Re: Dual split P advice
This is always going to be the limiting factor in your quest for tone. In my opinion, your American pickups deserve a better host instrument.
Squier, Cort, Yamaha and numerous others make playable, toneful instruments that can be obtained cheaply pre-owned. Any of these with an American pickup installed would serve you well for years. You could even put the stock SE Asian pickup from a new instrument into your current bass and then sell that on to recoup some of your expenditure.
I concur with those who have already posted in praise of the straightforward single PU Precision style bass guitar. The secret is to exploit its capabilities to the full.
If you doubt the power of a Fender Jazz Bass neck position single coil pickup, check out John Paul Jones on Led Zeppelin and LZ II.
Thanks Funkfingers.
Hate to disagree with you here, but to me, the body wood makes little difference when playing through an amp, both in guitars and basses. If I were playing an acoustic or semi hollow, though, I might think differently.
People seem to shell out top dollar for a mahogany neck thru body on guitars just to buy bright pickups to offset the tone wood. That doesn't make much sense to me, since it offsets the purpose of that expensive wood. Everything to me just comes out sounding like alder/maple/rosewood bolt on, which is what more and more instruments are becoming since mahogany and ebony are so expensive. The rationale for that is "this sounds close enough to more expensive woods that people won't be able to tell the difference, but at half the price." I think that's telling about how much of a role wood plays. To me, pickups and hardware (if Floyded) are much more important. And even for Floyds, it's more about flutter and staying in tune after a lot of bar abuse than tone. If I want tone for rhythm parts, I'll just use a tune-o-matic instead of a big blocked Floyd.
IMO, in this case, there's more tone from the neck than the body. I can hear the tone coming from the bridge, and also from the frets and where the string is fretted on the neck, but very little from the body. Of course, that could also just be because the body isn't resonating very much because it is plywood. But, again, I don't have much trouble with low end, but rather articulation.
Another reason I'm keeping this one is it has a maple neck and fretboard with a vintage stain that is hard to find on other basses that aren't expensive. However, the neck has its faults. Even with the truss rod completely engaged, the action is still a bit high in the middle of the neck. Part of me thinks this improves the tone due to high action, and also strengthens my fingers. But it's definitely not a bass I'd play for a light touch or fast parts.
I'll have to get back with you on Zep--they were a bit before my time, but generally everything made before the 80s to me sounds a bit weak and raw due to the vintage production. I generally prefer to hear Zep through modern equipment in a live environment. But no matter how many times I hear "Immigrant Song," the recording just doesn't sound heavy to me. That said, I like vintage voiced bass pickups much better than overwound modern ones. They seem to have more tone, definition, and nuance than something like the SPB3.
I'll just link you guys to the songs in question if you're curious. The In Flames tune uses my Peavey Foundation 5, and the Priest cover uses the lawsuit bass. I tend to prefer the Peavey. On the Priest, I added a bit of a BBE 482i plugin on the bass to get a bit more pick attack, but I didn't put it to this mix, so I may add that later during mastering.
The IF tune has a ton of stuff on a Fender Blackface in Amplitube, I think, along with BBE, Recab, etc. The second is less complex. Silverface for the lows and GK for the highs in Amplitube.
I did put a touch (maybe a 64th note) of delay on the bass for the Priest tune to get more sustain on the bass during the clean verse parts. IIRC, Ian Hill used a Fender Jazz bass on the original version of this, which might be why the parts are more articulate and stand out better than mine did on a P.
Speaking of cheap basses, I've noticed some cheap PP BC Richs around. I may try those with an SPB1 in the neck and SPB3 in the bridge and get back to you.
https://soundcloud.com/devolve1980
