Def, and with a loom it’s so quick and easy to upgrade the pots/cap/jack whilst swapping out pickups and makes such a difference, gives a better control of the sound not to mention better reliability due to far better quality parts.
I had two mics, a Shure SM58 and a Behringer XM8500. I sold the SM58 as the XM for about 20% of the price was about 90% as good.
Imo def not cheap and nasty, to quote @David B they’re cheap and good.
In my last band I needed that fresh new steel rounds twang, Warwick Red Labels lasted pretty well so that was every 2 months or so. Now I use Elixirs and can get between 8 months to a year before the clarity on the E goes.
My faves are the Fender Custom Shop 62s, though Lindy Fralin makes some great P-bass pickups, which at some point I’m sure I’m going to try, there was a thread on here recently about them.
I think it’s the imperfections that help to make the songs be as good as they are, as I’m sure there are similar in the guitars & drums. Sometimes being too perfect sterilises a song imo.
In the main I prefer to get my sound from my amp with no pedals, however in my last band I acknowledged that I’d be using so many shared/provided rigs that might be difficult. So I got my sound from a preamp pedal (Tech21 Para Driver) and then no matter what amplification I was using the audience would always get the right sound as all our gigs went through FOH PA. A couple of times the amps provided had broken so it was just my bass/Para Driver, with monitoring providing on stage sound. If good monitoring could be guaranteed I’d be happy enough to gig like that all the time.
In my old band I did a lot of gigs with shared/provided rigs. The two that made me smile the most were Ampeg SVT and Ashdown ABM.
Check out the ABM600, it’s an amazing amp, loud, versatile, at 13kg easily carried, and of course you benefit from Ashdowns fantastic customer service in the unlikely event of any issues.
Definitely, I use Dunlop picks and the difference in sound between their Tortex and Ultex picks is easy to hear, with the Ultex giving a more scooped/studio type sound with sharper highs and tighter lows.
Agree, back in the 90s I had an Epi Les Paul Custom, when I bought a Gibson Les Paul Studio the jump in quality, playability, tone, well it was very noticeable. Now that jump isn’t so much, aside from price tag of course.
Given how much I rate my recently acquired Epiphone SG guitar I I can only assume this has to be of the same quality, in which case you’ll have scored a cracker there.
Good point, certainly applies to all the gigs I’ve done since 2014, onstage gear purely for on stage sound, and even then the sound was also through the monitors.
That’s a good point Ricky, no matter what type of bass I play I’m listening for a Precision sound coming back at me. Probably why although I love the design, feel & playability of Stingrays I just don’t get on with them but love the sound when others play them.
Same for me, one bass - Yamaha BB1100s - did all my gigs in two major gigging bands without any backup. As you say back then (late 80s & early 90s) even the pro bands we played with the bassists only had the one bass with them.