Hi all,

I have a drummer friend who is interested in learning the bass, but I recently took back the bass that's on permanent loan to me for some potential recording. So now the drummer is thinking about getting a bass to play around with.

So...a few questions:
  1. Any recommendations? The SX ones seem OK and are really cheap. I'm sure they're not high end, but might be good enough. I know very little about basses, as you will see in this post, so I'm just testing the waters.
  2. What's the practical difference between a jazz bass and p-bass? I know the p-bass has one split humbucker in the neck position and the jazz bass has two...non-humbucking (?) pickups, one in the neck and one in the bridge. That's right, right? So many basses seem to be derivatives of these two styles that I thought it might be worthwhile to figure out the actual difference. When would you use one style as opposed to the other style? Are the p-bass and jazz bass better at certain styles or sounds or playing techniques? I figure there must be some definable difference between the two of them, otherwise they'd have melded together by now. Maybe I'm wrong on that -- like I said, I don't know much.
  3. Any other tips I should be aware of, such as fretboard material, scale length, # of strings, etc.?


Any/all input is appreciated. Thanks!