The Right Tools?

By Orin Isaacs

One of the questions I most often get is regarding gear. What kind of basses do I play? What brand of strings do I use? Do I use effects and with what kind of amp? etc. And most importantly - does it matter? To answer your questions with one word YES, it does matter. Lets focus on the most important piece of gear you’ll ever own: your bass. Some of my students' basses, in my opinion, are unusable when it comes to those tricks we all want to do. No matter how much I tried to teach them the techniques, they couldn’t seem to pull it off, until I handed them one of my basses, and then - BAM - they could play what they had been striving to achieve. Why? 'cause I play high end instruments and I maintain them. My instruments are custom made and are always set up with good sounding strings. That gives me a huge advantage when it comes to the playability and feel I need for the style or technique I’m after. For example, my main axe is a fretted 5 string, I can get through most gigs with that bass, but if I want to go wild with my thumb, I have more freedom on my 4 string. If I want to chord and jump on lead lines, I'd rather use a 6 string. I also have a 5 string fretless that I keep handy for special occasions. The basses I use in the studio are set up with higher action than my performance basses to minimize fret noise. The pick-ups are all configured differently in each bass for different sounds and most of my performance basses are EQ’d with allot of high end for TV. My main 5 string doesn’t have any controls on the front so I don’t accidentally turn off the volume or tone controls and send our show's sound guys and myself into a panic (which has happened before, in the middle of my bass solo in the bands only full length showcase ). We can go into the different woods and how that contributes to sound but that might get complicated. Why do I use so many basses? Cause I need them! These are the tools of the trade that I need as a versatile electric bass player.