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Oh jeez not another P vs J thread!

...Oh, and you don't always have to choose between P and J. ;)

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So we're not going to talk about this weird pink triangle face thing? Forget P vs. J, what kind of pickups will remove that thing from my nightmares?
 
Some people will notice the difference, musicians and hobbiest musicians but most people would not , hell to most people that are non musicians I am a guitarist

of course!
agree/disagree!

Agree with first half as
You repeated the same thing I said But in different words!
How ever I totally Disagree with the he'll to none musicians !
They are the ones that really matter!
Not to mention pay us!
 
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Hear me out!

I saw someone mention in another thread that a Jazz-style configuration has more "tonal options" than a traditional Precision, split-coil does.

I'm not so sure. The jazz has more knobs, and more separate pickups, but I find that the onboard controls of a P create a huge swing in tone shapes, and that my P is much more responsive to amp eq and pedal chain than my J. Where did the idea of the jazz being more versatile than the p come from, do you believe it or not, and why?
States reasons a jazz is more versatile than a single split coil, then asks why all of his reasons make a jazz more versatile?o_O
Those knobs aren't there for decoration. Neither are the pickups. Their physical placement gives them different sounds. The neck pickup and split single sound similar, and that is where the similarities end. Period. A standard P style bass will never sound anything like the bridge of a jazz or both pickups. It is physically impossible.
 
With high gauge stiff flatwounds and a mute I can get really close to a vintage classic P vibe with my jazz (my P stays in the case most of the time), and the fact that it has an inherently big low mid push has to do a lot with this. My jazz is quite P like in the way it is full and meaty in the crucial frequency spot, let's say 200-400 hz, no holes here. But many times the two pus get my vote for the capability to sit and blend wonderfully and sometimes the bridge pu sounds special with a touch of tube compression and burp.

The fact is that every bass can produce a variety of tones via technique, foam, purcussion etc, but when someone craves for this wde morphing capability, a dual pickups bass does offer that much more easily.

Regarding the never ending debate about the difference between jazz and P, well, play what you like and feel better. I usually don't need a P bass in order to rule, burp or support a band.
 
A P bass is not a one trick pony if you turn down the volume and tone knob to zero and crank your amp to what you consider loud...now ever so slightly turn up the volume knob and slowly turn up the tone knob. You can turn both up or down. Now you're experiencing the versatility of a P bass.

The same details above can be applied to J bass as well or even a PJ.

To mix things up even more, you can position your playing fingers along in different locations around the pickups.

No bass sounds the same as another.
So no P will sound like a J ever.
 
The best answer is that tonal variety doesn't equal versatility. I think that's what I was getting at. I find myself picking up my jazz for like 10% of my regular practice songs, and I think most of that is to justify owning it. My precision, with small tweaks to the eq and only one effect pedal, could pretty much do anything I ask it to, from reggae to blues to punk to 70's funk. Not trolling, just making stray observations based on personal experience and getting 3 pages or replies. It is called TALKbass, after all.
 
The Fender Jazz bass was designed to have over 65,000,000 tonal options, by using subtle combinations of the controls on the bass, and several imaginary controls that can be found in the invisible Fender Operator's Guidebook. I can psychically mail you a copy, but I will need a check for $11.64 and a sample of fabric from your living room drapes. Not those drapes. The P-Bass has 13 distinctive tonal options, but 12 of them are not worth using, and we all know that 1. I would suggest taking a gorgeous woman out for a nice dinner, and trying your best to seduce her. This seems to always solve any problems I am worried by, other than Godzilla attacking Tokyo, which happens far too frequently.
 
The P is more versatile than the J because it is in more words.

Per Wikipedia: The frequency of letters in text has been studied for use in cryptanalysis, and frequency analysis in particular, dating back to the Iraqi mathematician Al-Kindi (c. 801–873 AD), who formally developed the method (the ciphers breakable by this technique go back at least to the Caesar cipher invented by Julius Caesar, so this method could have been explored in classical times.

The first letter of an English word, from most to least common: s a c m p r t b f g d h i n e l o w u v j k q y z x.

As you can see, P comes in fourth place. J comes in 21st place.