Advice on Jazz Bass - Beginner

Amigo

I might regret this, so I am trying to keep the budget to a minimum. I have been thinking about basses for a while now, so I thought I'd try my hand at it. Never played one. Therefore I am after a bass that is cheap and cheerful, as long as it is serviceable and not a nightmare to start on. Any ideas?

Funkfingers

The default, no-brainer answer to guitarists seeking a first bass guitar always used to be some variation on the Squier Jazz Bass, be it Standard series, Vintage Modified or Classic Vibe.

Sadly, although all of these are cheerful, a brand new CV is no longer cheap.

If this Discussion had appeared two weeks ago, I might have suggested my own 2014 Squier VM PJ Bass. Unfortunately, I have recently thrown a lot of money at it in the form of upgrades. I shall be keeping it. 

Whistler

The Squier Affinity series is frowned upon in many reviews but, like you, I wanted a cheap entry point and bought a used Squier Affinity Jazz bass 10 years ago and it is fantastic. The pickups could be better but they are not bad; the rest is all I would want in a bass.

Amigo

Thanks for the pointers. Frankly, I doubt I'll be able to tell the difference in the quality of the pickups, because I have never ever played a bass. I don't even have a bass amp, I intend to plug it into my Audio Interface to begin with, and see what mileage I get.

Bridgehouse

Whistler said:

The Squier Affinity series is frowned upon in many reviews but, like you, I wanted a cheap entry point and bought a used Squier Affinity Jazz bass 10 years ago and it is fantastic. The pickups could be better but they are not bad; the rest is all I would want in a bass.

I wonder if the frowning is because relatively speaking the Affinity series are quite expensive relative to a lot of the other competition at that price point? 

I do agree though, pickup aside they are excellent and do the job very well

Amigo

How about second-hand cheap Yamaha or Harley Benton basses? Looking at what's available around my area.

Whistler

Amigo, friend! I have no idea what sort of music you play or listen to. Are you looking for a bass that has the most generic sound or one that has experimental options? Do you prefer (6-string) guitars that have a chunky or skinny neck? Do you want a bass that will easy to sell when you decide that you want to upgrade or abandon bass playing?

I had a quick scout round and found these and here are my personal opinions of them:

Gumtree: Aria Precision Bass Guitar, £60, Bury St. Edmunds
Gumtree: Bass guitar, £95, Ware
Either of these two I would expect to be either needing significant setting up or a really sloppy sound or they are hand-achingly hard to play or there is an unexpected bargain. Personally I would give these a miss in recommending a bass to someone I cannot personally check.

Gumtree: Cort 4 Syring Active Bass, £160, March
Cort make reasonable value instruments at the budget range. It has two pickups. There are a lot of new bass guitars around £200 so my personal opinion is that this guitar is probably not worth this much, but then it may feel like silk in your hands and have a sound that appeals to you and is therefore justified.

Gumtree: Yamaha BBG4AII 4 String Bass. Flame top. Emerald Green, £220, Shefford
This is an active bass. I assume you know nothing so forgive me if you have already done your homework: it will give you a broader range of tonal possibilities. It requires one (maybe two) 9v batteries. Yamaha is a reliable brand and this one looks the part.

Gumtree: Squier vintage modified 77 j bass with hi mass bridge and Aguilar 70s pickups, £270, Kelvedon
Almost the opposite of the Yamaha, this will have a generic bass sound that has been heard on millions of albums. It has an upgraded bridge (for better sustain) and pickups (for a less flabby tone). This seems to be the best secondhand budget bass (under £300) I looked at but the price is more than you would pay for a new bass, although the improvements should be noticeable to an experienced player.

PMT Cambridge: Squier Affinity Jazz Bass MN, White PG, 3-Colour Sunburst, £225
For this price you get a new guitar in one of a handful of different colours, with a guarantee. You get the chance to go and play these to confirm that it feels and sounds right to you before committing to buy it.

The last 3 guitars are all worth considering, in my opinion. I hope that helps you think about what you are looking for.

Back to my first sentence, what style(s) of music do you like playing and listening to? That may help one of us to point you in a specific direction?

Funkfingers

Whistler said:

Gumtree: Squier vintage modified 77 j bass with hi mass bridge and Aguilar 70s pickups, £270, Kelvedon
This seems to be the best secondhand budget bass (under £300) I looked at but the price is more than you would pay for a new bass, although the improvements should be noticeable to an experienced player.

Hell, yeah. The Aguilar pickup pair retails for around £160.

The Fender Hi-Mass bridge is made in cheap brass. It compliments some instruments and ruins others. The generic Gotoh 201B copy bridge fitted to many Asian basses eventually warps where the thin base meets the chunky string anchoring section. 

I upgraded the 2014 Squier VM mentioned earlier with a genuine Gotoh 201B. 

TBH, the traditional bent steel bridge often sounds better than the supposed upgrades.

Amigo

Whistler said:

Amigo, friend! I have no idea what sort of music you play or listen to. 

Rock, blues, jazz, lately more interesting in the latter. Classic sounds, I suppose.

Whistler said:

Do you prefer (6-string) guitars that have a chunky or skinny neck? 

On my guitars I now settled on 1"11/16 nut width, but with a chunkier feel, think PRS wide fat and Gibson 50', I think.

Whistler said:

Do you want a bass that will easy to sell when you decide that you want to upgrade or abandon bass playing?

That is a very sound question, to which I don't know the answer. Buy cheap and it may put me off, pay more and I may not be able to get much back when selling if I don't continue. I don't know, I suppose I will have to make my mind up at some point.

Because I don't know what I want, I think you might be right, the best thing might be to go to PMT in Cambridge and try a couple of basses. They have Squier, Ibanez, Hofner Violin, Gretsch, all reasonably priced according to their website.

Amigo

I found a few ideas that are available second hand nearby or near work:
Ibanez TMB30-IV
Yamaha RBX170
Tanglewood Jazz Bass
Harley Benton JB-75
Benson Jazz Bass
Any peaches or lemons among them?

Whistler

Perhaps I should have mentioned this before: classic Fender basses fall into two types, Precision and Jazz. The first three basses you listed have a combination of a Jazz pickup by the bridge and a Precision pickup in the middle to neck position. The last two are copies of a Fender Jazz bass in that they have two Jazz pickups.

I don't see any lemons as manufacting quality these days is pretty good at all prices. Personally I would be caustious of the Harley Benton but that it just me as they are built to be cheap not really a quality instrument, but there are growing numbers of guitar players finding good Harley Benton models. Depending on the precise model, condition and price, the Benson could be the peach among those, but the peach so far must surely be the one @Funkfingers homed in on, the Squier Jazz with upgraded pickups.

When you go to collect a bass, the usual guitar checks apply - that the neck is not warped, the action is reasonable ( a bit higher than a guitar but not much) and that all the knobs and switches work properly, and the tuners rotate evenly (as in one is not stiff or loose or wonky compared to the others).

Amigo

Marvellous, thank you! Tomorrow morning I go past a PMT, so I'll stop there to try a few for size. Will keep you posted.

Amigo

Another thing I noticed: there are short-scale and long-scale basses. In a nutshell, what would be the perceivable differences between the two, apart from the obvious?

Whistler

I really recommend getting a standard scale bass which is 34", 864mm. Short scale is often 30", 762mm, sometimes 32", 813mm, and other scale lengths.

A standard scale may feel like a bit of a stretch at first after being used to guitars but we (me and the others here that play bass) can help you adjust to that, no problem, as the left hand position and is slightly different. Bass is different to guitar in that, at least for a beginner playing single notes, you are not forced to keep your left hand close to the nut as beginner guitars players are.

One more thing: when you go to PMT it would be good if you asked the shop assistant to let you try basses with Jazz and Precision necks. I prefer the thin Jazz bass neck but from what you have said I get the impression a fuller Precision bass neck may be more to your liking. It will help you judge other basses you try, helping you decide which basses to discard and which ones to consider.

Funkfingers

Amigo said:

Another thing I noticed: there are short-scale and long-scale basses. In a nutshell, what would be the perceivable differences between the two, apart from the obvious?

For any string gauge, shorter scales put less tension on, causing the strings to feel sloppy under your fretting fingers. Compensate for this by using heavier gauge strings.

For scale lengths of 30" and below, the ends of regular scale strings will be in the section that gets trimmed off. The full thickness of the strings makes them difficult to wind around the tuner posts and prone to slipping once tuned. Short scale strings are made so that the outer wraps finish in an appropriate place for easy installation and reliable tuning stability.

In my experience, shorter scale bass guitars tend to have a slightly rubbery element to their sound. (Words are useless for describing sound!) It is tempting to dismiss them as mere toys. That would be a mistake.

Amigo said:

Ibanez TMB30-IV
Yamaha RBX170
Tanglewood Jazz Bass
Harley Benton JB-75
Benson Jazz Bass
Any peaches or lemons among them?

Peaches: TMB30, H-B JB-75 (with minor mods)

Lemons: Benson (unless it is a typographical error of Benton)

Depends: Tanglewood, Yamaha RBX 170


Tanglewood instruments can be wildly variable from one to the next. Try it, then, decide.

The Yamaha RBX is a great product but I suggest the 270 and above. It is worth paying extra for the better tuners alone.

Funkfingers

Bridgehouse said:

Whistler said:

The Squier Affinity series is frowned upon in many reviews.

I wonder if the frowning is because relatively speaking the Affinity series are quite expensive relative to a lot of the other competition at that price point? 

I am not so much frowning upon the Affinity Jazz Bass as having a high opinion of the next model up the Squier price range. Its neck profile is superb at any price. (I write this as the owner of some expensive German and American basses.)

When the Standard and, then, Vintage Modified series came with Duncan Designed pickups, I was of the opinion that they were 99% gig ready straight out of the box. Obviously, there was room for improvement in the control cavity but that could wait.

For full disclosure, I own a Squier Affinity STRAT, acquired cheaply at a Sunday market and modified into a shred beast with a high output humbucker.  

Amigo

Thanks a lot for all the suggestions. Unfortunately I was caught up at work for longer than I had hoped and I got past the PMT shop after they closed. I will try again next week, as I would very much like to lay my hands on some basses.

Last night I watched a few Youtube videos and I came across one that had a Hofner Viola, and I loved its sound better than all the others I listened to. I will be listening to some more, maybe I can narrow down what I like sound-wise.

Whistler

I find Thomann a great place to browse online as it is very easy to see the different types of equipment and list them alphabetically or by price or by sales (popularity). Here are the electric basses and here are the acoustic and semi-acoustic basses. For buying a wooden instrument I think going to PMT or any other local guitar shop will be better than buying online without being able to try it or them for size, feel and sound beforehand.

RichardT

I've got one of these sitting here doing little or nothing:

https://www.basscentre.com/bass-collection-jive-bass/bass-collection-jive-bass-windermere-blue.html

Previous owner dropped in Dimarzio Model J pickups and rewired to VTB. Older model so doesn't have the current high mass Babicz bridge. Very clean and a pretty good J , I just tend to pick up something less, well, massive, 9 times out of 10 when the bass mood comes upon me.

Amigo

I went to PMT today. I tried three basses they had on display and that looked interesting:

1. Hofner Ignition Violin
Very comfortable, good action, felt very good in the hands. The sound was very hard to tame, I found, way too hot for me, and probably my non-existent experience with basses did not allow me to get the sounds in my head out of it.
2. Squier Affinity Jazz Bass
Very good sound, but the action was a bit high. Working around the fretboard was a bit of a hassle, it did not feel natural, certainly not as natural as the Hofner. Sound-wise, however, I found it very good, to my liking. Humming was an issue when using one pickup, as was on the next bass too. 
3. Ibanez SR300E
Probably the best-feeling of the bunch. Comfortable around the fretboard, reasonable sounds, although active EQ may take some getting used to. Good sound control options, which I suppose are good if you know your way around them, which I do not. Humming was again an issue when one pickup was dominant. 

This is what I had time to try today, I don't remember what bass amp I used, unfortunately. I may take another trip another day and try a few more.

Bridgehouse

Amigo said:

I went to PMT today. I tried three basses they had on display and that looked interesting:

1. Hofner Ignition Violin
Very comfortable, good action, felt very good in the hands. The sound was very hard to tame, I found, way too hot for me, and probably my non-existent experience with basses did not allow me to get the sounds in my head out of it.
2. Squier Affinity Jazz Bass
Very good sound, but the action was a bit high. Working around the fretboard was a bit of a hassle, it did not feel natural, certainly not as natural as the Hofner. Sound-wise, however, I found it very good, to my liking. Humming was an issue when using one pickup, as was on the next bass too. 
3. Ibanez SR300E
Probably the best-feeling of the bunch. Comfortable around the fretboard, reasonable sounds, although active EQ may take some getting used to. Good sound control options, which I suppose are good if you know your way around them, which I do not. Humming was again an issue when one pickup was dominant. 

This is what I had time to try today, I don't remember what bass amp I used, unfortunately. I may take another trip another day and try a few more.

Shame you can't remember the amp - will have a big bearing on how it sounded. Bass amps are, as you can imagine, as much of a user preference as basses themselves - there's some amps I really hate the sound from, others I love, both with the same bass..