Hello
At first i thought i needed other basses now i'm asking myself what should my main bass be and why?
I currently have:
1. Fender P (MIM) with roundwounds (sounds and feels pretty good and does that thing)
2. Fender Telecaster (humbucker 2012) with flatwounds - modified this taking the second humbucker out and replacing it with a Musicman style 90's SD)
3. Epiphone Jack Casady with flatwounds
All of them ok in their own way, but each with it's own little problem/quirks.. I want to get something else not to have a bigger collection but to have a better n1.
What is your number 1 and why?
Thanks in advance
D
My Precisions(left to right)...
2019 Player Precision, FCS '62 P pup, hipshot drop tuner, strung with rounds.
2019 American Performer Precision P/J, no greasebucket tone circuit, cts & switchcraft components and Aguilar's hum canceling P/J pup set. Strung with tapewounds.
My Jazz basses(left to right)
2022 green flame top Player Jazz strung with half rounds
2006 - 2008 CIJ GL Signature Jazz, strung with rounds
2021 blue flame top Player Jazz strung with rounds
I also have an ABG(Kingman V2) and then two wall hangers.
So what is my #1?
Don't really have one.
The past year you could have said the green flame top Player Jazz. It definitely got played the most. But some of that was because of recording some originals. I had used that bass while writing stuff with our lead vocalist/writer/guitarist. I didn't see any reason to change up when we were recording as I already had my tone worked out on that bass.
The CIJ GL Sig Jazz I got back in June. I took it out once, played it for a few hours live in a 4 piece, standard rock and roll from the 70s and 90s. Got home, put it up until two weeks ago. I finally sat down, went through it, got it set up to my liking, and gigged it for 3 hours last week.
Why did I wait 6 months to do this? To be honest, because I had other basses I could play and rotate while tweaking a setup here and there when needed. To sit down and thoroughly go through the setup on a bass, neck, saddle height, pickup height, string height, intonation, etc... can take a little while. And the CIJ GL needed all of it but I didn't need it bad enough to take the time out to do it. All the more reason to own more basses than you need, than not enough.
But now that it's been done and proven itself gig worthy... I guess you could call it my number one for now. It's about to get a lot of playing time. I really enjoy it.
And to confuse you even more, my favorite bass is my least played bass and that's the 2019 Player Precision with the FCS 62 Pup.
I'm not even supposed to have that bass. I took it in on a trade with the intention of re selling it to offset the cost of my American Performer P/J. But I never listed it. That was 3 years ago. Every time I think I might sell it, I pick it up to make sure everything works, then I end up jamming for a couple of hours. Or every now and then when practicing or working on original material, I'll grab it just to change things up. And it gells really well with our guitarist's Nashville Tele. That bass always makes me smile when I play it. Everytime I pick it up, it's just right. Definitely deserves more playing time than I give it. But I don't wanna give up a great bass. And it's the bass that changed my attitude about MIMs.
All of my basses work for me. I could get rid of all but one, and no matter which one I kept, I'd be happy with it. Until that day happens, I don't think I'll ever have a permanent number 1 amongst them. But in the meantime I may add to them. Never say never...
I went two years without buying bass. Then the CIJ GL Sig Jazz buy came about last June because I stopped and read a "help me decide which bass to keep" thread here on TB. I told him "I know which bass you don't want to keep, sell it to me."
