Having a "Bass VI" as only bass. Doable?

[40Hz]

Briefly owned one and was mostly disappointed. As @lz4005 said earlier, it's not so much a bass or guitar as it is its own thing. It can work, but IMO you have to approach it as what it is - and work the song arrangements and parts you play around it.

I ended up not keeping mine very long. It was an "interesting" instrument. But it really needed more rethinking than I felt like getting into at that point. Especially since I didn't think it brought anything that great to the party sonically. It was ok, but nothing exceptional.

But that's me. YMMV.

 

[Pbassmanca]

So I'm playing bass with a 4 piece band in my new home of Germany, Drums/bass/guitar/keys. kinda like spacey pop, a bit rocky at times. My own bass is still in America till i can get it in November when i go visit. So right now I'm using the singers '74 Jazz Bass which is actually awesome but I want my own bass to tinker with have at the house. So I was thinking to buy a cheap bass till November. So as I was sorting my options I seen the Harley Benton Bass VI copy. Seems cool but not enough reviews really. I am worried about not having enough low end. I would change the strings to flats, but wonder how it'll fit with out instruments. My search results show me alot of post about people using it in a 3 piece band. but with my band sometimes two guitars are playing or just guitar and some synth. I just want to get it to do something different i guess.

Sounds like a horrible idea. I'd just stick with the 74' jazz and then buy a sweet Warwick as soon as possible.........

 

[40Hz]

Just a follow on to my earlier post. If you are thinking in terms of a B-VI, you might want to look at a 5-string bass and use a high-C string set. That'll get you all those convenient to play high notes for your creative prog and jazzy solo bits while still retaining that classic bottom end for everything else.

 

[Ric5]

So I'm playing bass with a 4 piece band in my new home of Germany, Drums/bass/guitar/keys. kinda like spacey pop, a bit rocky at times. My own bass is still in America till i can get it in November when i go visit. So right now I'm using the singers '74 Jazz Bass which is actually awesome but I want my own bass to tinker with have at the house. So I was thinking to buy a cheap bass till November. So as I was sorting my options I seen the Harley Benton Bass VI copy. Seems cool but not enough reviews really. I am worried about not having enough low end. I would change the strings to flats, but wonder how it'll fit with out instruments. My search results show me alot of post about people using it in a 3 piece band. but with my band sometimes two guitars are playing or just guitar and some synth. I just want to get it to do something different i guess.

Jack Bruce made the bass vi work ...

 

[ba55i5t]

I'll second the "it isn't good for a main bass" chorus. I have experience with it and tried hard to get it to work, and had very competent techs look at it. It just didn't work for me. And to be honest saying an E0 is an E0 is missing the whole point of timbre. To me the VI does not have a good usable bass timbre. It is not what you'd expect.

 

[blue4]

It's a bass. It'll work just fine. As long as you aren't flailing away at the strings when playing fingerstyle it should be fine. I have to disagree with the opinions that there is a huge difference in sound. I used a Bronco with a guitar pickup for years, there was no loss of "bass ability." I just don't see how it's logically possible that a bass with 6 strings and similar or the same wood is going to sound radically different in a mix than one with four strings using the same strings and gauges. It's just a short scale bass, same as any other. I have a short scale 5 with pretty narrow string spacing, again no loss of bass due to the extra string and spacing.

JMO. Since I've started playing I've seen so many contradictory "truths" that anymore I just do what I want without worrying about if it will work. 9 out of 10 times bass or string choices work just fine after finding the right eq setting.

 

[Jonithen]

If you buy one and expect it to be like a totally different instrument you're going to be disappointed, because different things are different. If you want the same as what you are used to, then getting something that isn't like that is kind of a dumb thing to do.

 

[jakrees747]

my bass collection consists of one double bass, a burns barracuda (bass VI kinda deal) and a jazzmaster copy modded to take bass vi strings (thats a guitar scale length, so has an even more screwed up shorscale sound than a usual Bass VI)

the last two bands ive played in ive been just playing bass VI as bass, - its a strange beast, and as people have mentioned, its harmonic stack and sustain behaves in wildly different ways to a bass guitar, - theyre not lacking in bass, but its certainly harder to be as punchy as a traditional bass, maybe due to decreased tension on the strings, giving it less of a tight, elasticy sort of sound. what you do get is this lovely plucky, short sustain sort of thing, this sort of slack sounding worn out warm bass sound, which i really like. it seems to take a lot more energy to play with fingers, - pick playing is super attacky and plucky, but then fingerstyle is really really soft, - so you have to sort of adjust your playing to match that some. i know some people say you cant really play fingerstyle with the bass VI, but i dont think thats true, ive been playing in bands with Bass VI doing both fingerstyle and pick for 3 years now, and its definatley doable, - i actually love the sound i get from fingerstyle playing on my super shortscale jazzmaster bass, its got this crazy supermuted pluck to it, almost like a parody of a shortscale bass sound! chords sound like nothing else on the baritone IMO also, theres just a really unusual notes/order/tension relationship that makes it really interesting

there are definatley some more modern bass sounds they cant do, but depending on what youre after they definatley make the air move and the butts sway. the two groups ive been playing with have been a funk band and a jazz/garage rock band, both of which definatley required lots of low end and worked with heavy drummers.

expect some limitations, but lots of new sounds also, - i fell in love with the bass VI sound as soon as started playing it, so dont miss those few things i cant do with it,

can you get a 30day returns policy with it? maybe take it to a few rehersals and see if it doing anything for you

 

[HaphAsSard]

I'll say it again, in hopefully no uncertain terms:

- IME there is no such thing as a distinctive lack of bottom end to VI-type instruments;
- as for reports to the contrary (not difficulty or failure to make them work in general, but specific claims that they did/do not sound bassy enough), I blame operator error - there, I said it;
- is it model- or even specimen-specific? Was I just lucky in picking up the instrument I use (a black OLP MM5 Baritone, with two crappy Duncan-designed HBs in average locations)? I doubt it, but if we follow that line of thought we'd better bear in mind the OP is eyeing not a Fender or Squier but a copy thereof, the Harley Benton GuitarBass VS Vintage series. (By the way, no Jaguar rocking bridge+vibrato tailpiece on it, just a regular TOM hardtail.) We simply don't know how it sounds yet.

Nope, it's not likely to pull off a dead on Pee to a tee. Neither is/can every other (regular) bass and its son-in-law available out there. Which is a big part of the reason for them existing at all.

All the other, usual considerations about playability and even having a real use for it still stand, but are beside the point. Well, they aren't if you only read the thread title, but the opening post is specifically about tone/bassiness.

I used a Bronco with a guitar pickup for years, there was no loss of "bass ability." I just don't see how it's logically possible that a bass with 6 strings and similar or the same wood is going to sound radically different in a mix than one with four strings using the same strings and gauges. It's just a short scale bass, same as any other. I have a short scale 5 with pretty narrow string spacing, again no loss of bass due to the extra string and spacing.

Yes. This. Thank you. Wish I'd stated it as succinctly as you have.

 

[jakrees747]

my problem with comparing the bass VI with a shortscale bass is that, having owned both, the bass VI behaves totally differently

this could be down to the much thinner strings on a bass VI, the difference in neck shape, spacing affecting the way that you attack the string/play it, i dont know, but as tempting as it is to think of it in terms of it being the same scale length= whats the difference, there is a big difference in the way the strings behave on them

my personal experience has been with hard tail bass VI Copys, not unlike the harley benton VI, and i think the considerations about playability are valid, as they are directly relative to how you end up attacking the strings and what kind of sound comes out of them. sorry for the lack of a technical explanation as to why this might be, but they definatley behave and sound differently

 

[HaphAsSard]

my problem with comparing the bass VI with a shortscale bass is that, having owned both, the bass VI behaves totally differently

this could be down to the much thinner strings on a bass VI, the difference in neck shape, spacing affecting the way that you attack the string/play it, i dont know, but as tempting as it is to think of it in terms of it being the same scale length= whats the difference, there is a big difference in the way the strings behave on them

my personal experience has been with hard tail bass VI Copys, not unlike the harley benton VI, and i think the considerations about playability are valid, as they are directly relative to how you end up attacking the strings and what kind of sound comes out of them. sorry for the lack of a technical explanation as to why this might be, but they definatley behave and sound differently

I hear you, and I addressed those points in my first post. Personally, I choose to use regular gauges. [EDIT: "regular" as in "common in regular basses", not "typical of VIs". I use a .105 E.] As for spacing affecting tone, I do agree it may be a concern, but it depends on how one approaches a regular 4-banger in the first place: personally (again) I can play my VI with regular 2-finger pizzicato just fine (playability- as well as and tone-wise), but I do find the spacing a little too cramped when I play standing up with a drummer (I usually sit with my keyboard+VI duo), because it won't let me get carried away as I'd tend to be with my normal fours.

 

[blue4]

There are a few manufacturers that make a standard size set of strings for the bass VI. I believe LaBella even makes them in flats as well.


I think it's one of those things where if you've been playing say, a 35'' Ibanez BTB for years, then you may notice some changes in your sound. But if you're like me and don't even own a long scale bass anymore, the adjustment should be fairly minimal.

When I bought a Viola bass to use as a main player, people told me that a Viola/violin style bass was a niche sound that couldn't do anything but Eleanor Rigby with a pick. That was wrong. It's a very versatile bass. When I went 30" for a 5 string, the line was that the B would be unusable. That was wrong. You can't use tapewounds you'll be buried in the mix, flats aren't for rock, you have to use analog pedals, etc. It's just made me very skeptical I guess.

 

[vickerekes]

A ’62 Fender Bass VI has been my daily driver since ’75. When I had to give up my old Traynor tube head and 6X10 cab, 20 some years ago, the tone was not what I’d become accustomed to. I installed a series switch, which turned the 3 single coil pickups into a big fat 3-bucker. A Staytrem bridge also fixed some of the inherent weaknesses of the instrument. Now, after decades of epic sessions and great memories, I couldn’t imagine not having this one.