late to the jazz bass party and am SO VERY HAPPY to have joined the herd!
Now kindly stay off my lawn!!!
Now kindly stay off my lawn!!!
Enjoy the benefits of a premium membership!
Upgrade Account
-
TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
Join free Log in
Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.
What does an authentic Jazz bass really sound like? Small rant warning.
- Thread starter CaribooBass
- Start date
“Why does it seem the Jazz bass can not stand in its own anymore?”
According to?
Why are bassists so defensive?
According to?
Why are bassists so defensive?
All Basses matter. Even the ones with 5 and 6 strings.
I love my Un-modded J. I can get any sounds I want to out of it and if I can't, then I pick up a different instrument.
Also, don't forget there is P-J. My go to for 20 years was a spector NS-2 with PJ. I could get any sound out of it I wanted, other than that RIC sound and for that I had a RIC.
Maybe it's the sheer number of J bass models from almost every manufacturer in the world that rubs the OP the wrong way.
I love my Un-modded J. I can get any sounds I want to out of it and if I can't, then I pick up a different instrument.
Also, don't forget there is P-J. My go to for 20 years was a spector NS-2 with PJ. I could get any sound out of it I wanted, other than that RIC sound and for that I had a RIC.
Maybe it's the sheer number of J bass models from almost every manufacturer in the world that rubs the OP the wrong way.
That's some good ancient Native American know-how right there.
Here are my two cents: Fender Jass basses are perfectly fine the way they are for the majority of people for the application they use them for.
Most people modify their instruments (Jazz AND Precission basses) to "achieve certain sound" because of marketing and without realizing sound is 80% in your fingers, 15% in the instrument and 5% in the hardware.
I wouldn't modify one of my Jazz basses to "sound like a Warwick". If I want to sound like a Warwick, you buy one, which I did as an impulsive buy when I was young and stupid.
Good sound and looks, but to me is a pain to play.
There's tweaking a build to honor the original design to the greatest possible extent and there's altering it to be more like a different model and those are very different things.
IME there are Js, there are Js and there are Js. Legally speaking, mine isn't very "authentic". The body is Warmoth, the neck Allparts and the pickups are Lollar; possibly not a single Fender™ part on it. But to me it epitomizes what an authentic J bass should be. (Slab rosewood board. No binding, inlays, graphite rods, fancy bridges, active circuits or anything like that; it's as close as I am likely to get to a pre-CBS.)
A J with musical wood and good single coils is at the very top of my pyramid. If I had to be morphing something, I would try to get the P to be more J-like! But I don't, because it never will.
Don't get me wrong - I like my single pickup BGs and use them pretty often. But if it had to get down to just one, for me it would 100% be the J.
YMMV
IME there are Js, there are Js and there are Js. Legally speaking, mine isn't very "authentic". The body is Warmoth, the neck Allparts and the pickups are Lollar; possibly not a single Fender™ part on it. But to me it epitomizes what an authentic J bass should be. (Slab rosewood board. No binding, inlays, graphite rods, fancy bridges, active circuits or anything like that; it's as close as I am likely to get to a pre-CBS.)
A J with musical wood and good single coils is at the very top of my pyramid. If I had to be morphing something, I would try to get the P to be more J-like! But I don't, because it never will.
Don't get me wrong - I like my single pickup BGs and use them pretty often. But if it had to get down to just one, for me it would 100% be the J.
YMMV
So switching out the pickups and bridge is making it no longer a Jazz bass? i think you are losing me here. Those are the most common mods folks make to a stock Jazz.
Without changes to your gain staging, all things being equal, I would expect a sterling Ray to outperform a passive Jazz in a rock band. The Sterling is giving your amp a much hotter signal with preamp boosted aggressive pickups, single signal from the magic spot. A Jazz would need...a hotter preamp at least...
I don’t which is why I play the neck or bridge pickup solo. Which are still Jazz bass tones.
None intended from me either. My favorite Strat sound is the neck pickup solo as well. I really like single coil pickups. It’s a flaw I try to overcome.
John Paul Jones, Geddy Lee, Jaco, Aston Barrett are all great representations of some different jazz bass tones IMO. I love the neck pickup sound with a bit of bridge pickup blended in, the tone rolled off and the volume rolled off a tad. Not a huge fan of that rubbery solo'ed bridge pickup sound, or the both pickups on full tone - although they are perfect for certain songs.
With the number of pickup, preamp, and tone adjustment options available on most modern amps, I think a Jazz can sound like more or less whatever you want. That's a bit less true for a single pup bass like a P. Geddy's tone isn't what I'd call "classic Jazz bass", but then he sounds like Geddy pretty much whatever he plays. The P Bass is exactly what Leo intended it to be, a simple, maybe even crude, but easily repaired bass that could be cheaply mass-produced. The J azz is a clear upgrade in sophistication, aesthetics, and ergonomics, but the tone is what you make it. Rounds? Flats? Active? Passive? Your touch? As a young guy I built my first Jazz as a Warmoth Frankenjazz parts bass, thinking "instant Jaco:, and like everyone else, realized that his tone was only partly the bass itself.
I have no idea what OP is even incoherently rambling about.
A jazz bass has a particular sound that is mostly determined by the fact that you have two single coil pickups at a certain distance from the bridge and the nut that gives it a certain timbre. Whether the pickups are of a different make and model makes nearly no difference. The biggest factor is which part of the string is being picked up, which makes the sound that enters your amp a specific mixture of fundamentals and harmonics. If the pickups pick up that specific mixture (meaning they're at roughly the correct position), then it sounds like a jazz bass. Whether you cut or boost certain frequencies with preamps, EQs, other different tools, doesn't really change the timbre of that tone.
If I think about a jazz bass tone, I mostly think of both pickups on full. That's what differentiates it very much from a P bass for example. The P doesn't have that clarity (those upper harmonics), because it doesn't have that pickup close to the bridge (where those harmonics are particularly noticable with how the vibration of the string works).
Whether or not a bass is a good platform for modifications really depends on how willing you are to work on the instrument. If I think about how I could modify my P bass, I don't think about all the things that are available for Fender P basses, rather I think about whether or not I could make a clean route for an additional pickup for example. Or if I need to upgrade electronics, I think about how I could wire that stuff up, because I'm not good with that stuff, but I know my way around a forum or a search engine, so I could do whatever I want with enough motivation.
All the modding in the world won't change the fact whether you have those two pickups in that specific configuration though. I could have an absolute Frankenstein bass with 6 pickups, but aslong as I can have those two single coils in that configuration active, it will sound like a jazz bass.
And if you ask Fender, a jazz bass is simply a model of bass guitar they've been creating for a long long time in many different vartiations haha
If I think about a jazz bass tone, I mostly think of both pickups on full. That's what differentiates it very much from a P bass for example. The P doesn't have that clarity (those upper harmonics), because it doesn't have that pickup close to the bridge (where those harmonics are particularly noticable with how the vibration of the string works).
Whether or not a bass is a good platform for modifications really depends on how willing you are to work on the instrument. If I think about how I could modify my P bass, I don't think about all the things that are available for Fender P basses, rather I think about whether or not I could make a clean route for an additional pickup for example. Or if I need to upgrade electronics, I think about how I could wire that stuff up, because I'm not good with that stuff, but I know my way around a forum or a search engine, so I could do whatever I want with enough motivation.
All the modding in the world won't change the fact whether you have those two pickups in that specific configuration though. I could have an absolute Frankenstein bass with 6 pickups, but aslong as I can have those two single coils in that configuration active, it will sound like a jazz bass.
And if you ask Fender, a jazz bass is simply a model of bass guitar they've been creating for a long long time in many different vartiations haha
Last edited:
This rant put the image in my head of some guy at an online retailer seeing an order for a preamp or a set of pickups come in, letting out a heavy sigh and muttering "Leo Fender fails again". It made me laugh, so thanks for that, OP.
Last edited:
You start with a false premise. You don't hear people talking about their unmodified jazz basses because there's nothing to talk about. People talk about what they're going to change, not what they're leaving alone. I don't think anyone here has ever said, "hey, I just bought this cool Jazz bass. Over the next six months I'm not going to order any parts and I'm not going to swap out the pickups or the bridge." You only hear those sorts of things from people who do want to do things.
The jazz bass has one of the most distinctive sounds I'm aware of. It's also more versatile than some basses, so you can get more out of it and you don't have to stick with a traditional, close-to-the-bridge, burpy sound ala Jaco if you don't want to. You can do more with it. That, in itself, is part of why Jaco and John Paul Jones don't sound the same.
I'm not sure there's anything else to say about it. Some folks will modify anything because they like to tinker and others will do it because they're chasing a specific sound, and some are just never satisfied. But some folks, like me, think their basses sound just fine the way they are and don't have the urge to change anything.
The jazz bass has one of the most distinctive sounds I'm aware of. It's also more versatile than some basses, so you can get more out of it and you don't have to stick with a traditional, close-to-the-bridge, burpy sound ala Jaco if you don't want to. You can do more with it. That, in itself, is part of why Jaco and John Paul Jones don't sound the same.
I'm not sure there's anything else to say about it. Some folks will modify anything because they like to tinker and others will do it because they're chasing a specific sound, and some are just never satisfied. But some folks, like me, think their basses sound just fine the way they are and don't have the urge to change anything.
Love my two Jazz basses! No preamp desired. I can get just about any tone/voice from them that suits me, and they handle most any playing situation that I would find myself in easily.
