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JAZZ BASS PLAYERS--Which Pickup Do You Attenuate?

Which Pickup Do You Attenuate On Your Jazz Bass?

  • Neck Open, Bridge Turned Down To Some Degree

    Votes: 39 23.2%

  • Bridge Open, Neck Turned Down To Some Degree

    Votes: 28 16.7%

  • Both Wide Open

    Votes: 72 42.9%

  • Both Turned Down To Some Degree

    Votes: 12 7.1%

  • Carrots

    Votes: 17 10.1%
  • Total voters
    168
electracoyote

electracoyote

Jan 2, 2009
16,390
13,852
Purple Mountain Majesties
#1
I used to just run both pickups wide open on my Jazz basses, but lately I've been experimenting with turning one or the other down a bit. You can hear the phase start to shift a little, and you get a slightly different tone. Very cool.

I'm favoring leaving neck wide open and slightly attentuating the bridge until I hear the change. Gives it a little mwahh and cleans it up a bit, not quite as much string noise. Makes slap and pop a different animal as well.

What's your setting and why?
 
#3
You have to play with it, and listen to what you get. I tend to have the bridge up all the way, and just a little bit of the neck rolled on to take any sort of midrange harshness out. I have the tone rolled almost off, but up enough so that the tone is not muffled, but not too much so that the frets and strings don't get clacky. I like a sound that sounds good (go figure), and feels good to the ear and body when the sound washes over you. Too loud or too harsh is not pleasant, to me. Yet it has to be articulate, by which I mean you hear the harmonic content of the bass's wood and strings. And I also like the amp adjusted so that you also feel the bass in your gut, as well as hear the notes clearly defined by the mids.

YMMV, of course.
 
#6
depends on the song. If I want something more agressive than I´d have the bridge wide opened and the neck 1/4 rolled off. If I want a more ballad kind of tone than that would be neck wide opened and bridge 1/4 rolled off. The tone pot always stays at 1/2 except when slapping (but I´m still learning).
 
#17
Prior to buying a Sadowsky bass, I owned a number of Jazz basses and Jazz style basses. All were run through a Sadowsky Preamp/DI. All basses were modded as Vol/Bal/Tone.

Bass settings are:

bridge pickup = wide open.
Neck pickup = none to some but not much.

Floor preamp settings see the bass control boosted.

I very much love the strong mids of the bridge pup, but with deep bottom end to support it. It cuts through and has girth.
 
#19
I read somewhere that the secret to getting the most tone out of a Jazz Bass is to keep both volumes rolled back a bit (ratio depending on tone preference). Ever since I started doing that, my tone became a lot meatier.
 

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