J-Retro electronics

The main reason I don't personally like active tone controls is that I'm always wondering when the battery will die. It gives you more options certainly, but at a certain point having all those options becomes more an advertising thing than really usable. It's nice to have but not critical. Musical knowledge, finger picking or flat picking technique, feel, rhythm, ear training, sight-reading, listening and imagination are all far more important than gear and gadgets -- in my opinion.

A bassist normall works at getting a great tone, or one that he loves, and then pretty much sticks with that through a whole album or set. It's basically the same sound but it's one the musian came up with, created and is satisfied with. Sometimes it takes having a tone circuit as described, but sometimes it doen't. Theoretically a person could have one of each type of effect, amp, bass, string-sets, picks and everything else, and still not be happy with their tone.

For instance, the tone I love right now is the Turser Beatle with RotoSound R77s flatwounds (have to get R77m next time), bridge pup off, solo on, volume full, RotoSound R66 flatwounds, into a POD guitar amp using the Modern Class A model and a bit of compression, and fingerstyle playing. That's pretty much it: bass, flatwounds, into amp (model), no passive/active circuits or anything.

On the other hand, you could surely give it a try :)

Retailing at £170 it's a bit of an expensive try.

I think I agree with you Demo. And as i've always heard - the amp changes tone more than the guitar?

Or am I wrong?

Yah, that's a little expensive to try out. I normally think of tone as 50/50, amp/instrument, but of late I've subdivided it a little more, like bass/strings, meaning flatwound vs roundwound. To me at least it makes that much difference, and it's a nice sort of difference -- really noticable. I'm thinking of putting flats on my Squier at some point just to hear the change.

On the amp side, for the way I play bass, it's pretty much a closed end deal; I use that one amp model (just as if I had just the one amp sitting in the room with me), and everything else is just how I play, whether I use a pick or fingers, where on the string I pluck, how hard or soft, things like that. For me at least, the tone of the bass is secondary to what's being played and how it's being played -- the feel, the groove, the timing and the little frills thrown in here and there. I think of the painting more than what sort of brush I use, per se, though some thought has to be put into that as well -- like 'thick brush' or 'thin brush;' that kind of thing. :)

Yea...

Perhaps a better way of constructing sound would be to have decent pickups e.g. EMGs, DiMazio etc

And then have a head with parametric EQ where you can control the volume of bass, mid and treble and what they are set on?

DemoEtc - do you use a Bass POD or Guitar POD for your bass?