I was thinking about this earlier today whilst looking at my collection. Allow me to tell you a story.
When I first started bass playing, almost as soon as I could actually differentiate the sound of different basses without hearing them back-to-back, all I wanted was that impossibly fat classic Stingray sound. It was on all of my favourite songs, I figured it would best suit the sound of my first band and it just seemed like the bee's nuts. Within a few years I'd bought a Stingray and really didn't think my sound could get any better. It was super ballsy and aggressive - what more could you want?
A few years down the line I had the opportunity to pick up a '77 Precision for a mindbendingly small amount of money. I'd never really considered a Precision before, and if I'm honest I really bought it more as an investment. However, during that time the sound I wanted to achieve mellowed considerably, apparently for no reason. I was still listening to the same music, and I was still in the same band playing the same material. As such, the Precision saw more and more use until it became my main bass. 'My' sound moved from about as aggressive as you can get to something very smooth and mellow without anything forcing it to change.
Then it happened again. I started to want more edge to my sound, and so the presence knob on my amp crept up and up in an effort to stand out a bit more. I was still using the Precision, but I couldn't find that Ricky 'clang' I was after. I got lucky again and managed to get a great deal on an old Rick - I've now got that real metal-and-wood clanking sound and I love it. I'm currently very happy with how I sound, I switch between the P and the Rick almost daily and genuinely appreciate them both. I don't even pick up the Ray anymore, not because it's not a great bass, but because it doesn't let me sound how I want to sound.
It's odd to think that 'my' sound changed so much when [i]what[/i] I play hasn't. It's been a fundamental shift in what noises I want to make, no matter what song I'm playing - if someone had asked me to play a Jamerson line then and now I would have played it exactly the same way both times, but they'd sound completely different.
Have any of you gents experienced big changes in what you think sounds good? Or do you still want the same sound as you did when you first picked up a bass? Or do you do the sensible thing and switch basses depending on what you're playing?