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When did you become a Jazz Bass guy (gal)?

#21
The school I attended owned a '74 Jazz (complete with covers), and it probably weighed-in at about 11lbs. Amplification was an Acoustic 360. The band leader was a bass-playing nun dressed in a full habit. She got me into the Carol Kaye method, as well as teaching her own style. She played in a swing bass style, and I still smile to this day remembering her big, black, square-toed shoe tapping away as she was 'fully cooking'. :-)
 
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#22
Dr. Cheese said:
I remember him playing Precisions back in the Seventies, but I certainly have not seen everything.
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As he tells it, he was a big P-Bass guy in the Seventies as well as his Florida days. He had one that he considered the Holy Grail and it was destroyed in a house fire, so he sort of stepped over to the Jazz format after that. Letterman has been almost exclusively Jazz styles for him, but there were detours with a Fodera singlecut and a Yamaha BB style for certain periods.
 
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#26
Dluxe said:
It was bass solo on Foghat's Slowride that got me into Jazz Basses. I think I was in 9th grade when that came out.
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That's actually a great J bass tone...I'm with You
 
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#29
When i picked out my first 'nice' bass, my favorite was a Fender J. Later when i found that a lot of my favorite recorded tones where done on a J, it sealed the seal. I own 3 j styles (1 fender, 1 lakland, 1mutt), have owned 3 or 4 others, and the only bass i regret selling is another j.

I guess i'm a fan.
 
#32
For years I mostly played my P bass. I heard some live recordings of the band I was in at the time and I thought the bass lacked some definition. I tried a PJ thinking that I could turn down the standard P pickup a little and turn up the jazz pickup a little but I never bonded with the PJ setup. The next step was a jazz bass. I really like the way a jazz bass sits in the mix. There are some situations where the P bass works better but mostly these days I play my jazz.
 
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#33
Dr. Cheese said:
Playing my Peavey Forums so much has reminded me that for most of my bass playing life, I was not a Jazz Bass player. If anything, I loved Stingrays and soap bar loaded basses the most like Modulus and Ken Smith. I think the first style bass I really bonded with was a Guild Pilot V, and later I bought a Fender Jazz Deluxe V to get more of a Marcus Miller sound.

I also think all of the Jazz talk on TB moved towards Jazzes too. In history, we talk about the "invention of tradition," where people adopt something, and soon act as if they have always done it. I guess that is me and Jazz Basses.
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I, too, was never a JB guy. The first real bass I ever bought was a Stingray, then an L2500...so yeah, I love humbuckers!
I had a couple of cheap J's her and there, and never liked them all that much, but they were very comfortable to play.
It wasn't until I got a Squier VMJV that I did fall in love with them, but they need certain ingredients for my tastes...
I also bought an Affinity JV and put a MM humbuckers in it...best of both worlds.
 
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#35
Short version:
I chose the Jazz Bass for all the wrong reasons, but that doesn't mean it was a bad decision.

Full version:
I was a kid saving my money for a Fender Bass. At the time, the only really choices were Jazz or Precision (they didn't have 100 types of each one.) So I kept looking at the (paper) catalog sure that if I stared long enough I would be able to determine which one was truly the best bass ('cause of course only one could be THE BEST right? :)

So I incorrectly tried to go by which one looked cooler. Then I incorrectly looked at how many players I knew played which one. In the pool of people I listened to, the Precision won out. Then I incorrectly figured that 2 pickups had to be better than one. Going back and forth, I just couldn't decide. In hindsight, If only I would have had someone just take me to a store to try them both that would have really been the way to choose, but that thought never entered my mind back then (duh.)

Then I discovered Gary Thain (playing a Jazz bass) and that settled it for me. Been a Jazz bass guy ever since.
 
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#37
The easy answer would be the first time I heard Jaco. A friend brought over the NYC live bootlegs (vol. 1-4 I think) but... I wasn't THAT into it at the time. It REALLY hit me when I heard Marcus Miller's The Sun Don't Lie album. I was instantly hooked, excited and GASing for his bass and THAT sound. Jazz basses ever since...
 
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#39
I don't think of myself as a "Jazz bass" guy as I have several different configured basses. But I do love my Jazz basses and in my current band I most often use my Jazz basses.

My first Jazz bass was an early 80's MIJ Fender (the white one in my avatar). Interestingly it was my first ebay purchase and the first Jazz I had ever played. It is a great bass and I love playing it, it has the thinnest neck of any Jazz I have ever handled even thinner than the MIJ Geddy Lee's.. I also have a MIM Jazz and an SX Jazz. I am going to be buying a Warmoth Jazz body soon to pair with a maple/maple fretless neck and I have a Warmoth Jazz V that still needs to be completed.

Wow! I guess I am a "Jazz Guy" after all! :D
 
#40
The first electric bass I ever played coming out of the upright bass world was my cousin's JB. Maybe that wasn't enough to make me what you'd call a Jazz Bass Guy - or even much of a Fender player...but I still have a soft spot in me for a really nice JB.
 

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