LOL! Very well said @eric.kiser!
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It really sucks when you get a severe case of GAS, and all the GAS stations are closed due to the lockdown. Fortunately, the online GAS stations are still in operation, although it doesnât totally replace drooling over the gear in person.
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So is it fundamentally necessary that a general gigging bass player have the Fender P on hand? Is that an essential in the collection? If it werenât it certainly seems fun to look at the SRH500F to play around with that upright kinda sound or the H8 with resonating strings, something like a bass sitar concept. Otherwise, I was looking at the Deluxe Active to knock down the P and the J or does that not really do it justice?
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No, that would depend who youâre gigging with. If planning to work as a studio musician, from what @Gio and @JoshFossgreen have said, then yes.
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Seriously?!? So, I show up for a studio gig and get kicked out because I donât have a Fender? No other P bass or even a PJ bass will do? It has to be a Fender P bass?
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Hey @PamPurrs. I donât know if itâs that extreme. Josh and Gio have made numerous comments similar to the one below.
That is utter madness. If thatâs true, it makes me want to sell all my gear and move on to a different interest. I hate the thought of being in an industry thatâs that pin-headed. If a highly qualified, extremely talented bassist, capable of playing whatever is put before him/her, shows up for the job, it shouldnât matter what brand of instrument they bring to the job. This really pisses me off.
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I havenât encountered any industry that was other than pin headed.
I think this is probably part of it. The more someone fits that description the more they would be trusted. I think itâs like any industry. Some people are good, some people are bad, and only a few are truly great at what they do. The truly great are going to get a lot more leeway. For everybody else, that person is there to do a job and if they show up with the expected tool for that job, their life will be easier.
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Iâm okay now, I just had to blow off some steam. SorryâŚ
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Itâs all good. 
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Imagine if you were a violinist and went to audition for an orchestra and the conductor would only hire those who play a strad LOL 
How many Stradivarius violins are known to exist?
It is estimated that in total, Stradivari made around 1,100 musical instruments in total. Of these, 600 are still thought to be in existence. Of that number, only 244 violins are currently accounted for.
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It does seem strange, but Iâm guessing that this applies mostly to very long-time, professional musicians, who regularly do studio sessions, and get paid for it. And even they all state that they bring multiple basses to the studio, to fit the job, but that the Fender P bass is kind of the basic staple to bring.
And from my tiny, one time experience at a studio, goodness, the guitar, drums, and vocalist get so much of the attention, I can see the recording engineer just wanting a bass player to stick to what is known and time tested.
Iâd venture to guess too, that for these roles in particular, theyâre just looking for a bass player to sort of order around a little. The other musicians, or producers, or whoever has the $ or the clout just wants the job done by someone who will do it without too many takes or experimentation, but do it well. It may be part of the old, âthe bass player is the humble one who holds everything together, but hardly gets credit for itâ type of thing.
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No not necessarily, @DaveT . . . 
The reason so much fuss is made over the Fender Precision Bass is because it has been in production longer (since the early 1950âs) than any other electric bass guitar out there.
Because of that, it has become the industry standard, and is the yardstick that other basses are measured against.
In reality, it doesnât matter what brand of bass you play as long as you can play it well.
@JoshFossgreen or @Gio could nail some rubber bands to a 2x4 and make it sound good . . . 
HTH and all best, Joe
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Obviously not every bassist uses a P-bass, in studio or live.
What I took @Gio and @JoshFossgreenâs comments to mean were that sound engineers in studios were way more comfortable with mixing P-basses, due to the fact that they are historically the most common instrument they encounter, and have a solid, distinct sound. So when a bass player that is an unknown quantity to them shows up with something that isnât a P-bass, they get wary.
There is a certain informative yet notoriously assholish sound engineer on youtube (not hating here, I am pretty sure he would wear that as a badge of pride) that famously has strong feelings about bass players. This is exactly the kind of person I am talking about here 
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And for me, the other side of this coin is that I totally DGAS what some asshole sound engineer would want, because for me, the asshole sound engineer is me
The chance of me becoming a regular session bassist with a sound engineer that is not me is basically 0 - not due to skill (which I definitely donât have yet), but because I have very specific interests and recording/engineering is one of them.
Of course the opposite is also true. If I were in a band, and we were recording in a studio, I would STFU and listen to the engineer. Because they are going to have a way more experienced and unbiased ear for that situation than I would. Assuming they werenât a bozo.
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who are you referring to @howard ? I do not know this person, but would love to have a watch based on that description.
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Decades ago, a young, inexperienced guitar player went into the studio with the band he played in. He had discovered that he could get a nice, fat tone with lots of sustain when heâd crank his amp up, and would mike the speaker in a specific way.
The recording engineers told him to turn his amp down, and they would crank up the volume â thatâs how it was done. âNO!â he cried, â⌠I want you to record THIS sound!â
Eventually, he got his way, and went on to change electric guitar forever.
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Itâs like sending your contractor home because heâs using a DeWalt sander rather than a Metabo.
Iâve never understood this fetish for the Fender P.
When I started out playing bass, everybody told me I should get one, so I did.
Iâve never liked it â I thought of it as a blunt tool. Which it is, really. And coincidentally, I think that cemented its success â when Fender was assimilated into CBS, their instruments went downhill⌠but as some say, the P was such a simple tool there wasnât much CBS could fuck up about it.
But in the hands of an average bass player (such as yours truly) it is an average-sounding, pretty dull bass that does everything adequately, and nothing really well.
And thatâs my other point â when playing an instrument, the sound is not in the gear.
During a sound check at one of Allan Holdsworthâs last live appearances, a friend of mine once got the opportunity to play Allanâs guitar, through Allanâs rigs, with Allanâs settings.
âI sounded nothing like Allan!â, he lamented.
So, if I were a sound engineer, rather than kick a session player out because heâs not using the kitchen utensils I am used to seeing in the studio, maybe Iâd better have a listen to what he has to bring to the table first.
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Like I said, heâs not wrong and is informative, but he has⌠strong opinions
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Itâs a lot mroe nuanced than that. While I understand your point that a lot of good tone comes from the artist, and I fully believe you that your friend sounded nothing like his idol when he tried the same gear, that does not make this statement entirely true.
Different basses have different tonal characteristics. Bright active basses with roundwounds sound a lot different, both in the mix and solo, than (say) a P with flats. Especially when you consider modern (late '80s/'90s onward) bass styles can be a lot more midrange-heavy than the more classic P-bass tone, and that simply sits differently in the mix.
I can understand why recording engineers get used to mixing certain bass tones. That doesnât mean I agree with it, and like I said I will happily ignore it for my own recording and just do what I want. But at the same time, if I was in a studio with a random band, I would definitely listen to the engineer. She knows her studio better than I do, and also knows what sounds good to her holistically as taking in the whole band, as opposed to my opinion as a single member of the band.
Would I leave and get a different bass? Nope. But I would definitely EQ like she asked me to, etc.
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