How to make your bass sound great.

I sat down this morning to hack a bass in the same way I've done my last 4 basses. It occurred to me that most people must not know about these - otherwise everyone would do it. Here are some secrets to making your bass sound great.

• Get rid of onboard preamps. The best OBP's are weak compared to the pre in a decent bass amp. OBP is a very old idea that had its time.
• Strip the electronics. I mean gut it. My basses generally run from the pickups directly to a wireless transmitter - no pots. Even if you fail to leap the mental/emotional hurdle of discarding your crappy OBP, you can get a lot more out of your pickups if they aren't loaded down by pots; at the very least get rid of the volume and blend pots in front of the OBP and replace the pots with switches.
  
• Use are wireless transmitter. This takes cable capacitance out of the picture and gives you a clean, consistent gain stage in front of your amp's pre. It also makes for less stage bumbling and gives you a convenient way to mute your instrument without relying on 1940's potentiometer technology.
  
• Take the time to find the right strings. ProSteels will make the dullest bass zingy, and worn flats will give any bass a good, soft-edged thump.
• Learn to pick an instrument. The stiffness of the neck is what makes a bass great, and really nothing else. Some bottom budget clunkers are great, and some expensive basses have no magic in them. You have to sort through a pile of instruments to find a good bass of any brand or model. Laminated necks are more consistent, but if you look it is easy to find a cheap maple neck that sings.
• Consider giving up the low B. The correct solution to the problem of flabby B-stings is a multi-scale fingerboard, such as that employed by Sheldon Dingwall. However, because some a-hole filed a patent on the centuries-old idea of multi-scale fingerboards, manufacturers have been slow to adopt the design. I.e. you are never going to get a good B out of a 35" string. So the choices are: buy a Dingwall (worth it if you can afford it), have a luthier build you a multi-scale bass, or stick with 4-string. It's less than half an octave you're giving up.
  
• Get your tone from your fingers. That's actually number 1 through 10 - the rest of this stuff is just icing on the cake.
  
  
  
  In case you don't know/care who Gary Willis is, here is a GW student using this technique on hard groovin improv: