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Why does TalkBass love the P Bass so much?

#142
badinage said:
Original recipe.

View attachment 5486786
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Extra crispy

IMG_0911.jpeg
 
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#144
I love the Precision. I like the no fuss layout and I also like the body shape. Simple stuff really. No mystique at all for me. It does what I need. I made a living with a Precision for around thirty years or so and it never let me down. Stayed in tune from gig to gig most of the time.
I don’t like the Jazz. I have no use for a bridge pickup and I don’t like the body shape.
When I built my own I made them look like Precision basses but with different pickups. They’re my working instruments now. We like what we like.
 
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#146
For many many years I avoided playing a P bass. Mainly because "everybody " played one. I was told many times by experienced players that I needed to get P BASS. When I finally got one I still remember the first gig I played it and my reaction was " that's the sound". I had been trying for so many years to get a sound using some other type of bass that was easily achieved with a P bass.
 
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#149
blr2 said:
It's not only on TB. The Precision was and still is an industry standard, and I believe, still the #1 seller worldwide.
I'm not a P-bass fanatic, but will always have at least one.
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In Australia I still see plenty of young players with Precision basses. I also still see Strats, Telecasters and 335s often too as well as the Fender short scale basses. They work well. Their appeal is still strong. I’m not seeing a lot of Stingrays or Rickenbackers though.
 
#155
I don't overly love the P bass. There is a pattern, though... I have a Fender American Standard, a cheap copy, an Orange O-Bass which is sort of a P bass and a Guild Starfire I, with the split pickup (so kind of a semiacoustic Mustang?). Right now, I dunno why, maybe it's the strings (Rotosound rounds), maybe it's the pickup (EMG GZR), but my favourite of these is the cheap copy. Followed by the Guild, especially with flats. The Orange doesn't really sound like a P (dunno why, maybe it's the okoumè body or the slightly different pickup position). My American P isn't quite there, although it is certainly the best of the four construction-wise. Right now, with DR Fat Beams and the stock pickup, it sounds too bright, and I actually have to cut the high mids quite a lot to get it in the whereabouts of where I want it.

The truth is that the split pickup in the middle happens to be one of my favourite pickups. I have tried Jazz basses, countless times. I like the way they sound when other people are playing it. I hate it when it's me playing it. It sounds thin, wimpy, and I hate the bridge pickup soloed. The neck pickup is OK but still not a split pickup. On the other hand, I quite like PJs, provided that the two pickups sound balanced together. I feel that the bass that best pulled off a PJ was the older Yamaha BB line (not the current models).

And anyway the bass that I most like playing is not over of the aforementioned. It's my cheap Chinese Höfner Club with a minihumbucker blade pickup at the neck, soloed, and with none of that tone filtering bollocks (I made it into a regular Volume - Tone affair).
 
#156
A PJ can come close but the primary thing getting in the way of being identical is the magnetic pull on the strings from the secondary jazz pickup. A second pickup will attenuate the sustain but I won't pretend to claim that it will affect the tone. Maybe, maybe not, I don't know. However, the magnetic pull reducing sustain is simple physics but please don't ask me to provide the calculation.
 

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