Not that I'm into basses or anything, but...
I had taken a break from music for a while, and when I came back to it I had carpal tunnel, so I found playing a standard long scale bass kind of hard for a while there. I picked up a short scale bass around 2002. This one was kind of a nostalgic, guilty pleasure purchase - a Gibson EB-2 like the ones I was infatuated with as a kid:
I loved Tull early on, and had a copy of Benefit with Glenn Cornick holding one on the cover (recently read that he actually hated that bass

and had only ever recorded one track - Witch's Promise - with it). The Animals (with Chas Chandler on Rivoli - Epi's EB-2 equivalent) were another early influence. So... I suddenly found myself with a '66 EB-2DC. The neck is the early version - wide and chunky, and I've modified the electronics quite a bit. Left stock, EB-2s are either a little too boomy (although, makes for a great dub sound) or too brittle/nasal. Not what I'd call a go-to/utility/all-purpose bass by any means, but I love it and all of its idiosyncracies.
From that experience, I discovered that I really like the blurry/middly sound of the mahogany on a bass, and I LOVE the short(er) scale stuff. The carpal tunnel is now gone, but the basses stayed.
So the ones I gravitate to mostly these days for live playing are an '83 Alembic Distillate, and a couple of Gibsons.
Alembics have low-impedance pickups, and I find the active setup in the Distillate easy to tweak - volume, LPF cutoff, resonance switch, and bass/treble boost/cut switches. The biggest plus with this bass is its an Alembic model that I can actually afford

. It has a 32" mid-scale, a beeeeaauuutilfuull slender neck, and the response is perfectly balanced across all strings and up the board. Fantastic player.
The other one I use quite a bit is a '73 Gibson Triumph. This also has low-impedance pickups that give out nice broad frequency response (without being active), and it also has a high impedance mode for gettin some filth thru the tube amp:
I can get a staggering array of tones out of this thing, but it still has its own unique voice- and theres really just one setting in particular that I've honed in on. The Triumph is all mahogany (and a big-ass chunk of a body at that), the neck is slim, slender, and comfy, and I bought this particular one from a dude who had it stuffed in his closet for 30+ years. The only down-side is its kind of heavy at 10.4 pounds. It balances well enough, though, to where I can gig it without curling up into a fetal position mid-set.
A more recent love is a '76 Gibson Thunderbird:
This one is long scale, and the farthest thing from ergonomic - but man the sound is there. Lightweight, highly resonant, and puts out those bell-like mids that are a staple of the Tbird sound. Like the neck pickup on the EB-2 above, the pickups are "sidewinders" - sort of a stacked humbucker turned on its side, with magnets on the outside, and poles in the middle. These arent as overwound as the EBs were (~30K impedance!!!), and put out a clearer, less saturated tone. They're usually wired in series on the 76-79 birds, but this one one has the pickups in parallel and sounds a bit more akin to the 60s and present-day tbirds as a result (more even freq response, vs. honking midrange)
The amp I use is a Orange AD200 head (200w, 4x6550), with Ampeg SVT cabinets (buncha 10s in sealed enclosures). Looks funky as hell and kinda beat, but omg I love that amp - it makes my insides happy. Plenty of headroom even for outdoor venues, and when pushed it just melts into the smoothest sexiest overdrive I've ever experienced on bass. The only drag is that its only single channel, so if I need to switch quickly between clean and OD sounds I'll sometimes frontend it with an EHX English Muff'n.
As for guitars, I have two old Rolands (G-505 and G-808) that I use only for recording. I don't play guitar very well - just play what I write and write what I can play. Actually, I've been working thru a self study book and thinking about taking private lessons on guitar after a I get done with my current school obligations. I had a late model Strat and SG, but is it any surprise that I sold 'em for these?!?
These were just yet another distraction/obsession on the way to modular and the further ravaging and pillaging of my poor little unsuspecting Paypal account
