My Main Instrument
This series of posts cover the gear that I purchased and use now (or maybe used before). So that they’ll be no sponsored by others.
Well, I must start “Gear Talks” with my main instrument, Fender Jazz bass 1978. This instrument is now 46 years old however, still in the front line of my business. The bass came to me in 1994 from New York, as the picture shows, right after Roger Sadowsky tuned. According to the agent, Roger set it up with replacing frets, replacing the bridge and installing a preamp. For controllers installation, the output jack was moved to the side. This preamp requires a 9V battery which is installed in the back panel, and can be bypassed with the tone controller pulling. Since the original tone controllers work roll-off only, this bass doesn’t have any tone control when it is bypassed. And the preamp only works for boosting. It’s a kind of classic active circuit!
If you are familiar with electric basses, you may say ““Oh, are there any passive tone controls?”. No, there aren’t. Well, I can control tone with my hands. I remember Anthony Jackson played the bass which didn’t have controllers.
This bass is super accurate and pretty responsible, extremely durable and reliable, has solid sustain and thousands of tones I can produce with or without the preamp.
How The Instrument Sounds
I will update some sound clips soon.
The Industrial Standard
There are two models of the electric bass which became the industrial standard in the recording scene. Fender Precision Bass and Fender Jazz bass. The reason why they became the standard is that so many recordings had been done in many years from the late 1950’s to the 1980’s. During those decades, many studio equipment had developed, innovated and manufactured. Believe it or not, electric basses are kinds of new instruments for recording history, especially in the 1950’s and the technology for the low end of the record must be developed rapidly. The following decades, the developers for the studio equipment had studied the Fender Basses and used them as the reference sound. Yes, because they were popular in the studio! The more studio engineers had gotten used to dealing with the Fender Basses, the more they were demanded in the recording scene. Finally Fender Basses became the standard of the bass sound.
Actually, I had been called to play “the Fender Jazz”, not “the bass” many times. They wanted the sound, not me! Sounds like a joke, but it wasn’t. Once I said “My Jazz bass doesn’t have lower than E, but this song needs lower D pitch”, the producer went like “You just drop down your E-string and record it. Don’t bring your 6 strings!” Oh, what the world is…. Whatever! This bass helped me to establish my music career for a long time.
Recommend Jazz Bass for beginners
Now you can find a lot of beautiful basses in the shop. But If you’re serious about playing, and you’re a beginner, I strongly recommend you to choose Fender Jazz Bass. You don’t have to buy a high price vintage, the current products line, new or used whichever will be a good choice. I know they look classical, not attractive though.
The first reason is the playability. Even Though the original design made in the 1950’s is never changed, it has a well-balanced body, an easily accessible neck for every position, so that you can practice longer and learn faster. This is also the reason why Fender Jazz Bass became the industrial standard for the players. Most players can play great for many years! I always recommend my students to buy a used Jazz Bass for the beginning.
The second reason is the sound. You have some sound variations with two pickups that fit any type of your playing. Like I said, most equipment has been designed to be good for Fender Basses, you don’t worry about your amps and pedals. They all fit to Jazz Bass sounds good.
After you learned how to play, and still you want to have some different sounds, then get other modern instruments! Fender Jazz Bass will be a good start point of your musical journey.
