Best Bass Guitar Brands

I really don’t. Those 2x4 necks are of no interest to me.

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Not yet, but you will. At one point I was a diehard Jazz profile fanboy and now I’ve come to love the wider P and MM profile. Not only they feel spacious but going back to faster narrower Jazz profile really makes for a great experience.

It’s like riding a mountain bike, the climb will be the wider profile, no pain no gain satisfying experience and the decent is the fast and responsive Jazz profile, yet another kind of rewarding experience.

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This is pretty funny to me.
A top 5 or even a top 10 would feel like it had some weight and impact. 17 feels a bit arbitrary and like the net has been cast out prettttty wide.
On the other hand, good news for bassists if there are 17 top brands to choose from, eh?

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There’s just something satisfying about the curve of a P bass neck and the nut width.

But p necks aren’t all baseball bats. My MDB5 has a slimmer p neck which feels wonderful cupped in your hand, my Squier p has a slimmer C profile too.

On the other hand my Charvel had a super thin, flat jazz neck that’s like driving a Maserati

Both have their charms.

For learning and practice I gravitate towards a P neck. I feel it reinforces good technique, where on a speed neck you can cut corners sometimes

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I hear you, but my fret hand is unique. I lost the fingertips on my left hand in an industrial accident when I was 16. I relearned how to play guitar by arching my hand over the neck to compensate for the shorter finger lengths.

In college, I played sax and learned piano. I also had a stable of electric guitars and two basses: a 70s Fender Jazz and a Rick 4001.

Before I got those two, my lead guitarist buddy had pushed me to get a P bass, because “Everybody plays a P bass.” So I tried out a bunch, looking for the glass slipper.

No cigar, man. The baseball-bat circumference and aircraft-carrier-deck width of a P is a non-starter for my fretting hand.

After college and the guitars/basses purge that allowed me to keep buying groceries, I needed a new bass for the band I was in, so once again to the music store. Man, I tried every axe in the joint. It was a drag. Nothing seemed to fit my hand. Until I played the one bass I had avoided because it was so non-Fender, funky looking: a Danelectro Longhorn short scale.

That weirdo little bass clicked. Hard.

The neck profile and scale length worked like a big dog. It also helped that it was set up to a fare-thee-well. Soooo easy to play!

I bought that puppy (for not much bread!) along with a Fender Bassman head and cab, and I was gone.

Fast forward several decades and I was in the market for a bass to do B2B. Amid Covid lockdown.

I researched likely candidates online, knowing I needed necks that would work for me. I also ignored conventional wisdom about not buying new/not buying online. I wanted a quick, guaranteed way of getting a refund for any instrument that didn’t do it for me.

So…within the first four weeks of starting B2B, I ordered five basses. The first one, a really pretty Gretsch Junior Jet II, went back to Sweetwater. Ironically, its neck depth was TOO thin for my hand; I cramped up bad when I played it.

The rest of the pack work great for me, as their neck depths are in a range that is comfortable and efficient for my hand/fingers: Sire U5 (short scale), Sterling short scale, Sire M5, Mayones Jabba Mala 4.

As is the case with many, I don’t need them all. But they are so damn fine (for me), I hate to part with any one of them. If I could keep only one, it would be the Mayones because it plays like butter and sounds like heaven.

Apologies for the lengthy diatribe. But the degree to which the cliche “We are all different” is indeed vast.

All to say, for me, P necks need not apply.

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Their website is full of nonsense like “ToneWood”. It’s not a scam site but clearly incompetent. To their credit their guitar brands list is much better

Wait, we don’t believe in Tonewood now?

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I used this as an excuse to tell my wife I needed 12 more basses. Only the best for me :crazy_face:

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Uh…I believe in tonewood.

What do I win?

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You win a cap @MikeC :sunglasses:

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@Barney Too late, Barn. Way ahead of you.

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When I play on my M2 sometimes (Yeah, that neck is not my gusto … but that Sire Marcus Miller preamp is so much fun.) I tend to really cheat on my pinky with my ring finger.

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There ain’t no right or wrong, man.

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We’ll that depends on the color of the capacitor and the material of the pickup wires. Occasionally, the color of the Pickguards come in to play.

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That’s why vintage is the best. The cloth covers on the pickup wires gives it that warm tone.

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Wait a minute, i can get different color capacitors? And electrically that color means nothing and i can accessorize and style my bass? I love this game!

Dang. I had to come back. You’re saying tie pickguard color has an effect? My basses don’t even have pickguards! No wonder I’m not amazing-i gotta rethink my whole bass game!

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No pickguards is best, they can’t hold in your tone then. Tone Plastic is a myth!

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