Help me choose my new bass... ~25 basses to choose from

[Soundlurker]

A lot of food for thought in that comparison, thanks! I wish all of them had the same brand new strings, since it makes a huge difference to the sound but I know that's impossible in this scenario. Loved the Lackland and Spectors, as well as the MTD Kingston. Some other cool ones there as well.

 

[Nimvi]

Even if people don't mind, but pedals and real amps do act differently depending how loud the input signal is, also you get better signal to noise ratio with louder clean input volume just from the bass. For example I just can't get Sansamp BDDI to growl with my LTD B50 but the Boss ODB3 sounds awesome with it, but with my friends Fender Jazz bass Sansamp sounded awesome and ODB3 was just awful.

Yea you have a point. I also have an ltd-b55 (the 5 string version) and altough I'm not unhappy with its stock sound (with fresh strings ofc), I have to throw a lot of distortion over it to make it stick out depending on the project.
Might also explain why I was never so fond of the Sansamp.

 

[Mago]

hmmm....how did you make sure that the strings were in the same state on all basses?
With old strings nearly every bass sounds bad imo

And huge LOL at the epiphone thunder bird, remeber that one...huge PITA to get anything useable out of it

 

[ahjteam]

Got some lossless wav versions of these DIs?

Yes, just a moment and I'll bounce it.

edit: 128 megs, order is the same as in the video. should be up in 17 minutes

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1338211/basstest.wav

hmmm....how did you make sure that the strings were in the same state on all basses?
With old strings nearly every bass sounds bad imo

Badly worded on my part. I didn't change the string, I meant that I played the same stuff in same tuning with whatever strings the shop had put to the particular bass in question, and if excluding one bass (Epiphone), they all seemed pretty mint strings with fairly similar gauges.

 

[Clark Kent]

I'm trying to pay attention to tone and not simply which has most volume. If volume was all I was interested in I'd pick Spector. However the tonality of the "Fender Roadworn 60s Jazz" was simply perfectly balanced all around. I left this comparison playing on the background and as soon as the Fender clip started I got interested in this thread. I was surprised how good the Warwick Corvette S4A Nabu sounded. But hey... I live in Finland and I've got a bass for sale. Why not buy my John Myung signature?

 

[egan.]

No post processing on the clips.

Yeah, I mean the on board EQ. It sounds like the kingston, jabba, jaguar, both spectors, and the corvette have some boosts going on on the active EQ. It's certainly not a bad thing to consider the on board EQ in a purchase it's just worth knowing that that's what's going on. I reserve the right to be wrong of course.

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

I think he means the active eq on board the bass.

Yeah I think this is why we liked some of them more than others. An active bass with active onboard eq is pretty much going to have a leg up on a lot of passive basses.

 

[ahjteam]

Yeah, I mean the on board EQ. It sounds like the kingston, jabba, jaguar, both spectors, and the corvette have some boosts going on on the active EQ. It's certainly not a bad thing to consider the on board EQ in a purchase it's just worth knowing that that's what's going on. I reserve the right to be wrong of course.

Starting point with all basses was "everything was at max", because I can always cut stuff in the post, but not necessarily add. But with basses that had active electronics I used settings that I liked the best, for example Jaguar had three tone switches, I just used the combination which sounded the best to me. Kingston has passive pickups, but active EQ and I think I had treble and bass at max, and mids almost at max. All other basses with active electronics (including the Warwick Streamer and Yamaha TRB1004JBL) were everything at max, but there still is huge difference in the tones between the basses. And for the record, the mids EQ knob was really different sounding from bass to bass.

But still, the Fender Jazz Blacktop is in my top3, and it's 100% passive bass.

 

[Jaymz]

Flat EQ on some basses are everything at 50% rather than maxed which is boosting.

 

[ahjteam]

Flat EQ on some basses are everything at 50% rather than maxed which is boosting.

I am aware of that, they usually had a groove in the pot where they stopped and some of the active EQ's could even be turned off with a switch, but thanks for reminding. I just used what sounded the best to me when I was recording, and usually the "everything at max" was the best sound because "louder is better", right? You know, the whole bang for the buck

 

[egan.]

Thanks for clarifying. Ultimately what sounds good is good. I played a bass with the EQ dimed for years. I do think it's worth noting that there is some of that going on in the shootout though. You can get 18dB of boost on lots of on board EQ which (obviously) makes an extreme difference in tone. In a non-DI situation you often make up those differences with amp EQ or pedals (or of course by adding a preamp to passive basses).

One point of note is that aside from EMG's, most "active" basses use passive pups and an active EQ. I know lots of guys know that but I thought it was worth mentioning for those that may not.

 

[egan.]

Starting point with all basses was "everything was at max", because I can always cut stuff in the post, but not necessarily add.

Actually, I want to address this because it isn't true. The bass EQ may sound different than EQ on an amp, DAW or other EQ you'd put after your pickups, but it doesn't have access to information that doesn't make it to the others (unless you have some serious cable loss). In fact, by diming everything you are far more likely to lose dynamic information (by running out of headroom) or cause distortion than you are to gain some intrinsic advantage over EQ'ing later.

 

[AD Chaos]

The Jaguar has some great solid low end going and lots of clarity IMO. And the Mayoness Jaba has some dirty clang thing and fullness I quite like.

On cans the Spectors sounded best, but on the monitors the lows are not there much, although their mid content seems more defined.

 

[AllanD]

But still, the Fender Jazz Blacktop is in my top3, and it's 100% passive bass.

Is this the bass with double P pickups?

 

[AD Chaos]

Yeah I think this is why we liked some of them more than others. An active bass with active onboard eq is pretty much going to have a leg up on a lot of passive basses.

A guitar tech told me once I shouldn't mix in active bass pups with an active onboard eq, or else I ran the risk of frying them. Is there any truth to that?

 

[egan.]

EMG doesn't seem to think so.

 

[AD Chaos]

Yeah I know, but IIRC the guy mentioned something about the voltage of the pups adding to the EQ's.. I don't remember if he was talking about an 18v mod, though.

 

[Nuno Filipe]

One Spector REX 4BS to rule them all!lol

 

[ahjteam]

Is this the bass with double P pickups?

http://www.thomann.de/gb/fender_blacktop_jazz_bass_wcp.htm

 

[AllanD]

http://www.thomann.de/gb/fender_blacktop_jazz_bass_wcp.htm

Looks like it, cool. Did you happen to try the blacktop with dual humbuckers? I've had my eye on that one for some time.