Blind sound test Starfire vs Ric vs Pbass- wife weighs in!

[lungimsam]

So for fun I did a blind sound test. Wife seated with back to me. Could not see which bass I was plugging in.
My Blue Flower Pbass vs. Ric 4003 vs. Starfire II bass. All of them have flatwounds on them. Neck pickup used on the two pup basses. Amp settings the same.
They all sound fantastic. But my wife, after listening to them back and forth said she thinks...
the Starfire sounds the best!!
She was surprised to turn around and see that I had the Starfire on when she was saying that this one is the best sound.
The Pbass was too "sharp" sounding to her ears.
The Ric was super "clean" sounding to her ears.
But she said the Starfire had the best tone to her ears and was more "powerful".
I agree that the neck pickup on the Starfire sounds really good. Very present and powerful and nice balance of highs and mids and solid fundamental low end.
(oddly, the bridge pup sounds too thin, imho). But only the neck pup was used for testing. It is interesting that there is a huge diff between the tone of neck pup and bridge pup on a Starfire. Gives a good spread of tone to use, though.
To my ears it is a tie between the Ric and Starfire. They both sound just as good but different. 4003 is thinner sounding. Starfire is beefier sounding.
PS - a future sound test is still to be had with my Gibson bass once I get a Bisonic in it and the new harness wired up.

Have you done blind bass sound tests with someone of your basses? What did the listener decide sounded best?

 

[mellowgerman]

Interesting findings! I would probably agree with your wife.

I haven't done a blind test with my wife, though I would be interested to see how that goes! She plays a little bit of bass too and, of course, has heard all of my basses for hours on end. I think if I asked her right now she would say my 1970 Starfire is the best sounding one, but that could be biased because she knows it's hands down my favorite (and I'm the one who obsesses over tone).

On a sidenote (*PICKUPS/TONE/RAMBLE-PHILOSOPHY ALERT*), regarding the thin-sounding bridge pickup, that makes sense to me and is consistent with my findings, at least regarding my 1970 Starfire. That bass has a DarkStar in the neck position and a Novak BS/DS in the bridge position, as a result of a lot of testing/swapping/listening. I found that with the vintage spec Bisonic in the bridge (heavier wind at about 1.5x the resistance) balanced very nicely with the lighter-wound DarkStar in the neck position.

That said, I guess it depends what your goal is with the bass and how the bass resonates naturally/physically. My 1962 Gibson EB-0 has a set of Novak BS/DS pickups, spaced farther apart, so the equation ended up panning out quite differently. I'm not sure if the thin solid body, fatter neck, or any of the other construction variables factor in, but I think the vintage-spec Novak sounds phenomenal in that neck position. Huge, warm, pillowy, but also clear and articulate. So it seems the hotter coil suits this bass better in the neck position than it does in the context of my Starfire (same scale length, same strings).
Also, the EB-0's bridge pickup cavity (from the old aftermarket mini-bucker that was in the bass when I got it), was closer to the bridge than I normally like. Correspondingly the space between the pickups is pretty big. Normally when that's the case, I find a sort of "quacky" quality to the tone of the blended pickups. To address this, I wired up the 4-way selector switch as: neck//both-parallel//both-series//bridge for more blending options. I also replaced the bridge pickup's tone control with a 12-position mid-notch filter control, to allow for thinner bridge tones with different mid-characteristics. Now I don't mind the wide pickup spread as much!
So that's kind of a rambly veer, but point being, what might seem to complement the resonant characteristics of a semi-hollow Starfire (in my findings, heavier-wound bridge pickup / lighter-wound neck pickup) isn't necessarily going to hold up on another (in some regards) comparable bass. Also, things like the actual spacing and positions of the pickups can make a big difference in how they mingle.