When I was a guitar player, I had a tough time distinguishing intervals. In context, I could not really tell you the difference in sound between a third and a fourth…or any other intervals by ear really. However with the bass, I can pick out when someone changes from a root to a second, third, fourth or any of the other tones within the bass line. Has anyone else found intervals easier on a bass? I think this is why, once I get my finger speed up, I should be able to play songs by ear (I think)
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Yes I find them much easier than sax for sure.
The oddity of sax is that you are never really in perfect tune unless you are really, really good, which throws intervals off just enough to mess things up, at least for me.
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I do also 
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This made my day and reminded me of several jam sessions where bagpipe players showed up.
The one thing I have had trouble with, when playing with instruments that use reeds, is that as they seem to be always going out of tune as the reed becomes wetter.
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It is really quite amazing that anyone can play in tune up and down a sax.
If you watch pros, they learn their horn and all the little mouth/embouchure changes that need to be made up and down the horn for every note. After a while your ear dials in each note as you play, but this is insanely hard and takes years. I am so happy i can tune a bass and play in tune in seconds, you have no idea!
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I wonder if this has anything to do with age or hearing loss in general.
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Every instrument goes out of tune, yet indeed reed instruments are easier noted.
It also depends on what you familiar with, I do for example, strungle with keeping a pennywhistle in tune after playing it for a while.
Yet on a hot and wetter day, my bass tends to get out of tine as well.
It’s the nature of the beast.
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In the end, we’re lucky we have only four strings, and not 47 (concert harp) or 88 (piano).
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Funny you should say that.
Some 20 years ago I purchased a 12 string acoustic, inspired by Gordon Lightfoot who lives up the road from me. I still have it but got tired of having to tune so often. Don’t get me wrong, I always tune when starting a session and usually it’s good for the whole session but the 12 string needed to be retuned every couple of songs and it was irritating to me 
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Just glad my bass has four yet my old harp only had 22 …
(Celtic harp) Which was more then enough 
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I learned intervals on a piano. Very efficient, since there’s no frequent tuning involved.
I played sax for years and the ingrained ear training from piano-based interval training carried over quite naturally. Yes, there are inherent tuning inconsistencies that must be addressed with embouchure, but the gross interval increments were easily recognizable with practice.
Applying them to guitar and now bass follows. The key is having musically mnemonic cues in mind for each interval, e.g., using a song you’re very familiar with that emphasizes a given interval in its melody. It takes dedicated repetition over several practice sessions to become second-nature, but it does work.
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