Advice on Jazz Bass - Beginner

Amigo

Life is a trade-off, marriage being very often involved...  

Whistler

Amigo said:
Would a PJ bass be a good compromise between a P and a J, if the neck feels right?

My thoughts are that a Precision has a warm and more full-bodied sound, whereas a Jazz has the option of a warm but less full-bodied middle pickup and the famous Jazz pickup bridge sound, as made famous by Jaco Pastorius - by choosing a brighter sound than other bassists were using at the time and his playing moved the bass from a support instrument to being a lead instrument.

The guitar in my avatar is a fretless bass with a PJ pickup combination. My opinion based on my experience of the fretless and my Squier Affinity Jazz bass mentioned earlier is that their sounds are not as far apart as maybe you are imagining.

You mentioned you will be plugging your bass into your audio interface. There will be a wealth of plugins and more you can use to tweak the sound, so I suggest you choose the bass that feels right in your hands and sounds pleasant enough to you on the day. It will be better to have a bass you love picking up and playing over one that has a great sound but you just don't enjoy playing.

Amigo

It becomes clearer by the day that I need to get my hands on a number of basses to make my mind up. I agree that having a bass that feels right is more important than sound, and the Ibanez I tried in PMT the other day felt really good in my hands.

Funkfingers

Amigo said:

the Ibanez I tried in PMT the other day

Can you remember which model it was?

The Talman is eccentric but no less interesting for that. One variant has a triple coil pickup with clever switching for tonal variety.

The Soundgear SR series has a comfortable body shape and neck profile. To futureproof such a bass, choose one with P, J or EMG35 sized pickup housings. These will be easy to change - should the need arise. Some of the Powersound narrow soapbar pickups are incompatible with all known aftermarket pickups - even Bartolini.

JayGee

Has anybody mentioned the Sire Marcus Miller basses yet? £279 gets you a V3 from Andertons, which is a very well executed J-style with easy to drive but powerful active electronics thrown in…

Funkfingers

JayGee said:

Has anybody mentioned the Sire Marcus Miller basses yet? £279 gets you a V3 from Andertons, which is a very well executed J-style with easy to drive but powerful active electronics thrown in…

Yeah but no but …

I have mentioned Sire and the Anderton's deal but in the thread about the Sadowsky MetroExpress PJ Hybrid.

Amigo

Funkfingers said:

Amigo said:

the Ibanez I tried in PMT the other day

Can you remember which model it was?

It was an SR300E. What I found peculiar was that it seems to have humbuckers, but they were humming when one was predominant. I have checked it again, and it seems that the Power Tap switch might have been at fault for the humming, but I had no clue then what it did.

Funkfingers

According to the blurb, the "Power Tap" switch offers three modes:
1) Humbucking "modern".
2) Single coil "traditional".
3) Single coil + low boost.
(Not necessarily in that order.)

Both single coil modes will be prone to RF interference and hum except when the balance control is around the centre position. If anything, the preset boost will increase the noise.

If the Ibanez bass at PMT was pre-owned, you have nothing to lose by modifying the switch wiring. 

In the longer term, the SR300E should accommodate Bartolini USA replacement pickups. (Probably their BC or P2 sizes but check dimensions before ordering.) Other brands may offer replacement pickups of the correct dimensions.

Ossyrocks

I’ll chime is as a fellow bass newbie.

Last week, I bought a secondhand Squire Affinity P-Bass off eBay for £102 which included a Fender padded gig bag, leather strap and various picks. 

You mentioned the high action on the Affinity you tried, well mine was the same, in fact the action was about half an inch! I expect some of the savings in the retail price of these comes down to having very little setup before they hit the shops. I’ve spent the last week tweaking it, or wrangling it to be more precise, into something playable. I’ve cleaned the board, polished the frets, fitted new strings and worked on the action. I have actually put about four turns on the truss rod to get the bow out, that’s not four quarter turns, that’s four full rotations! I may actually have to go a bit further yet too. 

I’m at the point with it now where it is comfortable to play with quite a low action and I can get on with actually getting used to playing bass. 

I did wonder about getting a shorter scale length bass, thinking with my guitarist brain that it might be easier to play, but as others here have mentioned, I’m glad it’s full length scale now as it will force me to play it properly. My fretting hand position is dramatically different playing bass compared to guitar now and I find I’m using my little finger on my fretting hand a lot to reach the distances needed, which on a P bass in F feels like a long way indeed.

Things I’ve learned this week.

Bass needs more physical stamina than I imagined, it’s tough.
I need to improve the strength in my pinky.
I need to play more lightly rather than plucking the string hard.
Consistent tone across all notes is harder to achieve than I thought it was, so I’m working on my right hand technique to make each note count properly.

Overall, I’m starting to get to grips with it, and enjoying it, but I have a greatly increased admiration  of good bass players.

Rob

Funkfingers

Ossyrocks said:

I need to improve the strength in my pinky. I need to play more lightly rather than plucking the string hard. Consistent tone across all notes is harder to achieve than I thought it was, so I’m working on my right hand technique to make each note count properly.

An idea I stole from an Allan Holdsworth interview was aiming to achieve equal note volume, regardless of whether they were picked, pulled-off or hammered-on.

Chapman Stick technique is pretty much all hammering on and pulling off. I found it transferrable back to bass guitar. 

Practice achieving consistent volume just with your fretting hand. Here, a low action will help. 

Billy Sheehan style string bends will have to wait.

Whistler

Hey @Rob when I started playing bass a friend told me not to try playing it like a guitar: instead of using my left hand (fretting hand) fingertips, use the pad of the finger where a fingerprint is. I found that helpful.

Bridgehouse

Whistler said:

Hey @Rob when I started playing bass a friend told me not to try playing it like a guitar: instead of using my left hand (fretting hand) fingertips, use the pad of the finger where a fingerprint is. I found that helpful.

Funnily enough, if you move on to fretless then it’s almost essential to move to a classical grip and to use the fleshy pad of the fingers to sort out muscle memory, stretch, and intonation. 

Ossyrocks

@Funkfingers I’m having to try hard NOT to hammer on and pull off like I would soloing on guitar! Or perhaps it’s that if I do transfer that aspect of my playing to bass, my left hand is all the wrong shape for bass and I’m trying to hammer on and pull off with my third finger and not my pinky. At the moment I’m just trying to slow down and make every note count. I will try what you suggest though. 

@Whistler yes, completely agree. It’s much more about the pads of my fingers than my fingertips. My fingers are straighter and much more perpendicular to the board. It’s going to feel odd in a few months time as I can already feel the pads hardening rather than my fingertips. 

Apologies to @Amigo for the highjack.

Rob

Bridgehouse

Ossyrocks said:

@Funkfingers I’m having to try hard NOT to hammer on and pull off like I would soloing on guitar! Or perhaps it’s that if I do transfer that aspect of my playing to bass, my left hand is all the wrong shape for bass and I’m trying to hammer on and pull off with my third finger and not my pinky. At the moment I’m just trying to slow down and make every note count. I will try what you suggest though. 

@Whistler yes, completely agree. It’s much more about the pads of my fingers than my fingertips. My fingers are straighter and much more perpendicular to the board. It’s going to feel odd in a few months time as I can already feel the pads hardening rather than my fingertips. 

Apologies to @Amigo for the highjack.

Rob

Flats will stop your pads from going as hard - depends on if you like the sound, but they can be easier on your fingers.

Funkfingers

The flip side is that the bassists' habit of leaving strings on for years can work against him/her. My brother had a Tru Bass phase. (Those black nylon wrapped sets.) When he eventually broke one, replacements seemed unobtainable.

My brother's next fad was Superwound strings with their exposed cores where the strings sit in the bridge saddles. Same thing. Broke one. Couldn't find replacements.

Bridgehouse

Funkfingers said:

The flip side is that the bassists' habit of leaving strings on for years can work against him/her. My brother had a Tru Bass phase. (Those black nylon wrapped sets.) When he eventually broke one, replacements seemed unobtainable.

My brother's next fad was Superwound strings with their exposed cores where the strings sit in the bridge saddles. Same thing. Broke one. Couldn't find replacements.

Course, you could stick to known staples like TI Jazz Flats which seem to have been in production since 1647

Amigo

Funkfingers said:

According to the blurb, the "Power Tap" switch offers three modes:
1) Humbucking "modern".
2) Single coil "traditional".
3) Single coil + low boost.
(Not necessarily in that order.)

Both single coil modes will be prone to RF interference and hum except when the balance control is around the centre position. If anything, the preset boost will increase the noise.

If the Ibanez bass at PMT was pre-owned, you have nothing to lose by modifying the switch wiring. 

In the longer term, the SR300E should accommodate Bartolini USA replacement pickups. (Probably their BC or P2 sizes but check dimensions before ordering.) Other brands may offer replacement pickups of the correct dimensions.

The SR300e did feel good, and a pickup upgrade may be useful, if I buy that bass. At first I expected the Power Tap position to put the coils of the humbuckers in parallel position, but they are still humming, which means they are not in parallel.

Ossyrocks said:

Apologies to @Amigo for the highjack.

Rob

Fret not, the more the merrier.

Funkfingers said:

The flip side is that the bassists' habit of leaving strings on for years can work against him/her. My brother had a Tru Bass phase. (Those black nylon wrapped sets.) When he eventually broke one, replacements seemed unobtainable.

My brother's next fad was Superwound strings with their exposed cores where the strings sit in the bridge saddles. Same thing. Broke one. Couldn't find replacements.

Interesting to know that bass strings can be an ephemeral thing... 

ICBM

Amigo said:

The SR300e did feel good, and a pickup upgrade may be useful, if I buy that bass. At first I expected the Power Tap position to put the coils of the humbuckers in parallel position, but they are still humming, which means they are not in parallel.

I genuinely do not understand the point of splitting to single coils on a bass with humbuckers. Parallel wiring sounds as good or better and is hum-free - something that matters even more with a bass than a guitar, since the most common offending frequency is within the playing range of the instrument and can't be EQ'd out.

I'd go further and say that I don't understand the point of single coils on a bass at all - even though my favourite model of bass has single coils normally, my one doesn't! I replaced them with humbuckers and it sounds just as good, but now doesn't hum even with fuzz and distortion.

The Jazz Bass was actually a slightly odd backwards step for Fender - the P-Bass had a humbucker from 1957 onwards, and even though the two J pickups are RWRP, that means they only cancel hum when both are set to the same volume.

Amigo

ICBM said:
I genuinely do not understand the point of splitting to single coils on a bass with humbuckers. Parallel wiring sounds as good or better and is hum-free - something that matters even more with a bass than a guitar, since the most common offending frequency is within the playing range of the instrument and can't be EQ'd out.

That is an excellent point, I did not think about it, but it makes perfect sense.

ICBM said:

I'd go further and say that I don't understand the point of single coils on a bass at all - even though my favourite model of bass has single coils normally, my one doesn't! I replaced them with humbuckers and it sounds just as good, but now doesn't hum even with fuzz and distortion.

Another excellent point, I suppose it is the old adage that "we've always done it this way"...

ICBM said:

The Jazz Bass was actually a slightly odd backwards step for Fender - the P-Bass had a humbucker from 1957 onwards, and even though the two J pickups are RWRP, that means they only cancel hum when both are set to the same volume.

Am I along the right line in thinking that humbuckers on a bass guitar are not as standardised as the single-coils in the main P and J basses? Or is the P bass pickup a humbucker typically?

Also, what is the reasoning behind having a blend pot in a bass with two pickups, as opposed to a switch and independent controls that you find in a guitar?

ICBM

Amigo said:

Am I along the right line in thinking that humbuckers on a bass guitar are not as standardised as the single-coils in the main P and J basses? Or is the P bass pickup a humbucker typically?

The P-Bass pickup is a humbucker - that's why it has two separate coils. It's typically wired in series, but can be in parallel if you want a slightly brighter, quieter output, although the difference is less pronounced than with two full-width coils.

Full-width humbuckers are considerably less standardised though - many to the point of often being a problem if you want to replace them, as Funkfingers mentioned.

Amigo said:

Also, what is the reasoning behind having a blend pot in a bass with two pickups, as opposed to a switch and independent controls that you find in a guitar?

Because bass players more often want to dial in a particular sound and then leave it there, whereas guitar players more often want to switch between quite different sounds.

That said, I've never found blend pots that useful on a bass anyway - I find they tend to only have three really usefully different sounds, which correspond to the three positions of a switch! My favourite bass also has independent controls and a switch...

(Have I left enough clues yet? )