What features should I look for in a "good" bass guitar

guitarfishbay

Fender and some other makers put graphite rods in their bass necks in order to support them.  

I think the break angle of the string affects how it plays - I'm a fan of Fender American Standard bridge because it allows you to string through or top load. It also allows different options for string spacing but the spacing increments are fixed so may or may not work for your build.

fretmeister

Roland said:

fretmeister said:

Construction is all.

Which aspects? I'm thinking the neck should be laminated for stiffness. What else?

My Marleaux has a maple neck with strips of wenge in it. It's rock solid.

As said - other makers put graphite or titanium rods in channels next to the truss rod. No doubt there are several good methods

Lots of neck bolts is a good idea. Depending on the neck pocket I've had some 4 bolt necks shift quite a bit. 6 bolts do not shift.

Or you could go all Ritter and try and fit about 25 of them.

pintspiller

octatonic said:

A strap long enough so you don't have it up under your armpits. I tune mine BEAD as well.

i still sling my bass low. too much dee dee as a kid i guess. mind you, slinging a few inches higher these days. i tune to eadg. i'm old-fashioned

BigLicks67

A light weight body - whenever i dig the old jazz bass out of the case it's seems to be getting heavier with every passing year.

fretmeister

BigLicks67 said:

A light weight body - whenever i dig the old jazz bass out of the case it's seems to be getting heavier with every passing year.

Good point.

I sold everything I owned that was over 8.5 lb.

In an ideal world I'd be able to get under 7.5lb but there's not many 5 strings that light.

guitarfishbay

When I went and tried loads of basses I did find that light basses with stiff necks tended to sound particularly punchy.  This was mostly focusing on J and P type basses.  

ICBM

Some are just better than others - there's no way of predicting it, even going by things like weight. It's purely dependent on the individual pieces of wood and how their resonances work together.

A friend of mine owns what is hands-down the best P-Bass I've ever played - it's just extremely resonant in an amazingly even, powerful way without being boomy, and actually feels more 'solid' than normal in your hands… it's not exceptionally heavy, although it's not that light either. He apparently played about 20 different ones and that one just jumped out as being the best.

It's a Mexican Standard.

My Rick 4001 is similar - I've played a lot of them, most are good, a few are not so good, but this one is just great. It came into the shop for sale in a terrible state with all the wrong electrics and duff strings, but as soon as I played it unplugged I knew it had something special, and I swapped my modern 4003 for it without any hesitation.

chillidoggy

To be in keeping, when you start to build it, double the time it should take, to ensure it'll be late like they usually are.

robwright

One of these!

robwright

Or the deluxe model!