Thought I'd start a thread so all the bass players (and I don't mean the frustrated guitarists!) could post pics and or talk about what they're rolling in the deep with.
Currently I've been rawkin' either my Frankenstein blue P bass or my 73 Ric. I have a hard time choosing between the two, but to make it easier I restrung my P BEAD. At church there are a lot of songs that we play that benefit from having that low B. I've tried in the past to play a 5 string, but without much luck. The necks feel clunky to me and I have a hard time navigating. So I tried this way and it's been working out great for me. Years ago I had read about other bass players doing the BEAD thing, and never thought much of it. I had done the drop D thing, but I reached a point where I needed to go lower than that and figured I wouldn't miss the G. Sure, there's some "work arounds" you have to do to make it work, but that's just something I deal with.
As for "specs", here's what my P has: Body is from a late 90's Squire P bass that I had completely mauled and mutilated over the years. It's been repainted twice, and now wears a Krylon Baby Blue coat with some light metal flecks in the clear. It was completely rattle canned this go around, and while it looks ok, it in no way will fool someone into thinking it's anything "professional". I'm currently using a Badass II bridge on it, and Schaller straplocks. I cut a custom guard to house an old Gibson Recording bass pickup, and have that wired with the middle tap active, and then that runs through a transformer (from a Shure mic adapter) to step it from low to high impedance and finally through a tone knob with a .047uf cap. The neck is a Warmoth J with block inlays, made of wenge with a rosewood board. Tuners, I think they're Schallers? IDK, they're great though. It basically sounds like a good "growly" P bass that straddles the line between a 60's tone and something newer. Hard to explain, but it's vintage and somewhat "hi-fi" at the same time. I don't care really for active pickups, but this gives me a tighter tone like you'd expect from an active bass but without losing the "vintage" flair and flavor I love so much.
The Ric? Well, it's basically as it was when it left the factory in 1973, except for the brass nut someone had put on it at some point in its life. Everything else is original. The sound? Well, "piano tone" is the only way to describe it. Think of every awesome Ric tone you've ever heard, and that's what this thing does. It was the last year of them using the "toaster top" neck pickup. If you've only ever played Ric's with the "hi gain" pickups, do yourself a favor and play one with this setup. You really do owe it to yourself to hear and feel the difference. It's a visceral thing, and somewhat subtle, but it makes all the difference in the world to me. It's maple glo, and one day I want to find another one in black. I just LOVE black Ric basses!!! I'll never sell this one as it sounds so damn good, but to be completely honest, I don't care for the color... Dumb, I know, but I just go crazy for black Ric basses.
The rest of my rig is pretty simple, BBE opto stomp compressor, SansAmp Bassdriver into whatever amp they have on stage. I started using this set up so that I could easily feed a DI signal that sounded close to what my amps sounded like, since none of my tube amps had DI outs. I was tired of being mic'ed with an SM57... I used to rock a couple different tube bass amps, the V4B I had was killer, but I sold all of them and now play thru an Ashdown blah blah blah model. It gets me close to the tube heads, but is way lighter and I never have to retube it. I also used to run into volume issues frequently, I was WAY too loud for inside, and not loud enough at outside shows. Tube bass heads are finicky beasts, way more so than guitar amps. Yes, I miss my Ampeg and Nomad and Sunn amps, but I have a more manageable rig now. Speaker cab is an Ampeg 6X10 or whatever is onstage. With the compressor and bassdriver I can easily mimic the "feel" and grit I used to achieve with my tube amps. Not that I play "dirty", but I always shot for a Dusty Hill type of tone or something like that. Really, any basic or classic rock type tone where there's a little "hair around the edges"... I don't like squeaky clean.
I'll try to get a couple pix of my gear up here soon.