If budget is a concern, the 434 is an excellent bass. The pickups are different than the 734a (the 734a has the same pickups as the Yamaha pro series basses) but other than that the main difference between the 434 and 734 is that the 734 is active while the 434 is passive. If you can live with that, it might be well worth checking out.
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You will want a DI for gigs with mixers for sure (unless you are running the mixer right there on stage, which is what we did).
That said - DI are not necessary at all for home recording.
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734A is active/passive yeah, it has a switch. If you don’t need the preamp option then the 434 is fine. The 734A does have different pickups, the same as the BBP, but the 434’s pickups are still fine.
One other difference is the 434 has a solid alder body (excellent choice IMO, alder is my favorite actually for weight/tonal balance). The 734A and the BBP have an alder top and bottom with a maple core, which adds some weight but also supposedly gives it a deeper tone.
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Oh absolutely. I haven’t actually been able to put my hands on a 734 yet. I’ve played the 234 and 434. Both punch well above their price point compared to other similarly priced guitars imo and I’d be totally happy with a 434. I’ve got my heart set on the 734 though. I’m still trying to “earn it.” Almost pulled the trigger this week.
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Definitely worth well above its price point. Yamaha’s prices are really low for what you get.
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Yes absolutely, it’s muscle memory for me, 
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If you have one you like that’s not transparent and adds tone itself - REDDI, some of the Radials, etc - good reason to keep using it too 
And of course the DI out on bass preamps is useful for recording too, if you’re doing your effects with pedals. You can split out a clean DI track while keeping the dirty effected track and record both to blend later in the DAW.
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It’s so pretty and it plays so nice and growly with some heavier gauge strings. I just spent the last hour playing (err… trying more like) Ozzy - Mama, I’m coming Home, and it sounds so perfect 
Thanks to this thread and particularly what @sunDOG said about the iPhone, I finally stopped waffling on it and now have a Scarlett Solo and a pair of Audio-Technica ATH-M50x headphones on the way so I can finally record some covers. Ozzy might need a bit longer to practice though. 
Speaking of, what additional cables am I going to need? I have an iPhone 14 & and iPad Pro (2nd gen) both with lightning connectors. Can I assume I can go from the USB on the back straight into the iPhone? (and finally use the USB to lightning cable I bought by mistake?)
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The black cable is a USB-C to “normal” USB - this goes from the back of the Scarlett into the white adapter, with the C connection at the Scarlett end.
The white cable is an iPhone lightning cable - this goes from your power source to the white adapter. For power, I either use the normal wall plug that you might charge the iPhone with, or an external battery.
The white adapter accepts the iPhone lightening connection and a ‘normal’ USB connection, and plugs into the iPhone.
The Scarlett is drawing power from the phone. It can work without being connected to an external power source, but it drains the phone battery pretty quickly, hence needing to connect to either an external battery or the mains.
Hope this helps.
The next bit of the adventure is importing your backing tracks into GarageBand and making sure that you have a song that is more than 8 bars long. If you’ve already worked out how to do this, you’re set. If you need some help, nudge me. (I struggled with this and got very frustrated. In the end, a colleague at work had to show me how to do it…)
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Ok thanks, I’ll borrow one next week at my partner work and have a try.
Thanks. What the real main difference when the bass is active ? I said that I think I don’t need this because that what people told me, but I’m not sure I really get it. i heard that it’s able to kinda “'correct” sound sometimes.
It’s worth investing in a new bass that in a DI so.
Great, 434 seems a great contender in the short list. I was downtown yesterday and wanted to try basses, unfortunately no shop around got this model available. But one got the BB234 and it seems that the feel of the neck is really close to the 434 (see: Yam BB434 feels most similar to...? - #7 by howard) so I’ll go back and ask to try (It was almost closing yesterday). If I feel it I’ll ask for an order.
That makes me confident in my quest
Magic, thanks sunDOG.
I’ll give you a hollar if I start banging my head against the desk once everything comes in. 
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Depending on what you’re playing, this may or may not be a good thing.
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Hahahaha, touché My debut will be Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall, not generally known for their mosh pits it has to be said, more like reefer pits.
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I often say the original bass sound doesn’t really matter all that much and most instruments can sound great with a little work in the DAW.
This is a great example; @Fake_Train, here’s your Squier, with some minimal EQ, compression, and going in to an Ampeg SVT-CL sim:
I put less than five minutes of work in to that. The bass track is your original clip you posted. Yes, it’s now too saturated and needs some further EQ; at the same time, it illustrates the differences even just some simple processing can make.
The original you posted, for comparison:
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Hello @howard. Thank you very much for that ! That’s great ! Very encouraging, I’ll focus more on the EQ in the future.
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I’m kinda surprised no one mentioned it yet, so please allow me to do it: you should learn how to do your own setups. It’s not hard, and it requires only a couple of very basic tools.
The thing is, no “expert” will be able to setup your bass just to your liking. Only you know what you like when it comes to string height. If you know how to do it yourself, you can always quickly adjust your action if it’s not exactly the way you want it.
Oh, and strings can make a huge difference to how your bass sounds as well, so you should definitely also learn how to change your strings. I don’t know what strings you have on your bass, but it might be as simple as changing to different strings to make you appreciate your bass again.
You could start here:
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