drTStingray

And there was me thinking it came out of the speaker cabinet (or iPhone or headphones - or studio grade whatever gizmo) 😬👍 However what is definitely the case here is the fast section of high register notes sound vastly different between certain of those basses (notably the rosewood/ maple and paduak/paduak are more defined and fuller sounding). I have concluded over the years that many bass players seem to make fundamentally incorrect assumptions on bass sounds - not sure why - here are a few pointers:- 1) It'll all sound the same in a band mix - WRONG - ever listened to Andy Fraser's sound in Free - the BBC sessions show some remarkable bass sound through an Orange amp and cab and a Gibson EB3. The only time it'll likely all sound the same is when it's mixed a la mid 1960s - when you couldn't hear the bass properly anyway unless it had a clicky pick tone. Listen to any rock band mix from the late 60s early 70s and yes you can hear the bass and it does sound different dependent on who's playing and what they're playing. 2) As if to reinforce 1) above I sat in my car earlier today eating a takeaway and with the radio on - modern chart music - mostly dance orientated type of thing - I was astonished that every song had prominent bass AND completely different bass playing style and sound - granted a couple were obviously keyboard but not all were - perhaps the music industry has woken up and rediscovered the usefulness of a decent prominent bass sound (that's not all sub rubbish)? I'm confident the wood in the construction can have quite a significant impact on overall tone/timbre. I know Fender have never used piezo pick ups on their solid bodied instruments but they do exist - many other manufacturers have and the sound from these is more reliant on overall resonance than say a magnetic pick up. The current fad for many people to play Jazz or Precision derived instruments (the latter notable generally only for a couple of distinct albeit iconic tones) might contribute to some rather narrow views on any subject to do with bass tone and how it's derived? It's as if many people's minds are closed to the vast variation in bass tone and style (and instrument types recorded on) over the last 50 years or so!!

You are right - IIRC Jet stated this somewhere in a long interview he did with Licorice Locking (who was actually his replacement bass player in the early 60s). It's probably somewhere on You Tube - I think he mentions the type of guitar also - some sort of Fender (maybe Strat or Tele). Yes - late 70s and 80s - a very good player (there are some great bass parts on recordings, both studio and live from that era). Mark Griffiths was the most recent, also a great player. Licorice Locking was replaced by John Rostill, also a great player, who went on to play in Tom Jones's band in Las Vegas - apparently the band was so good that Elvis had a conversation with Tom Jones about it. Elvis's late 60s LV band was equally sh*t hot - Tom Jones's band may have been part of the inspiration!! John Farrarr played bass with the Shadows In lieu of John Rostill, who passed away at the beginning of the 70s, and also shared bass duties in Marvin, Welch and Farrarr. He no doubt earned, and continues to earn copious royalties from songs he wrote for Grease, including You're the One that I Want!!

I love that tune - appeared on the radio (Light Programme) very regularly in the 60s alongside the occassional Beat record, Cilla, Lulu and Acker Bilk. The bass line is great and a perfect example of "The Knack" bass sound. I had thought it was duplicated with a double bass. This style was used in the US studios - Carol Kaye talks about using a "Dano bass" for the tic tac sound (which she sometimes played), whilst other musicians duplicated on "string bass" and "Fender bass" - so no doubt the Dano is a good means of getting the sound. As is a Stingray (particularly one fitted with mutes) where you can boost the bass on the EQ if needed. On left hand muting, I thought everyone did that as part of playing a bass guitar - you can control the level of muting with your fretting hand very effectively - unless it's just the way I learned to play/developed my bass playing style - I've always muted with both hands - dependent on the sound required!!

Jaco was very R and B (which is where funk and disco bass had its roots) - but River People has a disco style octaved bass part with hi hat sixteenths - pure disco!! Jaco appeared to be into sequencer style lines - also appeared in River People. Even Teen Town could be considered a sequencer-style line. The real big break for 'disco' was Saturday Night Fever - not only the singles and album but the film - but it was around in R and B style bands before that. An early example being Love Hangover, Diana Ross (octaved bass part; hi hat sixteenths).

Twin humbuckers all Colin on in both, or single bridge humbucker only. Plenty of Bernard Edwards style focussed, fat note thump!!

You're right - I saw him with Hillage (may have been Gong) - prog with a groove funk bass player - fabulous!! Very hippy also. @Bean9seventy is quite right that this style of playing influenced very widely - even pure show biz orchestras started to have funk bass players - you were as likely to hear it on The Two Ronnies as anywhere else! Ive said this before here, but if you turned up to an audition in the early 80s (unless it was punk or maybe ska), if you couldn't slap you'd probably not get the job 😬 But to quote Marcus Miller in his interview with @Silvia Bluejay and @Happy Jack in those days you needed to be able to hold down a groove as well if not better than the next guy to get the job - perhaps doesn't seem to be as important these days 🤔

Now then, @Bean9seventy if you think I'm too hippy and non-street (though I will admit to having played slap bass in the street at least once or twice) you'll definitely think these two Brits were far too hippy (they certainly had long hair) but Neil Murray, in his pre Whitesnake days with one of the Canterbury sound bands with Dave Stewart, played a whole section of slap bass on a recorded piece, and I saw Alan Spenner play a sort of slap bass short solo with Kokomo..... Alan Gorrie also played some with the Average White Band (but he is Scottish.....) 😏 - more so in the 80s though (for instance Sweet and Sour; Into the Night). I agree with you regarding Larry Graham - his slap bass was not really that well known until Graham Central Station.

Bernard (from the live performances Ive seen) plucked the strings very close to the bridge - I wondered if that influenced the level of overtones on the upper strings (and maybe they're heightened by the level of compression in use). Whatever, it's a great performance of a great line. Love the bass sound as well - some modern producers could learn a thing or two from this - I'm astonished hearing modern disco with such imprecise and wooly bass sounds - just hearing the subtle use of both very short notes and longer and in some cases, slid ones in this is an eye opener - the magic is in the subtlety (although not on here the reversed hand claps in the instrumental break is another example of clever production ideas) which all combined create a magical and classic disco song.

It certainly appeared with the Crusaders (Pops Popwell) before that late 70s era - they were very much jazz funk. Thinking back, and the mention of famous players and instructional videos, I saw the Brothers Johnson when they were part of Billy Preston's backing band in the early 70s - quite by accident - they supported the R Stones on a UK tour - I'm pretty sure LJ was using the style even then - Billy Preston and his band were superb in fact blew the decidedly average main act completely off - the only saving grace was the Stones' tight rythmn section and the presence of the wonderful Mick Taylor on guitar. The rest was pure s**te!!!

The first time I heard or saw slap bass being played knowingly was Car Wash by Rose Royce (bass player Lequeint "Duke" Jobe). In fact the whole first album of Rose Royce is littered with it. The fact the song features slapped bass only breakdowns at the end of each chorus - and appeared on a popular feature film of the era, and a UK top 10 single leads me to suspect this was the biggest and earliest exposure of slap bass to the general public. Though Larry did it with Sly, and I saw Woodstock multiple times when the film first released, on those singles of the late 60s the slap bass is not really that audible - slap and pop is on Thankyouforletting etc etc and audible - but I hadn't heard that until about 20 yrs ago when it was referred to in a Bass Player article and I looked it up. The concept of properly audible bass, especially live, didn't emerge as a more general thing except in occassional situations (Andy Fraser for instance) until the early 70s (Acoustic and other solid state amps helped a lot). Rose Royce had been around for a good couple of years under separate guises prior to Car Wash and the slap bass had no doubt been a feature of Duke's playing previously given the amount and standard of it on that first RR album. In fact Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is features a slap/pop breakdown (again after every chorus) which is a direct lift of a Larry Graham fill (of which there are a cornucopia) from Graham Central Station's song Release Yourself. (I later found out LG was using double thumbing on that track - hence I could never get the sound right ) - it must be one of the most OTT bass parts I've ever heard - along with Hair from the same era - as with Funkadelic a herbal based studio fug can be imagined!!!! Except for Larry, I reckon it must have appeared on soul/funk tracks since at least 1975 as I was actually using it by then (although I was playing Jazz Rock and prog). Of course, Stanley Clarke used it quite a lot both with Return to Forever and with his own band - and the influence that turned him on to electric bass, Colin Hodgkinson also used it. For people like me who had heard it but not seen it, we didn't know they used their thumb and I for one developed a technique rather like Stan Seargent using a combination of tapped and heavily pulled strings to achieve the sound. So @Bean9seventy I think it was probably popular from earlier in the 70s than you're thinking - maybe 74-75 (I think I copied some of Stanley Clarke (with Return to Forever) and Colin Hodgkinson (with Back Door) phrases). I also copied every LG fill off Release Yourself and used them all in my own playing. The world would be a far worse and bass playing would be a much less enjoyable and exciting place without it 😏

The ash borer issue is a fairly recent phenomena - it remains to be seen whether any other manufacturers have experienced problems which have got into production - I think Musicman was the first manufacturer to stop using ash (for scarcity reasons) - Fender was at least 6-12 months later (presumably they keep more stock, or else respond to external factors slower). Musicman still use it for the Joe Dart signature bass (recently made available to buy internationally from 'The Vault' - and yes - I have been considering it!!! ) The other bass I mentioned seeing discussed on the Internet was discussed by the owner on the Musicman bass forum. Musicman make far more guitars than basses but I'm not sure what other instruments they use ash for these days. Certainly not Stingrays.

Same here 👍

Possibly one of the original Wal JG series basses - Alan Spenner (Roxymusic and Kokomo)? @TrevorR has a copy/photo of a list with names against serial numbers for the early Wal JG basses

Conversely there's only two that i haven't heard of (songs) - the Kylie Minogue and Maria McKee - also a notable year for the first in a series of overtly religiously themed Christmas singles by Cliff Richard - this one failing to make number 1 until after Christmas - much as I like Cliff's rock and roll and some of his pop stuff, these singles did result in me changing radio channel if they came on - I think this was when radio 1 banned him as well!!! The thing with number 1 singles by year, you miss out stacks of good songs, which were in the charts during the year - 1990 being no exception - wasn't there a famous Beatles single kept off number 1 by Englebert Humperdinck (he from Leicester) with Please Release Me sometime in the 60s - apparently appealed to many females, especially middle aged 😬

I've read about one other on the Internet - I think they replaced the bass as it was brand new (had a small hole appear in the body). No wonder they stopped using ash and will definitely keep an eye on my recent ones.

Wow that looks great 👍

I bought it for a blingy blue dawn Stingray but after about 12 months I put the original black one back on and it's been in the box it came in ever since - it is nice though - would look great on a black or white bass - neither of which I have in 4HH form 😩

Those of us into dance or R and B orientated music, or even the Madchester scene had quite a lot from 1990 to like. I've just realised that (I've got) The Power by Snap was released in 1990 - as well as a classic rave track it's also memorable for me as when it came on the car radio my then 5 yr old daughter, sat in the back, would excaim 'No you haven't' every time the words 'I've Got the Power' came out of the car radio!!! I always thought 1977 was famous for such seminal disco greats as Chic and a multitude of others whereas the NME proclaimed punk was THE thing in 1977 - for some it was but I'm willing to bet that Chic, Abba and others touched more people than bands like the Radiators From Space ever did!! AND I'm sure you could find the usual UK studio novelty stuff in the charts (the Grandad - Clive Dunn type of thing - though he was probably not 1977). And we had Weather Report crossing over with Birdland etc etc followed by Herbie Hancock and others. I always thought punk was Dr Feelgood (and other similar high energy pub rock bands) + gobbling + dear old Vivienne and Malcolm's fashion input, perhaps with slightly less musical aplomb than Wilco, Brillo and co. As others have said, views on the validity of music in particular years tend to be based to an extent on musical taste - presumably by 1990 not only had (some of) hip hop mellowed but punk had passed, Weller had mellowed - was ska still alive as a genre outside of its Jamaican origins?

More confusion for you - white ice, abalone or even tiramisu (on my Bongo) - all used to be options on a Stingray and can still be had (I think) from Chandler. Mind you they're a slightly different size on the SBMMs. No pickguard was touted by none other than Tim Commerford with RATM at one time. Id stick with white pearl as per your SR5 👍

Well if you exclude such classics as Step On (Happy Mondays) (in fact their album Pills, Thrills and Bellyaches), Fools Gold (Stone Roses), Soul to Soul (Back to Life etc), Killer (Adamski), Nothing Compares to You (Sinead O'Connor), Sacrifice (Elton John), Vogue (and album Immaculate Collection), Madonna and various other seminal or reasonably seminal music, along with the famous World Cup in Italy with Bobby Robson in charge (and England ejected in a penalty shoot out) and loads of other stuff maybe. The Rave scene was big in this period. For me it's a pretty memorable year!!

Cheers - the first incarnation of a Cruz Teal I saw (pre NAMM announcement, 2018) had a black pg and that combination was the basis of ordering - by the tube it turned up they'd changed the standard to white pg... I got a black one from someone with a spare in the US. YourSR5 looks great with the white pearl - my natural has had a white pearl (in place of its 'as delivered' black) since about 2003 - I think they look great so maybe your mint green should have a white pearl. On the question of tort, it's not my cup of tea and I have several spare pickguards for my orange Bongo - notably the tort looked awful (to me) and I swapped that one with someone in Germany for a white ice one. As people are saying, it's fun to swap pickguards around - as with new strings, a changes of pg can feel like a new bass. What do you think of the Sub 4 - the couple I've heard sound really good in a live band setting?

@PlungerModerno I may have misrepresented people in my characterisation which is possibly an exaggeration, so apologies - however I've certainly read posts with that view, as the extreme of the spectrum of views on this subject. Yes I agree re the piezo addition on a solid bodied electric bass - I think the point I was getting at was the resonance of the body etc will be important with the piezo, but conversely my view that body resonance (and everything else in the system eg bridge, neck, strings) influences the variation of sound transferred to the pick ups. Ive only once heard a piezo equipped bass demonstrated in front of an audience - it was a standard 3 band Stingray H fretless (with the optional piezo and additional piezo/magnetic blend knob) - the with piezo sound created more string sound (think upright) - was quite different - it was demoed by that chap with very prominent side burns whose name completely escapes me.....great player though. My own bass with it soloed creates a sort of lighter, airier sound - very interesting especially on the low B string. Brings a different flavour to hip hop type lines.

White and white pearl look great (I voted plain white) - that's what came on my SR5HH special - however curve ball for you (or Googly in English parlance 😏) - have you thought of a black one - that's what my 5 er now has (comparison below - Cruz teal is a bit darker than mint green - note the way it makes the body colour look slightly different)

A one off hickory Stingray was produced in the 80s, for a country artist I think - not sure if it was only the body that was hickory though - there are some photos on the internet somewhere - natural finish and looks vaguely similar to ash in appearance. I have a basswood bodied higher end bass which has inserts for the pg screws at least (the bolts for the bridge have also got inserts) - given the rate at which people seem to swap their pickguards (well at least those who discuss it in on line forums seem to 😏) - presumably those people making basses and guitars in, say 1960, hadn't learned the lesson of strap buttons coming loose (which i'd wager most of us here have encountered - often fixed by a broken match stick inserted in - but hardly the thing for a high end instrument). This is demonstrated by the fact the same companies are still selling instruments without inserts........whereas many high end manufacturers do. And another thing - I haven't heard any response from the 'the electronics are the only thing that affect sound in solid bodied instruments' camp regarding my solid bodied bass with piezo, which works very well in piezo only mode........ any comments?

They were both piezo I think but I can't really remember - however the song (which was arpegiated on an acoustic) started on the Gibson and when the Martin was introduced it sounded completely different - a much fuller sound altogether and I think because of the guitar construction - same amp and I think, piezo system (some sort of Fishman?) From this angle, I have a solid bodied electric bass guitar with both magnetic and piezo pick ups. Generally they're mixed together but I have used just the piezo before now and it sounds rather good - surely that must only pick up vibration from the body, strings and bridge. The body is basswood. Not all pick ups are magnetic.......but I think there's clearly vibration transfer with magnetic pick ups as well - unless it has absolutely no (or very little) resonance like concrete - or a bass with so many wood pieces glued together to make the body it's virtually solid and thus not very resonant.