P with flats your only bass?

[bucephylus]

Play whatever you want. The “P with Flats” Police here on TB don’t come to my gigs or auditions.

BTW, good palm muting technique and flexible onboard electronics can get a decent player close enough to that spectrum to be practical, IME. In the studio is a different situation.

Also, FWIW, I actually find Uptown Funk with the D-Tuner on a 4 easier in some ways than on the 5, as @JLubinsky-Mast previously noted.

 

[Double Agent]

Ive been able to cover a lot more ground in live settings on a Jazz with rounds (usually nickel, but I can work with stainless too) than with a P-bass wearing flats. It’s easier to get in the ballpark of a P-bass with a Jazz than the other way around IMO/IME. I love a P with flats, but if I were to have only one bass, that would not be my choice.

 

[darwin-bass]

IIRC, James Jamerson was only P with flats. And it began costing him gigs.

 

[Mike N]

I play a P with TI flats, tuned down a half step in a metal band. Other than a few Iron Maiden songs we play, I can't think of many other bands we cover where the Bass player used flats. But, it works for me.....

I've had a bunch of other Basses..... J, PJ, Lakland, Stingray, Ibanez, Spector...... and I still go back to my old P Bass with flats.

 

[Doctor Intrepid]

No and no.

 

[Luckydog]

IIRC, James Jamerson was only P with flats. And it began costing him gigs.

I think its not that simple. Music changed and he didn't change with it, he became unreliable at least to a degree, and had some issues with substance abuse. These were at least contributing factors.

 

[Claymore]

If I narrowed it down to 1, it almost definitely wouldn't be the P... It would either be my SB-2 or the Foundation.

 

[JGbassman]

Nope. My pallet varies too much for just one bass sound. I need a varied spectrum of sonic goodness.

A P with flats is good, but it’s not perfect for everything.

 

[mexicanyella]

I’m only ten years, one bass and one band into playing bass, but my Squier P with chrome flats sure works well against a loud drummer and guitarist (distorted Les Paul and 100-watt Marshall JCM2000 half stack). I don’t have to EQ as much to “fit into my slot” with the flats as I did with the rounds.

They sounded weird and kind of bad to me when I first put them on, duller even than the several-year-old Dunlop rounds they replaced. “Uh-oh,” I thought. “This was a $40 negative learning experience.”

About two songs into a practice though and I saw how they work. Now I hear the bass more in terms of “in context,” and they sound good to me, even playing alone.

 

[Kael]

Find an instrument you can make music with and roll with it. People over complicate this crap. It's music. Make music. If your voice is a P bass with flats, coolio. If it's a 9 string tabletop monstrosity of exotic woods, ew.... but ok, roll with that. Any bass can play any gig. Period.

 

[fishdude101101]

Just curious. I sometimes think I'd like to do that, but then the band plays a tune like "Uptown Funk" and I need a 5 string with rounds?

Everyone says all you need is a P (with flats?) but sometimes that just doesn't work, right? I watch Sean Hurley talk about dumping his 5 string Lakland for a 4 string P. That's all he plays now.

Thoughts?

Well I'll say this, once you start playing a P with flats, or any other bass with flats and get used to the sound, you realize just how many of your favorite songs are recorded with a bass strung with flats, even if the players uses something else with live.

But if you need those lower notes you need them.

I just love the strong fundamental of flats. Some rounds have a good fundamental too, like DR sunbeams.

 

[JRA]

Everyone says all you need is a P (with flats?) but sometimes that just doesn't work, right?

IME: that combination totally sucks...all of the time. a P-bass with rounds is the only combination that would give me the confidence to go on at all, let alone playing.

FWIW: i recently tried some TI jazz flats on a red P-bass. it played and sounded horrible. at first i thought it might be because it was red. but it had nothing to do with the color of the ax --- it was the strings that sucked. i couldn't play them! i can't play flat wound strings. for me, it's almost the same as frets. why bother? OTOH: a red fretless P-bass with the right rounds = better than any other possibility! as always, YMMV.

 

[socialleper]

I don't own a Fender. I don't own a split single coil only bass. And I never us flats.

So no it isn't all you need. There are several genres where that would never work.

 

[Stewie]

Yeah, if I could only have one, I'd sell my upright and my SCPB. They all have flats. But for roots and blues, a fretless P with old flats works just right, for me

 

[LadyLoveStingRay5]

As much as I enjoy my Pbass with TI flats , it couldn’t be my only bass. When I want that sound.... nothing else will do. It’s a must have color in my crayon box .
But no one likes coloring with one crayon .
A good 70’s Jazz bass is my favorite. My US Geddy Lee is top dog wearing Ernie Ball Cobalt flats. It gets the most playing time .
My crayon box would be incomplete without a good 34 scale 5 string “ super jazz”. For me that’s my Fender Elite Jazz V with Dunlop Marcus Miller Super Brights.
I need at least these 3 to cover my needs.
Some people can work with one bass. Not me.

 

[jamro217]

For decades I used a '76 P with light gauge rounds. Recently strung up the '68 P with flats and it's great. I honestly can't imagine paring the fleet down to a couple of instruments, though. At this point I have fourteen or fifteen basses and twenty guitars and there's no end in sight. There are two almost done in the basement. This is the second day of vacation and I hope to make some progress on at least one of the builds.

 

[kmon]

If i had to get down to 1 it probably wouldn't be a P with flats. Might be a P though. Maybe.

 

[scowboy]

My four basses all have rounds. Still can’t hang with flats.

 

[SteveC]

If I had to chose I’d probably go with my Roscoe fretless 5 with nickel rounds.

 

[2F/2F]

A P with flats is not my only bass...

...but I pretty much try to make every other bass I have sound like my P with flats. It's my baseline (no pun intended) for what "An Electric Bass" sounds like .

I have started keeping rounds on a few, just in case...but I don't really like 'em.

I've used flats nearly exclusively since day one of playing bass, in 1988. Rounds are the odd strings out in my book. Never understood their popularity. IMO, pretty much anything I've heard that is obviously played on rounds would sound just as good or better, if played on flats. "What if you need the roundwound sound?" Well, I don't like that sound, and I'm not a studio musician or a hired gun, so I can get away with only playing with the tone I want to play with.

That being said, I can get the job done on rounds, with a little tweaking. I just don't like to. Don't like their striated feel, and don't like their lower tension across the board. I like the smooth feel, high tension/high mass, and naturally treble attenuated sound of flats. Set an amp flat, play a Precision with heavy gauge flats through it, and chances are it'll be a "good tone" to me, or at least very close.