I use the Stringcleaner on all my guitars and basses. It cleans both sides of the strings with one swipe and doesn't require anything but a quick rinse twice a year or so.
http://thestringcleaner.com/ Simple, cheap, effective and the bass version has an extra pad that cleans the fingerboard at the same time. I just leave them on the guitar and give it a quick swipe before and after I play. Two seconds, tops. Done.
For strings, for most gigs on bass I use Carvin/GHS stainless steel:
http://www.carvinguitars.com/products/40STS Ten bucks a set. They sound fantastic on my fretless basses, especially the acoustic 5-string. On my Alembic (Series 1) I rotate between three sets, depending on the gig (the advantage of our amazing tailpieces is that you can pop strings on and off with ease).
I specialize in Motown and the basslines of the great James Jamerson:
http://bassland.net/jamersonhits.htm The thing about James is that he was an upright man, like me. He left the factory mute on his '62 P-bass, jacked his action up so high that Bootsy said; you had to have a friend help you play it. He used LaBella Flatwounds that he never changed, and on his Ampeq B-15, he would turn on the treble and mids to 0 and his bass control at full blast. He made it sound like an upright as much as possible.
He controlled the amount of sustain by using the right hand pizzicato technique of pressing lightly against the string with the side of his finger while using his index forefinger like a flat pick, for both up and down strokes.
He called it the claw. The next time you hear anything from Heard It Through The Grapevine to Bernadette or Knock On Wood, consider that every bass note was plucked with ONE FINGER.
http://www.metafilter.com/75769/James-Jamerson-Motowns-Secret-Weapon Here's what it sounded like:
http://youtu.be/rfDjwuwlJFo For the Motown orchestra I play with I use a fretless Jazz Bass (a copy of Jaco's) I made, with EMGs (w/mid expander). I wound a strip of thick neoprene through the string ends at the tuners and have a 4 length of soft 1/4 pipe insulation stuffed under the strings, against the saddles.
I use a set of black tapewounds - well-used - I found in a cubbyhole of an old workbench I inherited when I went to work at Daddy's in the early 90s. I've been trying to guess the gauge ever since (circus big-top guy wire? Undersea electric cable? Ethyl Mertz' clothesline?)
I tried a variety of amps and preamps over the years, until I borrowed a Tech 21 SansAmp DI at the last minute (because I forgot I'd borrowed my amp's power cable for something else and forgot to put it back in my gig bag) and ran it directly into the FOH. Boom, there was the sound I was looking for.
Holy cow, hits you right in the pants, don't it? quoth the drummer. You bet. That's where I was aiming. I put duct tape across the top of the SansAmp so nothing would change. To this day, I have absolutely no idea what the settings are.
One last thing. Legend has it Jamerson recorded all day at Motown then went out to play a gig, got roaring drunk and came back to Motown the next morning without a second's worth of sleep.
Smokey Robinson had an arranger write out a very complicated bassline for the new tune he had written, but Jamerson was too drunk to read it. Instead, he laid on his back on the studio floor and said; count it off. I'll think of something.
He played two notes. To this day, over a half-century later, when you - as a bassist - play those same two notes, everybody knows which song it is:
http://youtu.be/Vc_SDlPMGDA Now THAT'S genius.
Jeez, I didn't realize this sucker became a novel. Oh well, it's a subject near and dear to my heart, and a VERY weird setup you might never hear of another bassist using.
