Find The P-Bass Challenge (Strikes Back!)

[Rib13Bass]

Its back! 5 Different Basses with 5 Different Pickups in the P-Bass position
 

 

Edited June 28, 2023 by Rib13Bass

[Rib13Bass]

Any takers? 😁

[ezbass]

I had a go over on YouTube, where I said something like - My cloth ears with headphones thought that 1, 2 & 5 were all pretty similar, number 4 sounded quite hot and gnarly by comparison (G&L?) and if I had to say which one was the P bass (assuming there is only one), I'd go with number 3. On crappy, phone, tablet speakers, they all sounded the same to me.

[Rib13Bass]

3 minutes ago, ezbass said:

I had a go over on YouTube, where I said something like - My cloth ears with headphones thought that 1, 2 & 5 were all pretty similar, number 4 sounded quite hot and gnarly by comparison (G&L?) and if I had to say which one was the P bass (assuming there is only one), I'd go with number 3. On crappy, phone, tablet speakers, they all sounded the same to me.

Yup....I saw that and I had figured it was you from here.....thanks for playing: I'll try to have the answers up next week 

[police squad]

I'll be honest, they did sound very similar. All sat nicely in the mix. Once I would have stuck my neck out and picked one but I can't really tell.

I thought 3 might be, but I thought 1 and 2 were too.

I dont own any basses with the pickup in the same position as a P bass, so I have nothing to go by. I did have a rickenfaker, made from basswood, rosewood board with the pickup in the same place, but it was a P bass pickup. It did sound like a P bass.

[BigRedX]

I don't do click-bate videos, but I'm sure that they all sounded like bass guitars and all of them would be suitable for the majority of music that uses bass guitars.

[Supernaut]

What is it with YouTuber bass players lately? Nobody watching your vids? 

[nilorius]

9 minutes ago, Supernaut said:

What is it with YouTuber bass players lately? Nobody watching your vids? 

You tube is past - Tic tak is our childrens future.😂

[BigRedX]

The problem is that most YouTube video are way too long and often the actual "information" occupies less of the time line then the intro, outro and requests to click the subscribe and notification buttons etc. I've just finished watching one that was over 8 minutes long explaining an obscure aspect of synth tuning and detuning, that could just as easily have been achieved in under 500 written words, and would not have involved having to watch some ineloquent ugly bloke with poor dress sense waffling pointlessly away most of the time along with poorly disguised product placement... If that written article had existed, I would have gladly read it instead, but it appeared that after 4 pages of Google search results, this video was going be the only source of getting the information I wanted.

[Rib13Bass]

9 hours ago, Supernaut said:

What is it with YouTuber bass players lately? Nobody watching your vids? 

9 hours ago, BigRedX said:

I don't do click-bate videos, but I'm sure that they all sounded like bass guitars and all of them would be suitable for the majority of music that uses bass guitars.

 

The last version I did of this got a bunch of responses. It was also way easier

This one has about the same amount of views as the last one at about this time, but it is also more difficult - and hardly any responses

 

Im wondering if there is a correlation  

 

My channel is already done bizarre enough as it is that most of my content isnt really click-baity for the sake of being click-baity. Im also a former working bass player that is now a RN that does YT for fun.....it isnt a career choice    I am a very experienced bass player, but Im old so I did this channel geared toward younger players but in a way for anyone with a sense of humor to enjoy - and not just bass players.

 

I have an advantage in knowing and understanding a few things: (1) at my age (very late 50s), I understand that a lot of points in my experience may now be obsolete so I try to avoid those and (2) I dont think the music world revolves around my generation's music (I dtry not to yell at clouds)

Edited July 1, 2023 by Rib13Bass

[neepheid]

7 hours ago, BigRedX said:

The problem is that most YouTube video are way too long and often the actual "information" occupies less of the time line then the intro, outro and requests to click the subscribe and notification buttons etc. I've just finished watching one that was over 8 minutes long explaining an obscure aspect of synth tuning and detuning, that could just as easily have been achieved in under 500 written words, and would not have involved having to watch some ineloquent ugly bloke with poor dress sense waffling pointlessly away most of the time along with poorly disguised product placement... If that written article had existed, I would have gladly read it instead, but it appeared that after 4 pages of Google search results, this video was going be the only source of getting the information I wanted.

 

It's not fun getting squarer when the holes are getting forever rounder

[Baloney Balderdash]

I honestly have no idea.

 

They did all sound ever so slightly different from each other, but can't tell which is which, I am pretty certain though that #1 is not a P pickup but a regular humbucker of some sort, and I don't think #2 is a P pickup either, but which of #3, #4 and #5 is a P pickup I have no idea, as far as I am concerned they could all be, though obviously different P pickup models.

 

A wild guess would be that #4 is the P pickup.

 

Edited July 2, 2023 by Baloney Balderdash

[neepheid]

They're all basses and I claim my five pounds.

[Rib13Bass]

 

[BigRedX]

On 01/07/2023 at 19:13, neepheid said:

 

It's not fun getting squarer when the holes are getting forever rounder

 

It's also a question of efficiency. Most of the YouTube stuff I watch is because I need the information, and watching a video seems to be the only way to get it. Since I can't "skim-read" my way through a video I have to watch from the beginning waiting for the 30 seconds that will hopefully tell me what I want to know. And while I'm being bored with all the other stuff, I notice all the inadequacies of the "script", the editing (or usually lack of it), the presenter's appearance and weird accent, and all those other things that really ought to be invisible, and would never be noticeable in a written piece.

[neepheid]

1 minute ago, BigRedX said:

 

It's also a question of efficiency. Most of the YouTube stuff I watch is because I need the information, and watching a video seems to be the only way to get it. Since I can't "skim-read" my way through a video I have to watch from the beginning waiting for the 30 seconds that will hopefully tell me what I want to know. And while I'm being bored with all the other stuff, I notice all the inadequacies of the "script", the editing (or usually lack of it), the presenter's appearance and weird accent, and all those other things that really ought to be invisible, and would never be noticeable in a written piece.

 

Oh, I get it.  I go to the BBC News website to read news.  It irritates me when I see something that looks interesting and it turns out to be a Sounds podcast.  Back button pressed almost instantly.

[Baloney Balderdash]

On 07/07/2023 at 02:32, Rib13Bass said:

 

 

On 02/07/2023 at 12:46, Baloney Balderdash said:

I honestly have no idea.

 

They did all sound ever so slightly different from each other, but can't tell which is which, I am pretty certain though that #1 is not a P pickup but a regular humbucker of some sort, and I don't think #2 is a P pickup either, but which of #3, #4 and #5 is a P pickup I have no idea, as far as I am concerned they could all be, though obviously different P pickup models.

 

A wild guess would be that #4 is the P pickup.

 

So I was about as wrong as I could possibly be, except I guess for the fact that I actually guessed that bass number one was not a P Bass but some kind of humbucker.

 

But yeah, just proved to me that it's incredible hard to determine which bass is actually used in the context of a full mix, and difference in tone is barely detectable, as long as the pickup in question is at approximately in the same ballpark, not even necessarily dead on, position.

 

That said I actually liked the tone of #2 bass the least out of all of them, so maybe time for me to reconsider my preference of P pickups, even if I guess it likely really just being a matter of that specific pickup in that specific bass.

 

And in any case, as I said, the differences is actually really really subtle and just barely detectable.

Edited July 9, 2023 by Baloney Balderdash

[ped]

Nailed it 🤗

[Velarian]

42 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

 

It's also a question of efficiency. Most of the YouTube stuff I watch is because I need the information, and watching a video seems to be the only way to get it. Since I can't "skim-read" my way through a video I have to watch from the beginning waiting for the 30 seconds that will hopefully tell me what I want to know. And while I'm being bored with all the other stuff, I notice all the inadequacies of the "script", the editing (or usually lack of it), the presenter's appearance and weird accent, and all those other things that really ought to be invisible, and would never be noticeable in a written piece.

If the video has a transcript this is a quick way to copy the content to paste in to a document. I’ve found this quite useful a few times. (The explanation is only a couple of minutes 😉). 
 

 

[BigRedX]

Ironically the instructions for getting information out of a YouTube video without needing to watch it are in the form of a YouTube video...

[nilorius]

1 minute ago, BigRedX said:

Ironically the instructions for getting information out of a YouTube video without needing to watch it are in the form of a YouTube video...

Is there another video way, today ???

[Rib13Bass]

10 hours ago, BigRedX said:

I notice all the inadequacies of the "script", the editing (or usually lack of it), the presenter's appearance and weird accent, and all those other things that really ought to be invisible, and would never be noticeable in a written piece.

 

So, if what you are saying is that YouTube is to Video/TV/Movie Entertainment as Karaoke is to Live Music Entertainment.......then, yeah, I can see that 

[Rib13Bass]

On 07/07/2023 at 09:11, Baloney Balderdash said:

 

So I was about as wrong as I could possibly be, except I guess for the fact that I actually guessed that bass number one was not a P Bass but some kind of humbucker.

 

But yeah, just proved to me that it's incredible hard to determine which bass is actually used in the context of a full mix, and difference in tone is barely detectable, as long as the pickup in question is at approximately in the same ballpark, not even necessarily dead on, same position.

 

That said I actually liked the tone of #2 bass the least out of all of them, so maybe time for me to reconsider my preference of P pickups, even if I guess it likely really just being a matter of that specific pickup in that specific bass.

 

And in any case, as I said, the differences is actually really really subtle and just barely detectable.

 

All Im trying to do in the video is "Keep It Real" to all the P-Bass dogma and tropes. Im not trying to change the industry or anybody's preference. By Keeping it Real I mean: We -as bassists, engineers, producers, etc - tend to get caught up in the little details of our instruments/gear as well as the artistic minutia of our craft but, the reality is, the application itself often isnt as demanding of those details as we would like to think they are. I used a Squier Classic Vibe 60s P in the demo because it is about as middle-of-the-road P-Bass as I can get, there are certainly better sounding P-Basses