I mean that mostly in terms of the tone and the styling. What sorts of music they would most lend themselves to.
“Classic” meaning - If you just plug in and start playing, it has the sound based on a Leo Fender design. The Sire V series have that “jazz bass” sound. They have a more classic, curved body style.
“Modern” meaning it has a sharper, usually brighter sound than one of those classic designs. All of these “modern” basses use a pair of slim humbucker pickups (as opposed to fat MM style buckers). They lend themselves more to modern rock, pop, and metal. They also have sleeker more modern body styles.
“Versatile” meaning - you have more onboard options to change the tone of the bass to get different sounds. 2 pickups, usually active electronics, and maybe even goofy things like switching humbuckers between series and parallel.
I call the BB234 “classic Versatile” because it will give you a range of adjustable tones, but they’re all going to be on the spectrum between P-bass and Jazz bass.
The “modern versatile” examples, you can maybe get to sound like a classic P, J, or Ray bass, but it will require fiddling to approximate that sound.
Everyone’s input has been tremendous. I like SW cuz I love my rep. He plays and owns basses and is amazing at making sure my orders are right. With that being said I will give Pitbull a look when the time comes and GAS guy inevitably wins.
It’s insanely difficult to find a bass that’s not versatile enough across genres so the fun task is to find the narrowest versatility from your 2nd bass and on.
One and done is not a good thing. Last thing I “want” on a bass is versatility. That’s why it’s so much fun to play a song with 10 different basses and pick the one you like the most.
I love it when I record originals and know exactly which bass to use and it also provide the inspiration for the bass lines.
I have three P/J and one double-P. I think I have a theme going.
I like humbuckers a lot too, have owned three basses with them, but nothing punches quite like a nice, mids-strong P pickup. Neck humbuckers can quickly get too saturated and muddy on basses IMO.
J pickups aren’t really my thing. I like them on P/J but that’s about it.
Sure, there’s a lot of great humbuckers too - and then on the other hand there’s also a lot of Gibson EB0’s out there
Ceramics can help a lot. IMO given equal quality, ceramic pickups sound better on bass than AlNiCo do - sort of the opposite of guitar for me (and the opposite of “convention”). The added brightness and mids they bring is nice.
I realized recently that I have two jazz-style basses. One with flats, one with rounds. I have two P-style basses. One with flats, one with rounds. And two basses with MM style pickups. You guessed it, one with flats, one with rounds.
(And then two BTBs, one with rounds, and the other with rounds LOL)
I’m glad you found this useful. Please don’t consider this authoritative. I am just a rando on the interwebz providing information worth what you’re paying.
Depends on what you’re doing. Great option if recording in a home studio.
For playing with my band, I really like something with a nice default sound, but with some options that I can adjust simply. My main bass is my Reverend Raymond, and I love how much tone variety I can get with just pickup sweep and tone nob. From sharp Stingray to very warm P-bass sound.
But going back to the original topic: I picked it because I wanted a ray-type, and I saw this and thought it looked incredible. Then I held it and it was super light and the neck fit my hands great.
Well I’ve been reading all the lovely posts at to be honest I’m still undecided , a friend of mine has a Marcus miller M2 which is nice I felt comfortable with it ,but I’m in no rush I won’t be buying a bass just for the sake of it i need it to feel right,will keep you posted my friend
