Horuss said:
fronobulax said:
JS has the short scale which is a plus for many people but the one you're looking at has the stock humbuckers which are an acquired taste. The consensus of the thread Grot referenced seems to be that a Pilot might be a better choice.
Thanks for the responses.
I've looked at the other threads but can't find one where anybody talks about the sound of the stock Guild pickups on the later JS IIs. What about them makes them an 'acquired taste?'
I'm too lazy to search but a lot of the discussion comes up when talking about the Hagstrom or bi-sonic pickup that was standard on Guild basses until '71 (or late '70) when Guild introduced the humbucker. I seem to recall an old thread about "one bass" that kind of evolved into commentary on the pickups. Most of the people compare the humbucker to the bi-sonic and use terms like "muddy", "boomy" and "indistinct" to describe the former. The knee jerk solution is to replace the humbuckers with
Dark Stars although doing so would come close to doubling your investment.
That said, it has been a long time since I compared my JS to the sound of any non-Guild bass. I have very old flatwounds on it at the moment and I tend to play through a guitar amp because a Princeton Reverb 65 only weighs 30lbs. and I'm more concerned with being heard than sounding good. I mention this because the last few times I was doing A/B compares on the basses, I noticed that the amp's tone controls were pretty ineffective over a wide range. But I digress. I find the JS can produce a fair variety of sounds. The PU positions give some of that and boosting treble at the bridge and cutting it at the neck actually sound like extremes. The "tone" switch can cut a lot of treble and doing so seems to me to obscure the pitch. I actually use it a lot when I don't know WTF I'm playing and figure a rhythmic thump will be good enough if I am otherwise hitting wrong notes.
I seem to recall favorable comparisons to the Gibson EB0/3 sounds so my comments are definitely influenced by having a Starfire available. And the JS was my only bass for several years (although I cannot for the life of me figure out why I bought a new JS instead of a new Starfire. Could have been cost or it could have been that solid body basses had a bigger coolness factor).
If I wanted to get a sound I like out of my JS I'd consider Dark Stars or just roundwounds. I may do the latter since the cost is much lower and there is no guarantee that the JS with Dark Stars will be different enough from the Starfire to replace it as my favorite sounding bass.
I'd offer you a recording except figuring that all out and putting it in practice is a New Year's Resolution and not a skill I currently possess. There are a few JS owners besides me so maybe one of them might make some samples.