The Guitar (and Other Musical Instruments) Thread | Page 24 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

I appreciate your indecisiveness @Beatlebug (when did this Bebu thing start?), I’m pretty split between the styles of bass myself. The P is indeed very forgiving, it’s a warm comfortable thumpy sound with flats and a lovely clanky gritty whumpy sound with rounds. Those are the sounds it’s best at. So many great P players including Colin Greenwood and Kim Deal, it’s having a bit of a comeback lately.

If you do go for a PJ pay close attention to the distance between the pickups and the distance between the J pickup and the bridge. Different PJs take different attitudes. My SB-2 has the J close to the bridge and treats the J as more of a tone knob and there’s a few PJs (and some Jazzes) that are similar to this.  Other PJs (like the shortscale Jags) have the P in the traditional place but the J much closer to it. This makes the J less trebly which might be good in a shortscale but in a longer scale bass might be a bit useless. So contrast and compare! A PJ isn’t that much different to a Jazz but it is a distinctly different tone. I don’t know any specific person who is a key PJ player, everyone has a go at them.

The Jazz can fake a Precision to a certain degree, but has has a much wider mid-range and treble. With rounds you can do punk and funk but you can also turn the tone and bridge pup off, play near the bridge and do reggae and ska, many have. And of course there’s that quacky bridge pup sound that Jaco fanatics insist is the proper tone for a Jazz. And, like the Precision, it has a different character with flatwound strings, still has more range than the Precision but you’ll get the thump and the bridge pickup will sound different. The world is pretty much split between the Ps and the Js. One of my favourite Jazz players was the late Dee Murray of Elton John’s band, a massively underrated player. Another underrated player, George Murray, who played for David Bowie!

The Stingray approaches all of this from a completely different direction, with a bridge humbucker powered by an active preamp. Very popular with the rock/funk crowd but it was being used way back by bands like Siouxie and the Banshees, when the combination of a Stingray and bass chorus was heard all the time.But its more versatile than that, Tony Levin has been playing them with King Crimson for decades. Their sound ranges from aggressive to jazzy, I don’t hear them being used for reggae! Also their necks are chunky which might put you off, people like Jazzes because they’re easier to play down the neck but now its a thing to have even Precisions and PJs with tapering necks (like my SB-2).

Finish paying off the Cort 06 next week, terribly excited! Still playing the heck out of Siobhan, the next step will be an amp for her and the others but I must buy a synth first. (@Beatlebug I hope you don’t mind me telling other people on the internet about your lovely guitar channel, it has been getting great reviews from those whose opinion I value).

Absolutely @Beatlebug, if it doesn’t feel right and fun to play it won’t matter how good the tone is! Everyone’s different and bass presents particular problems for those of small frames or small hands. Do cast your net wider for shortscale basses, there are a few, like the Squier Jaguar I mentioned but also the Gretsch Junior Jet II which is a wicked little monster! And by practice amp, which do you mean, acoustic guitar, electric guitar or bass guitar?

Oh good! Ok, my first caveat with all this is that a good bass amp needs a good cabinet and for low end you need at least a 10″ speaker unless you’ve done something amazing with the cabinet, it just won’t reproduce anything on that E string very well otherwise. BUT there can be good sounding amps that defy that baseline (see what i did there), and for a practice amp you don’t need an earthshaking sound, you want to avoid it (mostly). So, I’ll just mention a couple of things that I’ve looked at recently because I’m Down a rabbit-hole about amps anyway, I’m trying to decide between a preamp/DI or just get a good bass head with a DI anyway.

So, a friend has just got himself a cute little Vox Pathfinder Bass 10, which seems to have a great clean tone and a headphone jack which doubles as a line out, probably not going to sound great with a lot of gain on it because it has little speakers but it might be a good option and they’re pretty cheap even new.  here’s one demo of someone using one:

I really like that sound, but it might not be terribly versatile if you want to play a lot of different styles, you’d best bet is to sit down with one and try things on it. The Fender Rumble 15 is supposed to be popular but it sounds a bit “boxy” to me. Here’s an interesting “shootout” video:

The surprise is how good the Vox pathfinder GUITAR amp is, shocking really. The Rumble 15 and the Marshal both sound awful. The Ampeg, LT25 and Vox all sound the most present and open-sounding. People have mixed feelings about Ampeg amps and its definitely a brand you should try before you buy. You should probably avoid any modeler amps with menus on them, they’ll just add confusion and are also a way of distracting you from paying attention to what the amp is supposed to do: reproduce the sound you want in a good way with basic controls, If you can’t get a good sound without messing with menus, its going to be a disappointing experience.

Another Vox bass amp to look at is maybe the Vox VX50 which has a few nice options for tone, a bit louder and has a separate direct out. It’s been around for a couple of years and surprisingly hasn’t had much interest but I did find this review:

Yes its in Russian but there are English subtitles. My only concern is that he’s obviously very into a more mid-range tone and didn’t explore the lower end as much as I’d like. You may or may not like that drive sound it does sound a bit fizzy to me but perhaps a different EQ would improve it. Anyway there’s a couple of things to start you off with.

Beatlebug said
Be

hold

BEAUTY!!!

My friend messaged me the other day saying her parents’ friend was selling a mint green Fender Precision bass and “thought you might be interested” [wink wink nudge nudge] (she’s heard a few of my minty bass ravings), and so we went to try it out yesterday and now I have a very classy pearlescent surf green MIM Fender Precision Bass Special with a Jazz-style pickup and a very sleek neck, and it came with a Fender Frontman amp, a good case, a nice strap, a tuner, and a good conversation with the nice man who was selling it. I am sitting with it in my lap now and feel well satisfied. Now to think of a name… Green Jeanie? Gene Greenie? Cirrus? Mentho? We’ll get better acquainted, then we’ll see…

  

What a fantastic score, well done! And you have one with a tapered neck, that’ll make things a bit easier AND a nice case! Jelly! Well how can I top that? Hmmm…

How about an all-solid acoustic, Cort Gold 06, this was made in May 2018 by the serial number so my run of buying my music shop’s older guitars by accident continues. Really nice sound, great depth to it but also really clear and warm. Making dents in my fingers already!

I love reading this kind of stuff (even though I don’t fully understand it all). Musicians are the best!!

Beautiful instrument @Beatlebug. Can’t wait to see him or her in action. Here is an idea for their name…