Why does TalkBass love the P Bass so much?
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Why does TalkBass love the P Bass so much?
- Thread starter GwennyT
- Start date
On these cheap TV speakers, I couldn't tell a difference at all in any of them. I sure wish my soul patch was still dark instead of gray.....
Here ya go then - If the P Bass is so special that its the only bass that sits perfect in a mix and no other basses can mimic it, you should be able to pick it right out
So heres 5 basses with pickups in the P position. See if you can hear which one is a P Bass
I admit: it was a good one
These posts are like bass church for me, preaching to the choir but the choir never minds and stays longer than the parishioners.
After we get bored of this we can always talk about Jamerson or Jaco.
Cheers.
After we get bored of this we can always talk about Jamerson or Jaco.
Cheers.
I mean, a jazz with the much soloed will get pretty darn close. I’d bet half of TN couldn’t tell the difference in a blind test.
For myself...
It's Cheese, Double, Both...Hot Ketchup/Hot Mustard..
*Burger appears courtesy of Hudson's est. 1907
It regains supreme....!
It's Cheese, Double, Both...Hot Ketchup/Hot Mustard..
*Burger appears courtesy of Hudson's est. 1907
It regains supreme....!
Last edited:
I wanted to just glibly say “because it’s pretty good”
but let’s get into it.
A huge factor in music involving electric guitars is the relatively young but well-tread tradition that comes with it. While modern rock and pop and r&b were developing, they went through a lot of trial and error to find things that sounded good. Sometimes it starts with this guitar sounds good with that piano, or these drums sound great with that band, and one of the ones that worked often was a p-bass in a variety of settings. I’m hardly a historian of these things, but just looking at a couple of legendary studios, we see hundreds of tracks over a few decades wherein the formula that they worked out involved a p-bass.
so the sound is well-established in our musical DNA.
Zooming out a bit, we can see these same generalities of give-and-take developing things like the kinds of tube amps and eq and guitars that set a large part of the stage for what our ears are used to hearing now.. there were a lot of other kinds of amps and guitars and whatever else attempted, but not all of them sunk their teeth in and established themselves.
some of this is absolutely luck and circumstance, but there’s no doubt that there’s something about a P bass that just works really well in a wide variety of circumstances.
now… for the other half. Why not X or y?
well I LOVE jazz basses, and I have a huge part in my heart for PJ’s… BUT.
A jazz neck pickup sounds amazing, but it doesn’t pull the same thing out of me that a P does. Not better nor worse, but it just doesn’t speak the same, and I find with a J neck, I’m leaning into the character and fatness and personality more.. with a P, I personally have more of a song and personal focus come out. Of course, that’s just me.
while I love PJ’s, I don’t actually find them versatile. With a PJ, if you aren’t adding a bunch of switches and custom wiring, you’re usually getting one of two choices: either you can have a good P and a good J neck, but kind of a whack 50/50 sound, or else the 50/50 sound is fantastic and full of detail, but the P isn’t the most classic P and the J may or may not be a classic j bridge. I personally don’t find most fender PJ’s to do what I want; Ibanez does an absolutely sick 50/50 sound, but the P would never be mistaken for a great classic P
But I think it boils down to something simpler- if you’re a player who finds that a P bass does what you want, that it’s a ubiquitous bass sound and you love it, then you don’t want anything else.. the same goes for those of us who use multiple instruments, and sometimes choose a P. When I play a P-bass, I’m playing P-bass, and I don’t want it to be versatile… I want it to be a P bass
You should have bought both !The same question might be posed about the Jazz bass, and after an exhaustive board search, I've found people actually love the Jazz bass even more.
For example, I was going to buy this ...View attachment 5486499
...but I bought this, instead.
View attachment 5486500
Mine is a Dodge Dart with a big block.
versatility is for suckers. what do you want, to be paralyzed by options?
if you have the best tone, you don't need versatility
if you have the best tone, you don't need versatility
‘I have a 90’s MIA Fender PBj that has been my #1 (out of 2) for 20 years. It’s going to the grave with me. I don’t understand why people are buying 60s-70s, and now 80s Fender Basses for premium prices like they are high end boutique instruments. I’ve played just about every Fender MIA series basses ever made as they hit the market. IMO the 90s N series instruments were some of the best instruments Fender has produced.
My gray goatee. Got a black strip down the middle, which is getting grayer every year.
