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... and why should it be a meaningful compliment?

(Playing bass guitar)

"You've got a great tone!"

Okay. It's an electronic instrument.
I set the knobs on the guitar and the amplifier where I like them.
If something is goofed up on either one of those, I fix it (defective parts, worn out strings, whatever).
I'm still using strings that I put on there a long time ago because they don't have any false vibrations and they still have a reasonable amount of resonance (though I'm thinking about getting some new ones for my birthday (and the date and age are none of y'all's business.
I'm playing with my index and middle fingers like everyone else, and I clip my nails.
Okay. It's a very good guitar and a very good (yet very portable just barely enough wattage) amplifier.
What's so difficult about achieving a "great tone"when playing the bass guitar?

This is just not something I think about it all, and - when I hear that - it's sort of like someone telling me "nice hair" (as I'm pretty good at hiding my comb over in the front and my bald spot in the back. )
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TUBA: "nice tone":
THAT actually involves some serious effort and some serious homework (as all of us know).

It's either a compliment to your setup or the old adage "the tone is in your fingers" which I mostly disagree with.

LeMark wrote: Sat Jun 13, 2026 11:51 am It's either a compliment to your setup or the old adage "the tone is in your fingers" which I mostly disagree with.

You know, I have been in Guitar Center before...
Admittedly I've heard people beat against bass guitar strings way too hard with their fingers. I wonder if that has anything to do with it...???
(but those people never sound me like they're working anywhere...)

I'm only a fledgling bassist, but I enjoy playing through a larger speaker much more than the dinky thing I practice on. And...as for 'technique', bandmates often encourage me to "dig in" more, meaning (to me), more front end on the note. Please feel free to advise & recommend as needed.

Several decades ago, I mostly just played (other than all the other types of gigs but most of us play) in this traditiona... (oh to hell with that pretentious bu11sh!t) DIXIELAND band (a hell of a good one, whereby it sounded like we were playing charts, but we didn't have any charts) and we had a weekly decent-paying ($80 1984) Sunday afternoon job had a nice restaurant bar (standing room only). We were a seven piece band. I was using an Ampeg baby bass and the same F tuba that I have now (which was my only tuba at that time, because I had generally been disappointed with all of the various contrabass tubas that I had owned...whereby "a really nice contrabass tuba" was something to look for in the future.

The baby bass sounded like an upright bass (and I put some little cheat marks on the fretboard until I got really good at knowing where the positions were without them), but I enhanced it with a Schaler magnetic pickup. I did things to make the F tuba sound like a big fat tuba (I've linked recordings here before I'm not going to do it now).

We got hooked in with the west coast Dixieland revival festival circuit and we were going out there so often that I was always having to take my bass guitar (AND tuba ), so I sort of tilted my bass guitar sound towards the sound of an upright. I probably still (very much) tend to do that, even though I'm now playing in an eclectic band that plays all sorts of things. It's just too much trouble to bring two bass guitars with two types of strings (flats on one, roundwounds on the other) and to turn the knobs this way in that for different songs, especially when I'm also carrying the tuba when we mix in some dixieland in with all the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and '90s stuff that we do.
You've probably also seen me thinking of toying around with a five-string - but in a goofy way, whereby I'm thinking of a high C string for some of these funk tunes that go way up on the G string (whereby very few of these oldies were originally recorded on five-string basses, so I'm not sure that I need that low range for much of anything).
.
As far as a bigger amp @Unclebeer, my portable amp is something I bought new in 1982 made by Polytone (for all the touring, and it went all over Europe - suffering and surviving my cheap 250V to 110V converter. It is still sort of heavy because the amp has a huge magnet on the back per old school (ie. not powered) but the cabinet is only 13x13 and they squeezed a 12-in nice sounding speaker in it, though only 60 watts. If I turn it up to about 9 out of the range to 10, it's usually plenty loud enough... and does NOT sound like a "practice amp", which is why I like it.

Otherwise, there's a super heavy (and I replaced the casters) Peavey TNT here with this 15-inch speaker that is known as a "Black Widow" - which was an upgrade from the standard speaker. It was made in the 90s. I've managed to get it out to the car by rolling it and tilting at 90° into the back seat... So I'm not lifting it.
It's got a broader sound, but not enough so that I'm often willing to fool with it. I might use it every 8th or 10th gig... This stuff is here, and I just am not in much of a buying mood.
I have an Ampeg tube amp that belongs in someone's recording studio ("Portaflex" made in the early 70s); I need to get active about getting that one sold and out of the house. (Someone feel free to reach out.)
There's even a two-columns monstrous wattage PA system here whereby each of the columns has four 12-inch speakers. It was built in Missouri in the 1970s (Woodson). I've used that thing to crank up to almost 3 (out of 10) to play along with symphonic recordings whereby the orchestra in the speakers is at least as loud as a real orchestra.
I probably don't need it either, but it is fun to play along with stuff, whereby the stuff is full volume and sounds almost like the real thing.

Sounds like a concise way to compliment one's overall musicality; timing, intonation, appropriate 'articulation' or whatever it's called on stringed instruments,...

I only played bass at the HS pep band level so I never heard it.

Bob Kolada wrote: Sat Jun 13, 2026 4:49 pm Sounds like a concise way to compliment one's overall musicality; timing, intonation, appropriate 'articulation' or whatever it's called on stringed instruments,...

I only played bass at the HS pep band level so I never heard it.

Well...
I can play a lot of fancy stuff on the tuba (even at this age) but about all I can play on the electric bass is what needs to be played with combos and jazz bands. Thank goodness I can usually at least play that.

Those characteristics you listed:

With the electric bass, a really good instrument set up properly (fortunately I know how to do that, but it's pretty logical, once these fairly simple instruments are analyzed - if the neck is straight, the frets are in the right places, and the bridge is located at the correct place - hopefully at the factory, once the (bridge adjustments) string lengths and the string heights are adjusted - and maybe the nut at the top of the fretboard is also evaluated) it's going to play as well in tune and as easily as it's going to play (just as with a piano, except way-WAY simpler)

A musician either has good timing or they don't...tuba, bass, saxophone, jaw harp.. a good drummer and a good bass player can keep each other honest. Those who claim that one completely regulates the other just aren't thinking about it correctly.

articulation - electric bass
Some people play with their thumb (I guess they don't plan to do too much, and that's fine), others employ a truncated version of classic guitar right hand technique, others play with a pick, others are amazing at slap technique - and combine that with hammer-ons and pull-offs, yet others can do all of these things and a few of them can do all of those things at extraordinary speeds and with good time.

I'm pretty much (VERY much) blue collar, when it comes to electric bass playing.
The bass guitar is just not something I've ever spent much time practicing at home - other than recently: to get through some of the technical oldies funk passages that requires speed as well as sustained speed (and other techniques that I possess, but techniques that I never particularly built up speed employing).

Call me if you need a really good tuba player.
Call me if you need a really good tuba player who plays bass guitar OK. Call me if you need an electric bass player who knows a bunch of standards - and even a whole bunch of obscure tunes with multiple strains from the 1920s and 1930s, and can play a whole bunch of songs (that fewer and fewer people know) without having to look at lead sheets.

summary:
You're not going to be wowed by my electric bass playing, but I don't believe you'll be distracted by it either.
I have a goal of getting better at playing the thing, but - whenever I sit down to practice - I find myself grabbing one of the tubas.
(They're already out of their cases, and they don't have to be plugged in.)

... so back to the original puzzling question...
If a good bass is set up correctly, it's going to play pretty darn well in tune - which is why it would be odd to receive a compliment about how in tune one's bass guitar is... and if a few knobs are turned this way or that, it's probably going to sound pretty good if it's decent amplification equipment, so it seems odd to receive compliments about how good bass guitar tone is, as well.

That's kinda like when one of the festival judges says you have a fine looking band.

Terry gets it.

Whether it's a pick or a thumb or finger, once the strngs are selected and installed, the bass is set up, and the knobs are turned particular ways, (after the articulation) the tone is the tone

There's some research study done recently that sought to "prove" a similar thing about the piano, that a player's nuance actually changes the sound of the instrument.

Something like that, and sounds similar to what you're saying.

And -- big shock -- like most research papers, they found what they were looking for.

Not sure if it's peer reviewed yet. Because I know bloke loves that too.

I would take it as a real compliment. It means that your playing the right notes in musical way with the right feel, helped by a good setup of your knobs. You were audible in a positive way but not obstrusive, only the bit more to be recognized and appreciated

bloke wrote: Sat Jun 13, 2026 4:20 pm Several decades ago, I mostly just played (other than all the other types of gigs but most of us play) in this traditiona... (oh to hell with that pretentious bu11sh!t) DIXIELAND band (a hell of a good one, whereby it sounded like we were playing charts, but we didn't have any charts) and we had a weekly decent-paying ($80 1984)

I ain't no musicologist.. just some guy who listens to records and likes to poorly jam along on various instruments.. but I consider trad jazz and Dixieland to be two different things (even though there is a huge overlap in repertoire).

Traditional Jazz -the broad umbrella for early jazz styles derived from New Orleans and Chicago jazz of roughly 1900–1930s AND the contemporary styles that evolved from those traditions but kept the same musical... like current NO style music like Rebirth Brass Band or even Tuba Skinny. King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band
Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five, New Orleans Rhythm Kings,
Johnny Dodds' Black Bottom Stompers etc

Dixieland - a revival style, cleaned up and reimagined for a more general audience... the mid-20th-century recreation of early jazz (say late 1940s-1970s peak popularity). The red vest and straw hat, often faster tempos, often associated with commercial enterprises. Firehouse Five Plus Two, Dukes of Dixieland.

I don't think Dixieland is bad or unauthentic just different. It gets confused because Louis Armstrong, Kid Ory, Bunk Johnson, eyc rode the wave of Dixieland Revival as well as being party of the original movement.

Yes I know the name Dixieland bands from the "Original Dixieland Jass" band recordings pre-1920.

It's kind of like how I would consider 1960s Jamaican Ska and Dancehall to be distinct and different than the 1980s British Two-Tone and 3rd Wave US Ska/Ska Punk.

I 100% agree.. I don't have time to worry whether or not someone gets their nickers in a twist over the word Dixieland or ascribes nefarious cultural appropriating motives to the music or people who enjoy it.. They are always going to find something inconsequential to be angry about that keeps then distracted from society's real problem.

Here's the piano version:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 073949.htm

@gocsick

I'm responding to you privately, to avoid ridiculous inflammatory screed popping up, which has been a problem lately.

My third/fourth grade students would have called the original post a humble brag.

...so this social media post (along with comments that I've mentioned above which I've received... I guess they're meant to be compliments) are what prompted me to open up this topic...

...so - seriously - someone is going to say something this profound about how they sound when they're making music - all tied in with a piece of electronic amplification equipment...



Up until just recently, I believe I didn't understand how lucky I am to play some instruments that don't plug into the wall.

Gee, I don´t know...
Not playing bass myself, I still find the following convincing:

Choosing gear of individual good quality items in combination with setting those up in meaningful ways seem two of several applaudable skills when it comes to bass playing. Otherwise, bassists and their etude books and their nerd-magazines wouldn´t be as gear-centered as they are.

There´s more, though, from what I heard:
If You´re not good at pressing strings down onto the fret bord, especially in time before the string is plucked, I´d be inclined a bass player and/or bass teacher worth their money will (and should) notice, and preferrably they´d be able to offer suggestions to fix problems.

Articulation varieties need hours of practise (And this is something I experienced myself, using a funk bass method to try and emulate such variations on the tuba). At least, hours of stubborn practise is what the author of said method prescribed to his audience, electric bassists.
A tubist trying to play funk bass probably was NOT on that author´s mind...
This corresponds to pro drummers practising consistence in cymbal- and drum strokes for literal HOURS (probably after they invested similar amounts of time into their polyrhythmic and four-limbs-independency abilities.

@bloke First, take the compliment. It means you are doing "things" right. That's something to be proud of. Second, as an electric bass player, our tone is a combination of "all of the things." It starts with our fingers. The rest of the gear just amplifies that. I've heard plenty of bass players who still don't have "it" with regard to their hands and try and fix things with knobs, pedals, strings, etc. IMHO you can't fix bad technique with do-dads. Third, if you are getting a compliment then you are consistently doing things right.

When I was a teenager, my nylon string ("classic") guitar teacher was annoyed that I was going to play bass guitar in the school's jazz band, because he just viewed that as sloppy classic guitar technique.
Maybe it was back then to some extent, but today bass technique (all the things that I can't do well) has really become something.

My right hand fingers certainly know how to articulate strings (and subtly change the way that I'm articulating depending on what I want to hear), but I just don't consider that - because it's so automatic.

... and (referring to the picture that I posted just above) as long as a bass amplifier it's pretty good and isn't humming or buzzing or broken, I find that I can find some sort of knob settings that I can use to deliver a marketable product. Do I appreciate higher grade equipment such as Ampeg etc? Of course.