested in bassists and their approach than I was in guitarists. If you're not really going to throw yourself into it, you'll just end up playing boring guitar riffs on bass and it won't be great for the band. Don't expect to buy your gear and turn up to your first rehearsal and start pumping out awesome lines because it just won't happen unless you're really keen to put the homework in.
Forgive me if I'm jumping to conclusions but reading your posts it doesn't sound like you really want to be a bassist, it sounds like you want to be a Nolly clone so you can get into a band. There are enough lazy guitarists-on-bass in bands out there already, ask yourself if the band might be better served by getting a real bassist? If you really want to switch to bass, do it and practice, then join a band once you can really serve the music.
Finally on the note of 8 string guitars, it's interesting how they've fallen out of fashion. It used to be a case of "more is more" for guitarists and frankly those 8 strings sounded awful tuned to F# or whatever. At a scale where the high strings didn't sound shrill and painful to listen to, the F# would sound so flubby and loose.
At a scale where the F# would be tight enough to not sound flubby, all the other strings, particularly the G, B and E would sound so ice-picky and horrible. Meshuggah use something like 29.75" scale on their 8 strings and the high strings sound dire. Fanned frets are an option but still, tuning that low creates a nightmare when it comes to EQ. You can EQ the amp to get the bottom strings to sound tight with plenty of clarity and attack, but the top strings goes awful.
It's quite telling that Periphery barely use 8s any more and only seem to do one or two bits on each record with them to keep the fans happy. Animals as Leaders have moved away from it too, with Tosin Abasi using that Rick Toone bass / guitar hybrid thing for the low stuff and Javier Reyes just avoiding using the lowest notes. These guitars create a sort of technological and acoustic contradiction where it's very hard to make them sound good and the music suffers as it has to be written to make it fit. I remember a telling interview with Morten Hagstrom where he talked about not being able to play powerchords because they sounded like mush, so both guitars and bass had to play the riffs in unison to make them sound thick enough on stage. It just seems like such a way of tying your hands behind your back from a musical and sonic perspective and it was a compromise that 7 strings never really had to make when they weren't being tuned to such extremes.
Good luck in your endeavor though, let us know how you get on!
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i play , keys/bass/gtr ... since 1963 ..= old fart
i have always played 34" scale basses ... 4, 5 or 6 ...
for hand comfort , moving from guitar ... i like a 5 string with an asymmetrical neck backside ... many have that ...
my current 5ver build uses a Warmoth Deluxe Jazz 5 ... feels great going from my P neck( 4 strg Jazz body ) to electric or acoustic guitar ... i think ease of playing is paramount ... then you can tune however , .. and play and practice more easily .. !
i have always played 34" scale basses ... 4, 5 or 6 ...
for hand comfort , moving from guitar ... i like a 5 string with an asymmetrical neck backside ... many have that ...
my current 5ver build uses a Warmoth Deluxe Jazz 5 ... feels great going from my P neck( 4 strg Jazz body ) to electric or acoustic guitar ... i think ease of playing is paramount ... then you can tune however , .. and play and practice more easily .. !
buldog5151bass
Kibble, milkbones, and P Basses. And redheads.
The best scale bass is the one that is the most comfortable to play. Start picking them up and trying them.
The OP states he has no bass experience. Too many of the "suggestions" here are irrelevant to the needs of someone who's starting out. I suggest the OP get as middle-of-the-road a bass as there is, say, a copy or clone of a Fender Precision 4-string or something equally ordinary. At his level there's no defensible reason to push him toward specialty basses.
Secondhand SR500 would be an excellent first bass, especially for the kind of music you'll be playing.
-You can sound great and do what you need to do with a good 4-string.
-If you want a 5'er, get a 5'er. If you THINK you MUST need a 5'er to do a good job...well, seek some advice from Jaco or Carol or about a million other successful bassists.
-Or get both a 4 AND a 5'er. Learn to feel comfortable on both.
-You're beginning. Assumptions based on guitar work can be misleading as to your requirements cuz you play, in correct key, with your drummer and augment--not copy--the guitarist unless a part is written to do that (copy) for a specific song-reason.
You are generally striving to be playing "correctly different" from the guitarist IMO because you want to ADD to the music, not double-down on the guitarist.
That's my overview on the subject. Good luck.
-If you want a 5'er, get a 5'er. If you THINK you MUST need a 5'er to do a good job...well, seek some advice from Jaco or Carol or about a million other successful bassists.
-Or get both a 4 AND a 5'er. Learn to feel comfortable on both.
-You're beginning. Assumptions based on guitar work can be misleading as to your requirements cuz you play, in correct key, with your drummer and augment--not copy--the guitarist unless a part is written to do that (copy) for a specific song-reason.
You are generally striving to be playing "correctly different" from the guitarist IMO because you want to ADD to the music, not double-down on the guitarist.
That's my overview on the subject. Good luck.
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The top question in your original post:
If the answer to that question is "no," the follow-up question about scale length becomes irrelevant.
As far as that follow-up question goes, I believe ESP/LTD or Schecter might have some affordable 35" scale instruments.
