Is there any bass out there?

The Lounge Other Gear
#1

This forum seems to have a serious lack of a dedicated bass guitar thread.
Far before to fall in love for synthesizers I enjoyed to play bass. Today I practice the instrument a lot less than in the past, but every time I put my fingers on the fat strings of my beloved Precision I feel truly happy. To play a good bass groove is always a big pleasure!
I love the feeling of the P bass: I like that it is passive and that is aggressive in the mix. I like it played with fingers and also picked with plectrum.
But if I had billions to spend I dream of a bass guitar collection: vintage Jazz basses, Rickenbackers etc…
About strings, I like the flatwound ones, that sound darker and have a limitless life.
And also I have some bass heroes: McCartney, Waters, Lemmy, Aston Barret, Pastorius, Wooten, Steve Harris, Richard Bona and so on…
Talking about the web, I like to watch Scott’s Bass Lessons and Bass the World videos.
So let’s talk about bass. What are your preferences? Your amps? Effects? Also pictures are appreciated!

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#2

Sorry, Davie504 ruined any hope any of us had to ever slap. So… We all gave up. :stuck_out_tongue:

My daughter plays the bass though, and is pretty good. However, she switched to guitar, because apparently that’s the cool progression for 16 year olds. :smiley:

In short, I know a few good bassists, but not many.

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#3

I got into bass only recently:

My wife started to play the bass a few years ago, but she was rather anxious to lend me her bass. So about 1.5 year ago I got a bass for my 40th birthday. Even though I had one I didn’t come to play it much. Until in November a befriended band (who knew i got that bass) asked if I could be their stand-in bass player at a gig. I had four weeks, didn’t tell them I hadn’t played much and started practicing like a mad man. Not only studying their repertoire, but also working on my bass technique through YT-vids and excercices. It turned into a genuine obsession for those four weeks. After the repetition in the rehearsal studio was a succes I told the band for how long I was actually playing, which was met with both disbelief and a lot of compliments… :blush:

Thanks to this I have found an instrument that suits me a lot! (and combines well with electronics!)

I modded my own HB MP4EB bass: removed active electronics and added a lot of switching options for the factory pickups (2xvol 1x tone, series/parallel per pickup, series/parallel for both pickups, coil tap to switch to a bridge SC)

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#4

How low can you go?

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#5

To about 20Hz; otherwise it becomes somewhat difficult to hear :upside_down_face:

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#6

Yes! Sometimes I enjoy to make a simple groove with my modular and have fun to play some bass lines on it. It’s mind refreshing and fun. Roland 531 modular mixer has a good external input boosting the signal to eurorack level, I like to have my bass in the system, to apply filters, effects etc…

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#7

Death row!

#8

What a brother know

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#9

Ha! Mystery cleared up. I always thought it was “water buffalo”, and it made no sense to me, but most of their lyrics didn’t at the time, anyway.

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#10

Long time bass player here … actually I just worked out how long since my first bass purchase and it’s scary. Not something I do much any more, except when I want to work out a melody and I reach for the first thing that doesn’t require me to turn on any amplification or select a patch first.

I finished up with a love of a thumpy flat wound sound, fretless, and 5 string (low B)

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#11

Bass! Hedge row, water buffalo. Once again, buck is the incredible, rhyme animal, incredible Deer. Crop enemy number one. Farmer said freeze, and I hopped one.

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#12

That is pretty much the kind of thing that was in my head before the advent of online lyrics. I was (and still am) absolutely terrible at understanding them from the original source material.

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#13

I played bass in my teens, had a fretless and loved it. I can confirm @J3RK guitar is def cooler at that age as I made the same move. A few years back I got a cheap bass that is really good! Play it quite a bit and missed the groove!

I don’t have any amps, I use either my SiX channel or the JHS Colour Box. Both do a decent job.

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#14

Someone asked the same question pretty much in the guitar thread:

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#15

…the only thick strings i play…my customized two string bass from krappy guitars…

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#16

I’ve been playing more guitar than bass the last couple months, but still think of myself as a bass player first. My main bass is a Sire V7. Definitely don’t sleep on Sire if you’re into Fender style guitars but want to try something a little different. I currently play through a GK 400RB, I use the direct out into a small desk mixer and into studio monitors because the 8x10 is overkill for home use lol. I started out with a Peavey MKIII and have been thinking I’d like to maybe try a 90s Peavey T-Max at some point. I historically have been a pick only kind of guy, I’ve developed a decent enough fingerstyle over the last couple of years but pick is still the sound I hear in my head first.

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#17

As a quick update to that, I did end up selling my combo amp, and I am fully ampless using SamsAmp VT Bass DI with my Focal Twin monitors. Super happy with the setup.

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#18

Good to know, thanks for sharing! It gets great reviews and affordable!

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#19

I’ve played bass for 25 years and love it. I don’t think it is much fun to play by myself, but in a band I find it super fun.

I’m doing a lot of recording these days and I’m happy with how a p bass sits with my Model:Cycles.

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#20

I have recently been plugging my bass directly into my OT and loop some grooves, just use the gain on the compressor to get it loud enough, sounds great! For some crunch, the distortion on the filter is ace

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