G'day guys, my name is Alec, I'm here from Better Music's bass department, here to talk
to you guys about the precision bass and the jazz bass from fender.
These are the basses that started it all off for the electric bass player, and it's been
a staple diet in bands around the world from rock, blues, jazz, funk whatever it's been,
the jazz bass or the P bass has been there, one of the two.
The electric bass as we know it today was invented back in 1951 with Leo Fender at the
helm designing something that was small and portable but it was able to play loud and
boomy on the gigs that these double basses couldn't quite make it through.
So the bass that he first came out with was a tele style bass in '51 and now in '57 he
came out with this stunning rendition of the P bass that has survived to this day.
Small changes have been made to it, but the majority of it has stayed the same throughout
that time.
The two basses we are going to be testing out today are both Fender american standards,
in the Jazz bass and the P bass shape.
They both share notable characteristics but are different in different ways as well.
The P bass that I have here is a 2014 P bass american standard, comes with a satin finish
neck, custom shop pickups, high mass bridge, Fender F lightweight tuning machine heads
and comes in either a rosewood or a maple fingerboard.
The finishes range from olympic whites and sunbursts as well as pearl jade, blacks, whatever
you can think of really, blues and reds.
So what I would like to do is just show you a few of the sounds that you can get from
these bad boys and see if it can make up the minds of the people who are trying to guess
whether I should get a P bass or a Jazz bass.
Personally, I own both and use them for different settings and different bands from whatever
I come across.
The choice is yours.
So P basses just like this one here have been played around the world by some of the most
famous bass players that have walked the earth, such as James Jameson, Pino Palideno, Steve
Harris, Sting, countless others.
What I want to do today is just give you an idea of the sort of sounds that you get from
a bass like this.
First riff I'm going to play for you has got volume and the tone pumped right up full to
get a nice boomy sort of sound out of it, but still a bit of crunch to
the notes.
The next sound we are going to have a look at
is rolling back the tone on the bass, so we are getting a thumpier sort of sound and we
are going to go for a sort of sound that you might hear from players like Donald Duck Dunn
or James Jameson, Motown soul sort of feel.
The final one that we are gonna have a look at tonight is, we're gonna have a look at
the pick with the P bass.
A lot of people really love this sound, and I have been especially asked to do this.
I'm not much of a pick player but I'm going to try and give you an idea of what it's going
to sound like.
We've got your tone sitting at about 6 on the bass and the volume still up full.
So let's see what it sounds like.
Great, so now we've had a look at the P bass, let's move onto the Jazz bass, or what Leo
Fender was thinking back in the '60s, his deluxe model of the electric bass.
Same with what happened with the tele and the stratocaster, instead of releasing as
many guitars as he could with different features, they started to modify each instrument.
The P bass got modified and so did the Jazz bass through the time 'til today.
What we've got in this american standard today is a satin finish neck, rosewood fretboard,
also comes in a maple, alder body, two 60 custom shop pickups, with a volume control
for each one as well as a master tone, as well as a high mass vintage style bridge and
the lightweight tuners, just like what we saw on the Fender P bass.
So what we are gonna do is we're just gonna have a quick sound with the tone and with
the volumes all the way up, compare the same riff that we played on the P bass and see
if you can hear the difference in what this bass can do compared to that.
So next off we're gonna roll off this neck pickup a bit, focusing mainly on the back
pickup, on the bridge, so that we get that tighter sort of sound, and then I'm going
to have just a bit more tone happening in there, so probably sitting about, if we're
going from 1-10, you're probably sitting around 4 or something like that.
So I'll give you a demo of how that sounds, and you'll notice it's a drastic difference
in what the tone was from before.
Another tone that you can really get from this bass, and a lot of people love it is
the Jazz basses slap tone.
So what I've got going here, it's really up to the different player, but I've got the
bridge pickup running a bit hotter, with the back one coming off a bit and more tone bumped
up to about 6 or 8 on the tone side of things.
So I'll give you a small demonstration of how the slap tone goes on these basses.
One of the last tones I'd like to talk about, everyone thinks of this as a jazz bass, so
we might as well do a bit of jazz on it, so let's have a walk on it and see if that boomy
sort of sound you get from all your classic double bass recordings can translate over
to the electric.
So as you can see, both of these basses.
great tones coming from them, the Jazz bass like we've heard from many different people,
Jaco Pastorius, Geddy Lee, Marcus Miller, varying styles of music, but it all cuts through
with a Jazz bass, same with your P bass.
Personally I think if I'm going for a certain tone a bit of growl and punch that needs to
come through, I'm going to take my Jazz bass to the gig.
If it's my rock gigs, or my blues gigs or whatever the instrumentation of the group
is as well, really has an effect on what bass I'm going to bring.
Same with the P bass, using it for my latin gigs or if I don't really want to take my
double bass to a gig I'll take the P bass, just so I get a big thunderous sound that's
always present in the mix.
Thanks again for watching guys, my name's Alec, I'm here in the bass section, if you've
got any questions at all, or you wanna come in and have a play of any of these basses,
we'd love to see you.
If you've got questions, you can get onto us by giving us a call, through the website
or via email, If you've got any questions, please let us know.
Until Next time we'll see you later.