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I am getting more and more gigs where I play electric bass. Like weddings, where I play 3-6 hour gigs. And it is now time to by my own, instead of borrowing one.

I have been playing on a lot of Fenders and Fender copies. But compared to others, I find them heavy and hard to play on. Last week a local guy put a Warwick in my hands, and I liked the feel of it.

I do not know what to look for in an electric bass. But I do not need a 6 stringed monster, nor a bad beginner’s bass. I just need a nice all around bass that will do the job.

What are your experiences?

I would go with an Ernie Ball if you can shell out the money (around $1500), or you can try to find one used. Every now and then, Ebay will have a good steal on one.

Then again, you can almost never go wrong with a Fender Jazz or Precision Bass. I've owned my 5 string Jazz Bass for around five years now and have had no complaints what so ever.

Also, Squier came out with a Modified Jazz Bass (fretted version) at the beginning of this year. I took a dive and bought one and haven't looked back since. It's an amazing bass for the money (just under $300).

I just bought a Squier by Fender precision bass with 22 frets. A 15 watt Crate practice amp and gig bag were included (including shipping) for $216 from E-bay. Nice bass!

Squires are hit and miss. Their quality control is on the spotty side but when you find a good one, it's definitely worth the money.

Warwicks and Ernie Balls have a really heavy midrange because they're geared more towards the heavy metal sound. The
Ernie Balls I'm not sure but the Warwicks are made out of mahogany which is a heavy wood and might kill your back if you intend on playing it 3-6 hours straight.

The higher end of the Ibanez line is really nice. I've always liked them and they're very versatile, plus their neck profile is slim and really feels good in my hands.

I currently play on a Schechter 5 string. The strings are tightly spaced which helps when you're jumping from string to string but if you're into slap bass it may be difficult.

I guess this question is similar to buying tubas. My best advice is going to the guitar store and just sit down and play some basses for a few hours, until you find one that feels great in your hands.

You can spend multi thousands on boutique basses. I live in a town where one of the best boutique basses in the country is made, with anywhere from 4 to 7 strings, your choice of exotic woods, hardware, electronics, etc.

But if you're a doubler, just looking for a workhorse gig bass, there is a reason Fender or a Fender copy is still the #1 selling bass. It works. It's durable. It won't let you down in the middle of a gig.

Probably the most flexible bass in the world for the money is a Fender Precision that has had one of the new "noiseless" Jazz Bass pickups added where the Jazz bridge pickup usually is, and wired with simple volume-volume-tone controls.

Play a lot before you buy one. Get one that is lightweight alder or ash. Alder will be a tad "rounder" in tone, Ash will have a bit more "pop" or "zing" in the tone. A maple fingerboard will be a bit "cleaner" or "brighter" sounding, and a rosewood fingerboard will be be a little "bigger" or "warmer" sounding.

At this point, brand doesn't matter so much as it having real wood, quality electronics (that means having enough coil wire wound on the pickups to give a decent tone and high quality controls and jacks so they actually work smoothly without noise and won't break) and being set up properly. Spend the equivalent of somewhere between $250 and $1000 and you'll have a fine bass.

My custom bass which I had made with fanned frets so I could play for more than 20 minutes at a stretch without cramping is this configuration, alder with a rosewood fingerboard, and I've literally played about every kind of gig you can play with it. Even with the custom parts, since I assembled it myself, I only have about a grand in it. The biggest chunk was getting Sheldon Dingwall to custom fret it for me to my specs, with the low E at standard 34 inch Fender scale, and the G string at 33 1/4 inch Rickenbacker scale, and fanned accordingly from a conventional square nut.

Personal pickyness from 30+ years of playing bass guitar: 1) good hardware is a must to be durable. 2) Hipshot lightweight tuners will save you literally 1/2 pound in weight over the traditional large Fender style tuners. When the weight is in the headstock trying to make your bass dip and dig into your shoulder, that means a lot. 3) Get a good direct box. Not expensive, just good and clean so you can run straight into the board and gig/house system and use a much smaller amp, much easier to carry around, as a personal monitor, and hook it up with good quality cords that have a warranty. Don't let a cheap cord fail and ruin a good gig. You'll be spending a significant chunk on a good bass, an extra $30 to $50 or so for two or three good cords is a given. Again, not esoteric, just good quality. If the cord has a name brand and a warranty, it's probably alright. 4) Get a good tuner, and learn how to use it properly, which means, among other things, knowing how to adjust to something like the gig/house piano that may not be at concert pitch, and being able to check your bridge adjustments periodically, especially when you change strings. 5) Experiment with strings. Not all players and basses like all strings. My Rickenbacker 4002 loves GHS Progressives, my custom bass loves Rotosounds, my cousin's cheap beginner bass sounds best with GHS groundwounds; my friend's esoteric 7 string Conklin sounds best with Conkin private label strings, etc. Start with a good namebrand nickel plated roundwound set in a medium gauge, like 45-105, and see how it goes from there as to what you and your bass like or don't like. 6) Take some time to learn the traditional jazz-based or upright classically based technique (both hands), with positions, etc., so sight reading is easier. 7) Every time you play with a different drummer, study his style intensely as best you can in rehearsal, warmup, or at worst during 1st set so you can sit in the groove with him no matter what happens. He may be the one in the wrong, either setting the wrong tempo or being inconsistent, but you'll be the one who gets blamed for it. 8 ) Straight grain in the neck is essential. This isn't talked about much, but on a good maple slab neck with straight grain, there is usually a line of "freckles" on the neck at the edge of the fingerboard on one or both sides, as the neck is contoured to meet the fingerboard and the end grain or cross grain is exposed. In addition to the grain lines being straight along the back of the neck, if the "freckles" make a good straight line down the neck next to one or both edges of the fingerboard, then there is no "runout" of the grain, and the neck of that particular bass is much less likely to twist or warp over time. Voice of experience. 9) In addition to notes, learn the basic riffs, styles, rhythms and progressions of all genres of music, whether you like them or not, in all keys. You might not be in an area where the the difference between a samba and a rhumba may seem important, but you never know what the bride may request, with the father of the bride smiling in the corner with his wallet open at the tip jar, and the best man wanting to sing a good luck song with the guys, but can hardly carry a tune in a bucket and needs to have it taken down a notch or two to get through it. 10) Learn as many songs as you can. Period. Jazz standards, classic rock, TV commercial jingles, camp songs, country, songs that make limburger cheese smell good, etc. If you know it, you'll definitely get more tips in the jar. 11) If at the end of a gig, someone says something along the lines of how good a bass player you are, you probably screwed up or didn't blend in the mix. If instead someone compliments the band generally and/or the other soloists, you did your job properly. 12) There are others, it's too late at night to think of any more.

These are the highlights of having played bass since summer band camp in 1976, when the junior high camp jazz band needed a bass player, and I volunteered. I had never played bass before, but I had played guitar about a year, and I had at that point several years of fundamental piano, so I knew both how strings & frets and how bass clef worked. I asked my director if I could use my high school's bass. He said he didn't know I could play. I said I didn't either, but wanted to learn. So he set me up -- with the school's Ventura copy of a P-bass with a Jazz-bass style (narrow at the nut) neck. I showed up, the parts were passed out, and I literally did this: "OK, first note is a 4th line f. OK, let's see: D open, D# 1st fret, E 2nd, F 3rd. Got that one. OK, the next note is a...." And by the concert at the end of the week the drummer and I were kicking a full complement jazz band. I've never looked back, and even though I don't play as many gigs as I used to, over the years I've made more beer money from bass guitar gigs than the rest of them put together, including vocal, brass, guitar, or whatever.

I have the same brand of electric bass that Bloke touts. Mine is 6 string and fretless. It costs in the $3XX range, but is as good a bass as any mentioned so far.

I used to think that all China imports were awful, but lately some of the instruments are making a vast improvement in quality. Don't ditch the instruments untill you set down with one and give it some quality time.

Tom Mason

Thanks for the replies.

Please correct me if I am wrong:
I understand your advice is to get something like a Fender, Peavey, Ibanez or Ernie Ball. And I understand that I might get lucky with at Chinese made copy. Since I do not know much about electric basses, I think that I better be safe than sorry and stick with a known brand.

And it seems that you more or less say that I can not go wrong with a Fender.

I was at a local store and learned that Fender basses are made in Mexico and USA. And the Mexico made basses was a lot cheaper. Would I be ok with a bass made in Mexico, or should I invest in a “reelâ€

The Mexico vs USA Fenders is only a quality control issue, plus the American pickups are a little bit better I believe.

The Peavey Grind series is praised as a pretty good bass guitar. I'm not sure about their other ones.

As for Ibanez, their GSR series is basically an entry level bass. The SR series is very good with decent pricing imo.

The Fender Mexico/America issue is discussed in depth on talkbass.com. My own solution is to look for a used Japanese fender from the 80's-90's. Their quality is equal or better than USA Fenders and the price is close to Mexican's. I think they are the best "Fender" value on the market. I agree with Bloke on the Chinese bass. Take a friend who knows what to listen for and you might find a deal. Musicman's in my opinion are fantastic, high quality instruments. Sonically they are limited to sound very much like a musicman, great if you like it, but you'll never make it sound like a Fender. Ibanez's from the late 70's thru late 80's are great, after that they are okay, but they mostly have tried to cater to the rock crowd and don't make that many instruments for commercial players. As you start looking you'll find that many people copied Leo Fender's 2 original bass designs, the precision and the jazz bass. They are the most heard bass sounds in the world and the most copied designs. In most situations you can't go wrong with a Fender or a copy.
Good Luck.
Peace.
ASG

p.s. try http://www.talkbass.com

I just remembered that my dad has an old bas. Looking at it for the first time in years, I think that it might be a possibility if I had it setup by a professional.

Do you think that it is worth putting money into? It is a Wox “symphonicâ€

I notice it has three knobs. Is there a second pickup under the cover we can't see? If so, It's probably good the way it is, with just a new set of strings.

The only thing about this bass is that if it does have just the one single coil pickup next to the neck, it might pick up a little too much noise for a lot of modern gigs that have a lot of flourscent lighting, etc, and the placement of the pickup, especially with flatwounds, might be a little too much thud and not enough ring for most contemporary ears.

If you have access to a good luthier, and if it is a solid wood bass that plays well, and if the frets are still in good shape, and if the neck is straight, it might bear looking into routing and fitting a standard P-bass style pickup in it. But if it's not in great shape already, it's probably not cost effective to do anything to it. And if it's in too good a shape, it might actually lessen its value to some collector if you do modify it.

Hmm. Probably keep on looking.

I notice it has three knobs. Is there a second pickup under the cover we can't see?

Yes

and if it is a solid wood bass

Yes

and if the frets are still in good shape

Yes

and if the neck is straight

Yes

it might actually lessen its value to some collector if you do modify it.

Is it worth anything? It is ready to go.... Trade it for a nice tuba/sousaphone, another more modern bass or even a good Banjo.

Yes, since it does have a pickup in a "normal" P-bass position, just put a set of new wound rounds, whether nickel plated or steel, as bloke suggests, and see what happens. It might just be alright. If I were playing a bass like that, I'd turn the treble/mid knobs on the amp to where I got a tone I liked with the pickup under the cover, turn the bass knob down a number from there, and dial in the amount of bass I wanted for each song with the neck pickup.

For the equivalent of @US$30 for a set of strings, it sure beats buying a new bass if it works for you!

Can't go wrong with a Carvin (although their bass amps leave a lot to be desired).

They're in the same price range as a mid-high range J or P bass from Fender, but due to their factory-direct sales method (you pretty much decide EVERYTHING you want them to do to your bass and then they make it for you) they don't hold their value as well as other companies models do. Check on ebay for a used one. It'll be cheap, a joy to play and you won't have any problems with it.

Just make sure to get some new strings and have an extra battery lying around if the bass has active pickups.

Check this thread from a fellow TubeNet member:
viewtopic.php?p=181130