Author: Kim du Toit

Yesterday I talked about amplifiers that I’d use for testing and gigging.  Today, it’s the turn of the bass guitars.

First off:  I don’t think any electric guitar (lead or bass) should contain a battery — the so-called “active” mode — because a.) batteries go flat — usually at the worst possible time — and b.) battery performance degrades the longer you use one.  If you want to juice up your guitar, use a booster or graphic equalizer pedal, or have an amp which includes those functions.

Of course, because I am an Olde Phartte who thinks that very little has happened since about 1990 which has actually improved the human condition, the above will come as no surprise.

Anyway, I’m going to list my favorite guitars according to two criteria:  “everyday” (ones that could do 90% of anything I’d want them to do, and “specialist”, for a sound or purpose which the everyday ones physically could not do.

In this post I’m going to deal with bass guitars, because that’s the easiest and because I know more about them than should be allowed in decent society.  Bear in mind, I want a clean, full sound out of my bass so that it will round out the sound of the band and give it a solid, earthy foundation, so the bass guitars I pick will perform that function, in spades.

Aside:  any bass I play will have only four strings because it’s a bass guitar, not a lead guitar.  Adding extra strings to a bass leads one into temptation to play the bass like a lead guitar (which is totally wrong), and of necessity, 5- and 6-stringed basses end up with thinner strings (so as to fit them all onto the neck), and thinner strings play with a more treble sound.  My own strings of choice (Ernie Ball “Beefy”) were much thicker than a standard-gauge set, and when played with augmented bass through the graphic equalizer, I could move chairs across the dance floor.

Anyway, on to the guitars.

No surprises with my first choice:  the one I played professionally for ten years, the Rickenbacker 4001S (now known as the 4003S):

No other bass sounds like the Rick, and no other bass plays like it, either.  Also, although it’s not important, some of my favorite bassists played Rickenbacker:  Chris Squire of Yes (who first turned me onto its sound), Paul McCartney and Roger Glover of Deep Purple.  There are others, many others, but none of that matters.  And the Rick has a stereo output option, which gives it more flexibility when it comes to amplification.  (I sometimes used to run the bridge pickup through an effects pedal like a chorus or flanger, and the neck pickup clean, straight through a graphic equalizer, which kept the bass foundation steady whether I was using the other pedals or not.)

Anyway, if I were called on to test a new bass amp, I’d use the Rick and the Roland as the standard, then plug the bass into the new amp without touching any of the guitar’s controls (not that I ever did, anyway;  only occasionally would I even use the pickup selector, and then only to mute the bridge pickup to get the right tone for dinner-dance music).

Recording engineers apparently hate the Rick because driven at full volume on the guitar (as I always did), its signal causes problems at the board — but that’s their problem.  They do like my #2 choice (which is waaaaay below my #1), the Fender Precision, or P-bass, as it’s lazily termed.

The Precision is the Everyman of guitars:  predictable, reliable and probably the foundation for more music since 1950 than any other bass guitar, especially as recording engineers love them.  I prefer its neck to that of the Jazz bass, but to me its sound is kinda vanilla (with one exception that I’ll talk about in a moment).

For another exceptional-sounding bass, we go to my #3 choice, the Gibson Thunderbird:

As with the Rickenbacker, no other guitar sounds like the Thunderbird:  it simply growls like a big angry dog, and I can pick out its sound immediately in any recording.  Just listen to Martin Turner of Wishbone Ash in The King Will Come, and you’ll see why I love it.  (The bass actually roars in at 1:15, if that matters to you.)

There are lots of other bass guitars out there, but those three will handle almost everything needed to produce a decent bass foundation — and most importantly, their sound is always absolutely consistent, which makes them perfect instruments to test amplifiers.  I cannot tell you how many times I’d plug my Rick into a different amp, play maybe half a song or only a few blues or rock ‘n roll riffs, and know immediately whether that amp was worth a damn.

Aside:  I once stepped into an established band to fill in for their regular bassist for a month — his work permit had expired and had to be reinstated — and while of course I played my own bass (the Rick), I had no problem using his 200w Orange amp and reflex cabinet rig, because it sounded, in a word, fantastic:  halfway through the very first song, I knew the amp was top-class because my Rick sounded wonderful.  I even made him an offer for the rig when he came back.  He told me to piss off, quite rightly, because he knew what he had;  and I’ve loved the clean sound and simplicity of Orange amps ever since.

But back to guitars…

Finally, we come to the “specialist” bass guitars, and that’s an easy one, because I’m talking about the fretless type, with which one can create a double bass sound even if, like me, you can’t play an upright double bass.  This would be the fretless version of the Precision bass:

Fitted with smoothwound strings (instead of the typical roundwound) to eliminate the squeaks of the fingers changing position on the strings, and you have a smoooooth sound that works with jazz, rock and even classical.  Then there’s Tony Levin…

When I grow up, I wanna play bass like he does.

And here’s Cathy Popper, who plays a Fender Precision bass:

…and the double bass:

Next week in Part III we’ll do the guitars.

This is going to be a somewhat esoteric series of posts — i.e. of limited interest to most people — but hey, variety is the spice of whatever, right?

As with all things, your opinions may differ from mine — in this series, it’s about “sound” and “feel”, and no more divergent criteria exist — but there ya go.

Today we are talking  about amps for electric guitars and bass guitars, because I’m sick of seeing clickbait links to some guy talking about the “best” or “best ten”, and finding myself in complete disagreement not necessarily because of his choices, but of his test equipment and criteria.  I have a few prejudices on the topic (based on years of playing in a rock band), but I want to set the ground rules — testing standards, really — right up front so we can all see the “truth”, so to speak.

Typically, we see the tester (almost always a guy) holding a guitar and extolling its virtues, maybe riffing a little to make his point, and so on.  Then we see that what’s really happening is that he’s playing said instrument through a whole bunch of pedals which enhance or otherwise improve the sound.  And who can make a judgment based on that?  Even worse is when these guys then try another instrument, but through a whole different bunch of pedals and another type of amplifier.

In the testing business, that’s called “bullshit” (I know, a very technical term), because the essence of testing is that it has to take place in a common universe or using identical testing procedures / equipment, or else it’s just nonsense and we end up with that tiresome (but accurate) cliche of “apples to oranges” and such.

When testing a guitar, lead or bass, find ONE amp and use it for all your testing.  The guys at Sweetwater generally do it right in their demonstration videos, usually using a Fender Twin Reverb 85w amp in some shape or form.  I happen to think that the venerable Twin Reverb is the greatest guitar amp ever made, and all others differ simply in terms of their sound, whether the Vox AC-30, the Marshall 1959 or the Mesa/Boogie Mark Five.  (All would be excellent choices as a test amp, by the way, but the Twin Reverb has the cleanest sound and therefore makes it a first among equals.)  Generally speaking the simpler the amp, the better (for testing purposes), which means that all the “modeling” amps (which use electronic trickery to mimic sounds of other amps) are a waste of time, unless you use the same amp voice consistently.  But few do.  As a test bed, simpler is better, and the Twin Reverb is an outstanding choice.

If I were a lead guitarist in a gig band, my top 3 choices for an amp would be:  1.) Fender ’89 Custom Twin Reverb, 2.)  Fender ’65 Twin Reverb and 3.) Marshall JVM210C 100w.  (If you want to see how they sound, go to their respective links and scroll down till you get to the demo videos.) Note that whatever amp I chose, the type would be a combo (amp and speakers in the same cabinet), because when you gig, it’s easier to carry an amp in one hand and a guitar in the other, and combo amps pack more easily in the van.

On another note, I prefer the sound of valve guitar amps, but valves do degrade over time — I know, like batteries in a guitar — but the downside of a solid state amp is if a transistor goes (it does happen, it’s happened to me), you’re left with silence;  if a valve goes, the others will keep on going until you get to put in a new one.  But nothing beats the velvety sound and smooth distortion of a valve amp, which is why 90% of the world’s guitarists use them.

When it comes to bass amps, I’m (surprisingly) in favor of solid state amps.  I’ve used both (Fender Bassman and Orange for valves, and Roland for solid state), but the reason I prefer transistor-driven bass amps is that I like a simple, clean bass tone (it’s a rhythm instrument and not a lead one, although people like Mark King and Billy Sheehan have blurred the lines somewhat).  And speaking of the aforementioned virtuosos, while I envy greatly their skill, I happen to hate the sound that each uses:  King’s is very thin to my ears, and Sheehan’s is dirty — the very antithesis of what I like to produce.  For those interested, here’s a list of some other bassists;  the rankings are unimportant, because any one of them could have been in the top 20, interchangeably.

Once again, if I were going to go out and gig today, I’d probably use a Roland Cube 120XL (because they don’t make my old rig, the RB-120 anymore, the fools):

I know, it’s got a modeling feature (COSM), but I’d only ever use one — the “Session”, which is essentially their old “Studio” bass amp circuitry, and one of the best-sounding amps ever made.  They stopped making that amp too, the idiots x2. (I have a Cube XL-30 right now, as it happens, and I love it.)  The Cube series of bass amps are also wonderfully light, which is no small thing for gigging.

Side issue:  Roland does this all the time — introduce a brilliant amp, then discontinue it after a few years — and it irritates the shit out of me.  Their GA-212 guitar amp was the coolest one ever, and it lasted about five years before they ditched it.  The only one they’ve never had the nerve to kill is the peerless Jazz Chorus, and which would be one of my solid state amps of choice for a gig.

Simple is best, for me.  All there needs to be is gain, volume, treble, mids and bass controls, and Kim’s a happy camper.  Something like this:

So if I couldn’t find a Cube 120-XL and needed a simple (and available) solid state combo bass amp, then I’d probably go with a Hartke KB15 (1×15″ speaker, 500w):

“Why a 500w amp, and why a 15″ speaker, Kim?”

I need the power because I keep the gain (pre-amp drive) low to prevent distortion, ergo  I need more power at the power amp stage.  And as for the speaker:  bass is all about moving air, and a 15″ speaker moves air better than a 10″ or even a 12″ — and it handles bass frequencies better, in my experience.  I’ve played the Kickback before, not at a gig, and I was astounded at the clarity of its sound.  (Also, bass virtuoso Victor Wooten loves the Kickback, so who am I to argue?)

Okay, so we’ve established the amps I’d use, whether testing or for a gig:  the Fender Twin Reverb for guitars, and the Hartke Kickback for bass.  Tomorrow, I’ll rank my favorite guitars of each type.