What are the differences between active basses and passive basses?

[ahc]

Professor Corey, and I, believe you made this statistic up.

Accuracy is paramount in science, and the true figure is closer to 99.9998%, once you factor out the group which only operates on dedicated outboard power supplies.
Please refrain from injecting your future posts with such wild speculation and "guesstimates".
TB is NOT the place for colloquialisms and folklore!


That is all.

Well, Irwin is "The World's Foremost Authority" so I shall consider myself severely chastised .

 

[Kro]

No. Simply no. There are plenty of LH basses, and you should never try to change your natural inclination. Please don't give out unwarranted information to beginners. If he's more comfortable playing LH, then that's what he should do.

Pianos are also not "right-handed".

I offered information to be "strongly considered" which I think is fair. I didn't go any further than that.

I'm sitting here thinking about it, wondering how many left-handed bass players initially choose a left-handed bass because of a true inclination towards it vs. simply due to the fact that they write with their left hand. I'm legitimately curious on that front, because to be honest I remember when I first started playing guitar: it all felt completely foreign to me. Especially given my piano/sax background at the time - it felt super backwards that left-hand fingers from index to pinkie rasied pitch!

Also, (I say this tongue in cheek, please don't take me too seriously on any of this, I'm completely fine with being called out as wrong) - but if there's such a thing as a left-handed piano, then that logically makes all other pianos explicitly "right-handed".

 

[mcarp555]

I'm sitting here thinking about it, wondering how many left-handed bass players initially choose a left-handed bass because of a true inclination towards it vs. simply due to the fact that they write with their left hand.

What does that even mean? Did you choose a right-handed bass because of a "true inclination" towards it, or simply because you write with your right hand? I don't want to derail the OP's thread by getting into this discussion (again) but I'll simply suggest you "strongly consider" your own approach to playing and try to imagine it from a left-handed player's viewpoint. People such as myself no more made a conscious decision to play LH than you did playing RH. Some people are able to adjust their natural inclination to use the other hand for various reasons; many are not. The OP may be one of those people, so they need to go in whichever direction feels best to them. Availability of instruments, etc. are all secondary.

And pianos are no more left-or right-handed than typewriters. A piano laid out backwards is not explicitly "left-handed". You may think it's funny, but it's a pain in the backside for left-handed players who have to hear about this nonsensical stereotype over and over again, as if it means anything in relation to the discussion at hand.

 

[chris_b]

. . . . which type of base is recommended for beginners and why?

"Beginner" basses are usually cheaper because beginners don't seem to want to spend the money on a more expensive instruments before they've decided to be a bass player or not. I saw a guy recommending buy your second bass first, ie get a good one and it will be easier to learn on. I agree with this advice.

The differences between active and passive basses is tone. Passive basses give you everything you could want and active basses give you a little bit more.

I have a passive P bass and an active Jazz bass. My preference is that way around so the preamp in the Jazz can bring out the dynamics of that sound, but really they could be either way around. I haven't experienced any upsides or downsides between them.

Find a good bass that makes you sound "just right"!