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What makes a Precision so good?

#62
That pickup in that spot.

Not too many highs, not too fat lows. Just exactly, in general, where the bass is supposed to be in a mix. It slots right there.

They also have just the right amount of "bark", allowing the P Bass to cut just enough, and be usable in aggressive styles, as well as not get lost if you're playing with lots of others.
 
#65
I pretty much echo all of the previous stated reason. For me personally, it's ease of use and the tone obtained from that ease of use. The P tone is so universal. I've own/owned may different styles/brands of basses (Warwick, Spector, Lakland, MusicMan, Rickenbacker, Gibson, Hofner, Jazz basses, etc.) and I ALWAYS find myself grabbing a P Bass more times than not. Especially on recording sessions....a P always nails it, with little to no fuss about the recorded tone.
 
#66
Antisyzygy said:
I think P-basses have a couple things going for them.

1) Pickup design and placement

It's hum-cancelling, which is nice, and the wider/fatter shape picks up more of the string length. It's location is also in a good spot tonally I think.

There are certain harmonics you can't pick up with pickups placed in certain spots due to the amplitude of that harmonic at that location. For example, a strat neck pickup can't pick up the 4th harmonic with the open strings. On a 51' P bass, that single coil pickup can't detect certain harmonics as well (I think the 4th again). The modern P pickup is moved a bit south towards the bridge, and is a much wider pickup so it's sensing more length of string. It's also an offset design so you get a slightly different tone out of each set of strings, E/A and D/G respectively which I personally think helps thicken up chords and octaves to some small degree.

As you fret you change the location of these anti-nodes (where a harmonic amplitude is zero) but I still think the wider aperture and where the P-pickup is located allows you to get a thicker tone I think. The pickup shape also has an effect on the capacitance and inductance within the pickup.

For whatever reason the P-pickup produces a well rounded bass tone that seems to slot right in to the mix well. It works especially well in thick mixes I think. If you have a bunch of guitars and keys competing for the top-end spots you stay out of the fight and fit right in the low-end.

2) Minimalism

One volume, one tone. Sometimes it's nice to forget about dialing in your tone and just play. Avoids analysis paralysis.

3) Comfort (Subjective)

The thicker neck and the P body shape seem to work well for a lot of people.

===================================================================

Regarding the aperture and pickup location affect on tone, check these out.

You can see guitar pickup response using this applet :

Guitar Pickup Response Demonstration

Or read more here :

Response Effects of Guitar Pickup Position and Width
Click to expand...
Great post
 
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#69
I don't really know. I don't have one, but I had a friend's P for slight repair and adjustment at home, and to test it, I played along some of my Iron Maiden playlist, and suddenly I realized I was halfway The Number of the Beast. I was just good to play.
 
#70
That is a loaded question and I am surprised I have not seen the Fender critics say more. I think Fender played around with the deign a bit and got lucky. I say lucky because it seems that many others found the pickup location to be pleasing as well. To me, the P is a utilitarian looking instrument. I like the way they look but they are not as beautiful as what is available today in my opinion.
Anyway, I play other instruments but learned bass on an Ibanez PJ. I didn't know much about bass when I bought it and did not realize that I had a good pickup configuration to start with. I really like the P bass but when I bought a better bass than the entry level Ibanez, I opted for the J bass. It really just came down to a comfort thing for me, plus I play several different styles of music that the P tonally did not produce for my taste. There are times that I wish I had a P for one reason or another, and might pick one up in the future.
 
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#73
I think it is the way they work/sound in a band setting. I prefer the look/feel and "bedroom" sound of Jazz basses, but no matter how I set up my Jazz it does not work as well as my P bass in a live environment. At practice last night I went back and forth between my Jazz and P and the P just killed it. It is an overused cliche on this site, but P basses just seem to sit the best in the mix.
 
#77
JesseVMT said:
Nostalgia? Tone? Feel? History?

If the P bass wasn't the 'original' (so to speak) would it still be as popular today?
Click to expand...

I'm a fan of the P. It hits several spots for me, of which I would put simplicity at the top. It helps me concentrate on playing the music, not the bass.

That being said, P is not the only simple design out there, and other basses also have a great tone... So I think some history was probably involved in P's popularity, and I wonder if the fit of the P in a mix is partially based on sort of the opposite - perhaps the mixes were commonly made to fit the P... In the 50s and 60s, arguably, both the music industry as we know it started, and electric instruments became common... So certain conventions developed during that time. Electric instruments were developed to fit these conventions, but also dictated the conventions in turn. So each instrument was designed to fit other instruments, and in turn influenced how other instruments were designed (and quite possibly the recording and performing equipment). I presume a lot of trial and error was involved, and it took several iterations of the process, but eventually these conventions pretty much became standards.

In short, the P fits in the mix as much as the mix fits the P.
 
#79
It's been said by others. For me, the p bass just sits in certain mixes like my J does not. As much as I didn't want to believe the p bass hype (I was a slow adopter), my direct experience says otherwise.
 
#80
Its the PU...reckon u could stick it on a dead fish and it would still sound good (the fish that is).

But....I'd still love someone to explain why you hardly ever see modern house players, jazz fusion guys, Gospel players, cruise ship guys and pit guys playing them....everywhere I look its all boutique fivers or at the very least the Jazz bass.
 

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