The Big "I'm Not An Ignoramus" Bass Info Thread

So, I was just reading another post, where I found out that I've been mispronouncing "RickenBACKer" all these years, mainly due to the fact that I've heard everyone ELSE around here mispronounce it as well. And now I'm practicing... "Geddy played a RickenBACKer... Tom Petty plays a 12-string RickenBACKer... Lemmy played a RickenBACKer." Feeling a bit foolish, but not nearly so foolish as I might feel had I run into the poster who mentioned the pronounciation and I had screwed it up in his presence.

And it got me to thinking... maybe this is a great place to have a list of little things we ought to know in order to prove our bassist mettle. Some things theory-oriented (It's MixoLYDian, not MixoLODEian), some things bass-oriented (A P-style pickup just LOOKS like two pickups; two coils, one pickup, got it?), but all informative.

I figured it would either be very helpful, good for a good argument, or good for a good laugh... and hopefully all three.


I'll start it with the two mentioned above, though in no way do I claim ownership of the concepts:

1) It's RickenBACKer, not RickenBOCKer.
2) A Precision pickup looks like two pickups, but functions as only one.

 

How about:

3) There is no mode called "Delorean", nor is there a chord called a "demolished 7th".

 

Consider that many students don't read worth a snot anymore - and I'm talking ENGLISH, not standard notation. They hear a word, they see the word, they memorize the look and the sound, and if they get it wrong, oh well. And "Mixolydian" sounds just enough like "Nickelodeon" to confuse people and lead them down the primrose path...

Also, I've had people tell me that their bass has two pickups, only to have them produce said bass and find out it's a P copy, and they counted the coils as separate pickups. It's happened to me more often than I would have ever thought.

 

See the thread title. We're supposed to be HELPING each other on this thread, not enabling each other! Yes, it does matter, even if everyone else gets it, just like it would matter if I pronounced your last name wrong enough times for it to stick with everyone else. It's as bad as people pronouncing Porsche "Porsh".