Blacktop Basses

[Duffy]

Yesterday I had the time to play both of the new Blacktop basses for quite a while each.

My personal feeling was that the J bass with the twin P bass pickups had the best tone. I played it for about fourty five minutes thru an Ampeg PRO 1000 watt head and an Ampeg cabinet. I seemed to be able to get a lot more tonal variation out of the J bass than the P bass, but that may just be my experience.

The tonal difference on the J bass was significantly different when moving from the bridge to the neck pickup, using each pickup independently. The neck pickup was very smooth and round. The bridge had more bite. Both pickups full on was also a very pleasing sound. The J bass felt really good in my hands and was easy to play.

Without further checking them out, if I was to buy one today I'd get the J bass. To make it extra nice, this J bass was all black, with chrome hardware and a heavy bridge plate. I liked the black body and pickguard better than the silver one. To me it had a cool laid back vibe visually and tonally, but I dialed in a real mellow bassy tone.

The P bass has the cool dual coil J bass NYC soapbar'ish type pickups. Overall the P bass sounded brighter and really sensitive. I would have had to work some more to get the same really low mellow tone out of it that the J produced so easily, but I'm fairly sure I could have dialed it in if I had taken the time. It sounded real good the way it was; good in a different way than the J.

I think it would be a real pleasure to own the J bass. I could definitely enjoy that bass a lot.

Although relatively inexpensive, I think these basses give you a lot for your money and they are more than just gimmicks. The two P bass pickup design on the J bass is a lot more interesting to me than the P/J pickup arrangement, and it produces some really interesting tones. I think it has a vibe like a real nice custom J bass, way untraditional and cool.

[marnold]

Hmm, I didn't even realize these were out. I've always liked a p-bass sound and the Jazz neck. That's what my old Peavey Fury had. Did the "neck" pickup on the Jazz have that classic p-bass sound to it? It looks like the pickup is closer to the neck than is typical with a p-bass.

[Duffy]

The neck P pickup on the Blacktop J bass has a mellower tone than the bridge P pickup which is brighter, according to my experience using mellow bassy settings on the bass and on the Ampeg Pro amp. I did not compare it to my Fender MIM J bass but was assuming at the time that the bridge sounded more like my standard P bass than the warm sounding neck pickup. I will compare it to a standard P bass next time I go to the store. The neck pup is way more mellow than the bridge pickup. I played with mellow settings as I said, but I tested it out using bright settings briefly and it really gets a nice bright bass tone as well, with a lot sharper tone from the bridge pickup - as you might expect. The Blacktop J bass has a significant tonal difference when you independently compare the full neck pickup to the full bridge pickup. You can do any combination of pickup blend using the separate volume controls. The tone knob has a lot of tonal range to it as well.

In my opinion it is a real cool bass, mainly because of the twin P pickups and the tone but the J bass feel.

The bass played and sounded better than I thought it would. I had only briefly played it for a minute or two previously to yesterday. Yesterday I played it for about fourty five minutes and tried to get a decent feel for it. I think it's kind of cool that a J bass has twin P pickups. The neck feels real good too, but not like my fast Ibanez SR500.

[Tig]

Dang, that's a great bass for a great price. I like how it covers a wide tonal variety.