Is it worth buying a custom bass?

Gear
81

I have a few basses for the same reason, I like to pick up and play the one that I feel like playing at the moment, and I appreciate things about it, and after I put it down and pick up another, I re appreciate the things that I like about that specific bass. It keeps it interesting, and it makes playing old familiar basses, fell like playing it the first time once again. But I am a collector at heart. I can’t compete with Al or @John_E , or even come close, but I like the collection I have, but still would sell some just to be able to buy others.

I didn’t read the whole thing, but the part I read about you liking the p bass, but the neck was too wide, and you liked the stingray, but had the same issue with the neck…
Did you look at the Sterling by Music Man Stingrays, the Ray4 or the Ray24 in particular? Those are stingrays, just not American made, so they don’t cost $2500, but they are awesome instruments, and they have the more narrow 1.5" wide jazz neck. I would rate the Ray4 as the Best bang for. your buck for sure. for $299, you can’t find as well constructed, great classic looking, slick, awesome feeling bass that can sound like a stingray, like a real stingray. I prefer to swap out the stock pick up, that is the one area they cheeped out, but if you cut the eq all teh way down, maybe boost the bass a little, you can still play it and enjoy it. once you start boosting the treble, that pick up is so hot it makes your ears start bleeding.
To be fair, too much treble with many basses, on the bass, the tone pot, the amp, any pedal, and or any combo of, with too much treble can make any bass make your ears bleed, so if you play your cards right, you can live with the stock pick up and have an awesome Stingray for $299, With a jazz sized neck that sounds like is more to your liking. Sorry if all that was covered already, I am catching up, lots like about 8 days back.

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82

Thanks for the suggestion on Ray4. I watched lobster’s video, and the thing he doesn’t like about Ray4 is the pickup, and he changed it to another brand. I don’t have the skill to change pickups yet. :smiley: Still a long way to go in learning electronics and soldering.

What I currently have in mind is a Sandberg bass with P-bass + MM pickup design. I can have thin neck with Sandberg AFAIK. But I am still weighing it against other off-the-shelf options tho.

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83

Sandberg’s are excellent, you cannot go wrong there.

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84

Hi @John_E . Yeah I heard they’re great. I am also surprised that the cost are on par with some off-the-shelf counterpart.

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85

He changes the Preamp AND the pick up. Changing the pick up is literally replacing 2 wires, the new one where the old one was. Replacing the pre-amp gets a little more involved.
I agree with lobster on the pick up, but if you play with the boosts cut, and use the amp or a pre-amp pedal to dial in the mid and highs, you can get away with the stock pick up for a while, its not like YOU MUST change the pick up before you can play it. It is a good upgrade tho.
I put an Aguilar in mine, and love it. I did not change the pre-amp, and don’t see the need to, unless you really want the 3 band pre-amp, but I am happy with the stock pre-amp.
It literally is a 10 minute job to swap it out, or find a shop that will charge you no more then 40 to swap it out.

But yeah, Sandberg’s are supposed to be awesome, I am not lucky enough to get to sample any, they are not very common around here, and they are pricey, but well worth the price from what I understand.

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86

Based on what I have read here, largely from Toby but also others, if I were going to get any Stingray, including considering the EBMM’s, I would probably get a Ray4, due to the combination of weight and neck style. And then potentially upgrade it later. If so I would be replacing the preamp maybe even before the pickup (I dislike 2-bands).

I wouldn’t worry so much about the pickup. Stock bass tone is vastly overrated. You can do a lot to tone with pedals or in the DAW. It’s much more important to find a playable bass you will enjoy and want to pick up.

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87

Though more is generally better value, I do wish all basses are like Joe Dart signature with one volume knob only or none. Especially to most of us here, we’d probably have 2-3 preamps signal after the bass to the amp. At least one is going to be in the middle value if not all but one pre.

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88

The problem with two-band EQ is that nine times out of ten it’s the mids I want to boost or cut.

These days I generally just record clean anyway though and EQ later.

89

I agree @Al1885 - the options can look overwhelming - where to start? Especially as a beginner when it’s really even a bit hard to hear major tone differences much less subtle ones.

Wasn’t there a thread here about the best method/procedure/routine to adjust all your options? On-the-bass, effects-if-any, and then amp in order to get the tone you want? Maybe I just thought about asking the question? Or maybe everyone finds their own solution.

I’m lazy and I just want to play a fun song and not fiddle knobs - so I have passive bass with pickups and tone as close to center as possible on the bass end - amp has everything at 12’oclock. Then the Zoom B1Four in the middle has complete control over everything else: click->motown->sounds enough like a P-bass with flats that I’m happy; click->bman->sound enough like most blues bass tones to make me happy; click->drvn&comp-> sounds enough like modern pop/rock tone that im happy with the way it fits into sting songs. I’m a HUGE proponent of the 90% solution - don’t want to spend time/money/frustration trying to turn 90% into 99%.

(Sorry for hijacking)

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90

I have Genzler amp, which know for producing neutral tone and don’t have “signature” tone so what you hear is what you get straight from the bass. I love the concept so I mainly weave it center on most.

They do offer the blue and amber modern/vintage preset contour. That’s the one I use the most. Come to think of it, every time I tinker with the knobs so I could dial in my favorite tone which in the sense make all bass sound the same. I stopped doing that now.

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91

This is why I bought the Bergantino B|AMP. Pure, clean and powerful.
I wanted the tone of my bass to come through, or shape it with whatever pedal I want, not what the preamp has in a ‘signature tone’ for some brand or another. I can do that with pedals or (dare I say…) plugins, haha.
I didn’t want all my basses to sound sorta like each other.
I have yet to adjust the EQ on the amp, I leave that to the bass, B7K or VT Bass DI.
I will say it has a great fuzz/distortion circuit in it though.

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92

I think that’s the ultimate for tinkerer like you and I @John_E we pick the pickup and let’s see what it really sounds like pure. I’m heading that direction quickly And starting to notice what each bass sounds like.

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93

You guys are so close to taking that last step… realizing that amps are completely immaterial unless you want to play live, and you don’t need them at all… come on in, the water’s nice :slight_smile:

Amp and cab sims through good monitors sound great :slight_smile:

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94

Speaking on behalf of the technophobes here I would be really grateful if you could explain how to set something like this up @howard in very simple terms. I still get lost once abbreviations and initials start getting used. As sad as it sounds a step by step guide would be absolutely awesome even a dedicated thread

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95

The way I do it is that I use my audio interface as both the sound input (when recording) and sound output (always) for my computer. I have a pair of studio monitors connected to the sound output on my audio interface. I Direct Monitor the bass through these.

In my case, I always hear the clean bass while playing this way, and do all the sound modification in the DAW using plugins. But you don’t have to do it this way - for example, @John_E has a couple tone-shaping pedals he really likes, one of which is effectively an amp simulator, and the other has a built in cabinet simulator. He could run the bass through those and into the audio interface and it would likely sound fantastic through the monitors. He likes a very clean amp; there is nothing cleaner than monitors.

The reason I do this is it is much more convenient for recording and mixing to have the clean bass track, so that is all I record. My workflow is entirely in the DAW for adding effects and amp tone; that’s just one way to do it, but it is really flexible for me.

If someone wants to stick with pedals that’s fine too; it’s a bit less flexible (once you record the sound through the pedals you can’t really undo that, so if you want to change it substantially later you may need to re-record) but a lot of people still do this.

One thing you do learn very fast (either way) is that the initial clean tone of the bass doesn’t matter nearly as much as you think it does. There is a lot you can do to shape that.

I haven’t owned an amp in over two years, and don’t miss it at all. Then again, I’m neither playing live nor have any plans to. That changes things a lot.

Plus, some people just like amps. Nothing wrong with that :slight_smile:

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96

As a concrete example of this, here’s my bandmate and I - he on guitar and me on bass - with all DAW plugins off on the bass and guitar tracks, just some EQ and compression on the master track:

Here it is with the effects on for everything, with compression, amp and cab sims on the bass and guitar tracks:

The original tone for both the bass and guitar clean tracks weren’t bad - sounded pretty good, love my TRBX, his Gretsch is great, etc - but damn :slight_smile:

You can do a lot to the original tone of the bass and guitar. It matters a lot less than we worry about.

Isolated clean bass:

Add compression, amp and cabsim:

Simulate doubletracking - still need to play with this a bit, a little too much phasing, but generally sounds a lot “bigger”:

It’s kind of crazy how much you can actually shape the tone.

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97

Thank you @howard
I will take some time and study this so that it sticks in my thick skull

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98

The big things to take away here:

  • There’s a lot of paths to recording and playing, and an amp is not critical to all of them
  • You can do so much to shape and change the tone of your bass later that the original bass tone matters a lot less than we obsess about

The bass in those examples is a stock $600 TRBX604 with its original (admittedly very good) pickups. You don’t need a custom or upgraded bass to sound good. And you can sound great, with a big tube amp sound, without buying an Ampeg stack. There’s lots of ways to get there.

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99

This is what I have. It is to me the best looking, best playing, and best sounding bass I’ve encountered. Yes, it’s “very very very expensive” but to me the expense it worth it. It also is a one-of-a-kind collector’s item and the value will go up over time. Apart from the reasons I just mentioned, the number one reason is that my love of this bass makes me play more. I would say I play twice as much as I did before. That can’t be underestimated and that alone makes it worth the investment for me. It also stopped me looking at other basses as I have no need now, which means I’m not spending more money on basses.

Also, I’m a one bass guy. Many of you have a handful of basses that if you added up what you paid for those, it probably equals one or more custom basses. And it’s fine if you’d rather have multiple basses. Each to their own, but I don’t regret my decision in the slightest. My only advice on this is to not just buy a bass for looks. Lots of crazy looking custom basses out there where the focus has been on looks rather than playability and sound. If you don’t like playing it or how it sounds, then it was probably a poor decision as it is just going to sit on a case or on the wall collecting dust. I have done that myself with a guitar (not bass) I purchased in the past…

Note: There are also some “normal” Sadowsky basses around as well that aren’t as expensive. Warwick makes those nowadays. I’ve not tried any of them so can’t say how good they are or not, but I bet they are pretty good.

All this being said, I don’t think I could spend more than $5k on a bass. It just becomes silly to me after that as I feel like beyond that, you are just paying for looks and uniqueness. I do believe there are small playability and sound enhancements between $2k-$5k, albeit minor and maybe not even noticeable to many.

Also, I think basses are cheap overall. I used to play violin and they get CRAZY expensive for the body and the bow. Imagine paying $5k just for a stick of wood. :slight_smile:

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100

This is a huge thing and probably more important than all the other considerations combined, yeah.

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