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whats important to you? tone or feel?

#41
Feel is the most important thing for me. There aren't many basses out there that don't have at least passable tone. Unless you have a dead ass piece of wood and a neck with dead spots tone can be tweaked to your liking with electronics swaps.

Fixing uncomfortable string spacing, bad balance, heavy weight is far less feasible. I've sold some great basses that sounded amazing but for whatever reason didn't feel good, a Warwick Thumb being a perfect example! Love the sound, especially of the NTs but the balance and reach to first position was unbearable.
 
#48
mongo2 said:
I need both.

If a bass doesn't sound good, it doesn't matter how good it feels, I won't play it.

If a bass doesn't feel good, it doesn't matter how good it sounds, I won't play it.
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+1

Case-in-point: I love J necks, but hate the typical J tone, so I put a J neck on my Precision, and it's all good in my particular 'hood.
 
#50
R Upsomegrub said:
Feel, IMO The bass is either comfortable to play or it isn't; tone can be changed.
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Don't really agree on the black & white mentality when it comes to a bass being comfortable to play or having good tone or looking good or being well-built. There are varying degrees of everything. Some folks sacrifice a bit of tone for comfort, others sacrifice a bit of comfort for tone. Heck, some people sacrifice both for aesthetics and vice versa.

In music, everything is gray and subjective. Except disco and electronic music. I think we can all agree those are bad. :D :p
 
#52
I think that the bass is 100% responsible for feel and maybe 15% responsible for tone.
And strings, pickups, and preamps account for the lions share of a bass' contribution to tone.
The remaining 85% comes from the amp, speakers, and outboard electronics. IMHO.
 
#54
All my basses have both, but feel is more important to me when considering a new (to me, at least) bass. As many others have already said, you can change the bass's basic tone through pickups, pre, amp settings, etc.
 
#55
to me, feel depends a lot on tone. the instrument literally feels better to play if it sounds good and responds well. i don't have to work hard to get the tone, and it gives me a confident feeling. i've definitely played basses that felt good but didn't sound great and vice versa, but so often the line between the two seems blurred.
 
#58
mongo2 said:
While I prefer both tone and feel in equal measures, I've always felt that I shouldn't let minor things like tonal issues define how good I play on any given night. It's my job to play my best no matter what.
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Sure - I just think if you are not confident with your sound and really enjoying it then you are likely to be distracted and that never helps - whatever job you are doing.

Fuzzbass said:
If you replaced "tone" with "feel", then I would agree with you and Bob completely.

I guess it also depends on what you mean by "tone". I doubt Bob was talking about timbre: i.e. the tonal difference between a P-bass and a J-bass. He was probably referring to a sound that sits well in the mix, with proper dynamics. An example of bad tone in this case would be blurred notes from boomy room acoustics or a crappy amplifier.
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I'm sure that's right but I think the principle is the same. Whatever is making you sound good in a mix is what matters but I would much rather get sore hands and an aching back sounding great on a heavy P bass with a thick chunky neck than sounding too thin (for example) with a feather light slimline bass.
 
#59
It has to have both or I'm just not interested,luckily for me my 2011 MIJ 70's Classic Series has both.
I have 9 basses only this one has both,a ton of tone(with 1/4 pounders) and great feel,with its vintage frets,fantastic neck, and it's lightweight.
 
#60
davidjackson said:
I'm sure that's right but I think the principle is the same. Whatever is making you sound good in a mix is what matters but I would much rather get sore hands and an aching back sounding great on a heavy P bass with a thick chunky neck than sounding too thin (for example) with a feather light slimline bass.
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Yes, there are many categories of feel: weight, neck profile, balance (T-bird vs. P-bass), scale length. A bass that feels wrong to me is one with narrow string spacing. Some fivers are essentially four stringers with an extra string crammed in. In my hard rock band, I would rather play a normal-spaced fiver with nylon tapewounds* than struggle with, say, a Music Man fiver with rounds. Sounding incorrect is not as bad as playing incorrectly. 99% of the audience doesn't care about bass tone anyway**.


* Yes, I'm sure I could dial in a decent rock tone even on nylon tapes... it just wouldn't be my favorite rock tone.

** Even if tone is only important to the player then it's still important. Tone is important to me... just not as much as feel.
 

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