Looking for Recordings: Fender J With Flats

[Paul New]

All this jazz with flats talk inspired me to get out my old $89 SX and finally set it up. Labella DT flats 45-105 installed and it sounds so much better than it should!

 

[_Obra_]

 

[booch29]

Wow, Meshell sound incredible! She really can't miss!

Yeaaaah! Meshell is on another level!

 

[Jeff Scott]

BTW, those three songs in post 52 are totally improvised. They were culled from practice sessions that we did every weekend; we'd jam for a while every practice to come up with new material for song writing.

 

[wolffire99]

Aside from his tone, while there's lotsa talk about "underrated" bassists on TB, Stirratt definitely qualifies!

A master of playing the song and making it interesting at the same time

 

[JMacBass65]

Mentioned but not posted, the entire Stadium Arcadium album was supposedly a Jazz bass with flats, lots of distortion and compression also so not a pure Jazz with flats but...

Also I assume these are flats, she uses Fender 9050s now, this is from 2009 and these look like they could be Chromes?

My mind is completely blown!!!!

 

[DirkP]

All of Khruangbin's recordings, as far as I know.

OK, clones allowed She plays a cheap 150-300 SX Jazz Bass clone. Their guitar player upgraded it with new pickups. So cool to stay with this bass since many years.

James Jameson

James Jamer(!)so(!)n never recorded with a Jazz Bass. There’s another post claiming, all Detroit Motown is a Jazz with flats. Wrong. A P with flats.

My favourite from Joe Osborne is San Francisco, sung by Scott McKenzie. I heard it as an oldie, when I was 10 or 11 years old. One of the first singles I bought.
The bassline is incredible melodic and intelligent and full of soul. I guess it was one of the reasons that made me a bassplayer. Love that vintage stereo with all that bass on one channel.

 

[DJ Bebop]

All this jazz with flats talk inspired me to get out my old $89 SX and finally set it up. Labella DT flats 45-105 installed and it sounds so much better than it should!

Not a J but I do have an SX P with La Bella Jamerson Flats...

 

[Paul New]

Not a J but I do have an SX P with La Bella Jamerson Flats...

View attachment 5336392

Looks just like a P Bass to me.

 

[Ric Vice]

When there was nothing else available, we all played Fender or Labella Flat wound strings. The choice was pretty simple between the two.
Gibson Bass Strings didn't fit a Fender bass, because they were to short.

 

[Ric Vice]

and the masterpiece- "I Just Dropped In To See What Condition My Condition Was In" -The First Edition- where he DETUNED his bass for the recording!

And all this time I thought Kenny Rogers played the bass part on that tune.

 

[Snaxster]

Aston "Family Man" Barrett (RIP)

 

[Brians356]

Another example of a Jazz bass played fairly aggressively, with flats and a pick, from this Frank Zappa masterpiece, "The Grand Wazoo" the track is "Blessed Relief" a really nice jazz waltz... "Erroneous" on bass- who is actually Alex Dmochowski.

Dave, what do you hear in the tone or impulse that tells you it's a Jazz vs P?

Wow! Billy Byers, Ernie Watts, Ken Shroyer, Ernie Tack on that session.
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[LHbassist]

Dave, what do you hear in the tone or impulse that tells you it's a Jazz vs P?

Wow! Billy Byers, Ernie Watts, Ken Shroyer, Ernie Tack on that session.
-

I first heard the best of the best Jazz basses back in N.Y. City- in the mid- late 60's a friend had a stack knob. The tone always stuck in my head. NO other bass of that era, sounded quite like that. My Late friend Peter Tholke, had a matched pair of sunburst 1962's, a P-bass, and a J-bass- that he'd purchased from a retiring N.Y. session musician. That Jazz bass, to me, was what I thought a great Jazz bass should feel and sound like. I loved his P-bass, but that J-bass was the holy grail to me. So- I know exactly what a J sounds like, vs. a P. There is one tune, that had me fooled for years. "Sunny" by Bobby Hebb, I thought had a great old P-bass sound on it. Until, one day listening through phones- I was stunned to hear a J-bass, with flats and a factory mute!
Erroneous, is indeed playing a J with flats and a pick- there really is no other way to get that exact tone, and attack.