should be able to determine the relative
balance and consistency of the tone. Play
all the notes up and down the neck. The
bass should be loud
enough acoustically and
resonant enough for you
to be able to hear the
definition and duration
of each note. There are
customary “dead spots”
on bass guitars – usually
on the G string between
the 5th and 7th frets – but
this is normal. Any other
pronounced dead spots
are not normal and should
be detectable by scru-
tinizing the instrument
acoustically. Logic then
follows that amplifying
these unwanted and aber-
rant properties will result
in a decrease in tone.
cogent argument, saying that an important
factor in choosing pickups is the ability to
adjust the polepieces individually. Several
When the topic of pickups came up during the brunch, veteran bassist and former
Johnny Winter sideman, Jeff Ganz, made a
The brunch crew talks tone
major manufacturers make pickups with this
feature; the advantage of this design is the
ability to even-out the response of the pickup
to the individual string as desired. Pickups
that do not have this feature might have
a bias toward one string or another, creat-
ing inconsistencies in
tonal quality. Another
aspect of pickup choice
would be humbucking
or non-humbucking
configurations. The
humbucking setup exists
in the Fender Precision
-style split pickup con-
figuration, or in active
pickups. This does not
occur in a passive, two
single-coil pickups unless
both pickups are turned
up all the way, as rolling
off the volume of one
pickup results in hum
that would obviously
interfere with your tone.
I prefer a passive setup,
as do many other pro-
fessional bassists. On my 1962 Fender Jazz
and my Lakland Joe Osborne Jazz basses,
I leave both pickups turned up full (in hum-
