Top 3 Best Pop Punk Basses

Jesse

Ok, so everybody knows I'm a real gear-head and always checkin' out for new stuff. Now, I would like to talk about basses. Yes, more bass-talk.

But not just about any basses, I would like to talk about THE BEST basses for Pop-punk! Today I will list top 3-best basses that dominate the world of pop-punk!

#1 Precision bass

In my opinion this is the holy grail of pop-punk bass! You really can't get bad sound from it. Single pickup, volume and tone controls. It sounds really aggressive with pick and really cuts thru the band (in a good way!). It can also be very mellow sounding if you play it with your fingers. My personal favorite version of precision bass has maple fretboard, just to give it a little more treble and bite to the sound. Almost all of the greatest punk bass players use precision, including Matt Freeman, Joe Principe, Mark Hoppus and Ian Grushka just to name few!

Fender Precision bass... mmmm....tasty...

#2 Jazz bass

Jazz bass was first introduced as a "deluxe-version" of Precision bass. Two pickups, two volumes and a tone control gives this bass really nice array of bass sounds. The  basic sound of this bass is a little more middle-scooped and sophisticated. More low-bass and treble. This bass can sound HUGE when you play with your fingers, just listen to All Time Low! Jazz bass also has much thinner neck and more curved body to make it more comfortable for the player. I think that's why Mark Hoppus combined jazz bass neck and body with precision bass electronics… Best of both worlds! 

Classic example of a jazz bass with rosewood fingerboard.

#3 Stingray / Ibanez ATK

I put these two basses under the same number because basically they are almost the same bass. Both have active electronics and single pickup. Stingray has one humbucker style pickup with dual-coils and ATK has triple-coil pickup. I wanted to include ATK-bass in here just because one of the most iconic bass players in pop-punk scene, Grek K has been playing one in Offspring for tens of years now! These basses are really treble-heavy sounding and will cut thru the band like a knife! Equipped with active electronics these basses can sound really hi-fi and modern, but still theres something magical on these basses. These just sit really great in the mix! And they look cool also! ;)

MusicMan Stingray. I really dig this color scheme!

Ibanez ATK

This is just my 10 cents on the subject. It really doesn't matter what bass you use, as long as you play the hell out of it! There are so many options and brands today that it might be overwhelming sometimes so I created a little list to (hopefully) help somebody out in here :)