The Gear of the Great Jazz Bassists: What They Actually Played

Search “what strings did Ray Brown use” and most of what comes back is forum threads and string shops. So we went looking for what the players themselves said, and for the paper trail their basses left behind.

This is a sourced guide to jazz bassist gear: the basses, strings, amps and setups of eight players Better Bass Lessons teaches: Ray Brown, Ron Carter, Jaco Pastorius, Charlie Haden, Percy Heath, Paul Chambers, Eddie Gomez and Israel Crosby. Every fact comes from the player’s own interview, a maker’s artist page, a dealer’s sale record or a magazine piece we could open and read. Where two sources disagree, you get both. Where we found nothing solid, we say so and leave it blank.

Ray Brown: strings to suit the bass

In 1963, Jazz Professional magazine opened an interview with “Tell us about your bass, Ray.” He gave them the whole setup, down to the height of his endpin.

His strings followed the instrument, not a brand. On the Italian bass he used gut on the top two strings because, for pizzicato, metal G and D strings “tend to cut into the fingers.” In his words: “I prefer the gut; they have a more flexible ‘feel’.”

On string height he gave a trade-off and a test. “The higher the strings, the bigger the tone. But for speed solo playing, you need to press the strings down easier, so they need to be closer to the fingerboard.” Then the test: “If I put the third finger of my left hand flat on the fingerboard at the bottom end, and it slides comfortably under the strings, that’s the height that suits me.” He set the bass’s height once and left it: “I have mine five inches from the ground, with a wooden peg of fixed height.”

His right hand was old school by his own description: “I wrap the first section of my index finger round the string and snap it back.” And decades later he was still steering younger players away from sky-high strings. Christian McBride remembers Ray hearing him play around 1990, when young New York bassists were raising their strings for an unamplified sound, and telling him: “You don’t need your strings up that high.”

Amplification came later. “When I started, there were no amplifiers, and hardly any microphones,” he told Les Tomkins in 1980. JazzTimes says upright players spent years making do with amps built for electric bass or guitar, and credits Ray with the fix: “after consulting with the legendary Ray Brown, the folks at Polytone introduced the Mini-brute line of solid-state amps in 1968.”

He also played electric bass. “Yes, I have to play it in the studios,” he said in that 1980 interview, and he’s credited on electric bass on James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World” from the album Soul on Top. He granted it some advantages, like being able to “run over it with your car, and take it out and play it,” but when McBride later asked why he’d stopped, Ray said, “Nah, I never liked it.”

His basses stayed with bassists from his circle. Ted Panken reported on jazz.com that McBride took possession of an acoustic bass that had belonged to Ray, and McBride added that John Clayton “has one of Ray’s other ones.”

More on Ray Brown: Ray Brown Bass Lines: The Two-Bar Phrases Singers Loved

Ron Carter: one bass since 1959

“I have a Juzek that I purchased used in 1959 and have been playing it ever since,” Carter told No Treble in August 2025. That same interview lists the rest of his rig, item by item.

Of Nick Epifani’s amps he said, “I like his equipment because it sounds like me when I play through it.” Radial quotes him on its PZ-DI page: “Whether I am playing live or recording in the studio, the Radial PZ-DI makes my bass sound as fresh as a daisy!”

Strings get tested like lab equipment. “If I’m recording with a string that’s functioning at 75% of its value, I have to take it off. So I’m always looking for strings,” he told Stereophile in 2016. “My bass is a walking laboratory.” In 2022 he told WBUR’s Here & Now that the “great brands of strings I have stumbled on over the past 25 years” let him get Monday’s sound again Tuesday through Saturday.

He doesn’t always get to play the Juzek. When airlines stopped making it easy to fly with a bass, his first request to anyone hiring him became two basses waiting at the hotel for him to try. “None of them will ever be like mine,” he told Max Raskin in January 2025. He leaves a borrowed bass the way he found it, except that he’ll clean the fingerboard and strings and, “if I can, take off one of the five pickups that they have attached to the bridge.”

The bass itself started as a strategy. In high school he played cello, noticed the school’s bass player would graduate in the spring of 1955, and figured they’d have to call him. “So I sold my cello, got a teacher, and I was the guy they had to call,” he told WBUR.

More on Ron Carter: Ron Carter Bass Lines: Two-Bar Phrases and a Better Order of Notes

Jaco Pastorius: two Jazz Basses and an Acoustic 360

Jaco walked Steve Rosen through his whole rig in a 1978 interview that’s now posted on his official site.

Why Jazz Basses: “I don’t like Precisions. They’re too muddy plus they don’t have that back pick-up which you need to get the sound.” He used only that back pickup, so he turned the bass up all the way on the amp to make up for it. He wasn’t loud about it: “I just play about 2 1/2 or 3 on stage.” And he stayed with the Acoustic because “An Acoustic never distorts which is why I like to use it.” On his fretted stage bass he replaced the old stacked knobs because “those old pots were too soft.”

The strings were about harmonics. “To me Rotosound has what no other string has and that’s pure harmonics and the closest to playing harmonics in tune.” Asked about Fender strings, he said he’d used them when he started “because that’s all they were really making at the time.” For “Portrait of Tracy,” where the top two strings play nothing but harmonics, “I actually tuned the G string a little sharp when I recorded and the D string a little sharp.”

The delay was for doubling himself live. “You have the echo through one amp and then have the straight amp. I like to use that when I’m soloing because it really puts a nice ambience on.”

He did own an upright. “I had a real good bass once and it just fell apart, I mean literally fell apart in a million pieces,” he said. “I woke up and it was in a pile in the corner because the humidity just pulled it apart.” He couldn’t afford a bass that would stand up to the Florida weather, so he kept playing his Fender. His official biography tells it a little differently: the upright “wasn’t easy to maintain” and he traded it for another electric bass.

The Bass of Doom: where the stories split

The fretless ’62 is the bass Jaco nicknamed the Bass of Doom, and its story changes depending on who’s telling it.

• How it went fretless. Jaco told Rosen in 1978, “I took out the frets myself and refinished it.” His official biography says he either got the bass already fretless or pulled the frets with a butter knife, and that “his recollections varied over the years.” No Treble’s 2010 report tells the butter knife version as fact. Both say the gaps were filled with plastic wood.
• The repair. The biography says Jaco sent it to luthiers Kevin Kaufman and Jim Hamilton in 1986. No Treble says Kaufman glued it back together “from over 15 pieces” after Jaco reportedly smashed it in the mid ’80s.
• The theft. Stolen in New York in 1986, shortly after the repair. No Treble says from “a Manhattan park bench.” The biography says Greenwich Village.
• When it turned up. No Treble: it “resurfaced in early 2006 in a New York guitar shop.” The biography: it “was only recovered in 2007.”
• Who owns it. No Treble reported in May 2010 that the family had “finally regained ownership” with Robert Trujillo’s help. The official biography says it “is now owned by Metallica bassist Rob Trujillo,” who has told the family it can buy the bass for the price he paid.

More on Jaco: Jaco Pastorius Bass Lines: Teen Town, Havona and How to Learn Them

Charlie Haden: a Pöllmann, a Vuillaume and high strings

Haden’s basses have paper trails, but they come from dealers, not from his own interviews.

The Pöllmann sold through Upton Bass, which describes it as “formerly owned by the late, great Charlie Haden” and “used heavily in the 1970s with the likes of Keith Jarrett and Carla Bley.” Upton says it “is said to have been built expressly for Haden by Gunther Krammer,” a third-generation Pöllmann luthier.

The other bass is older and French. New Mexico Magazine reported in March 2025 that Haden “chose a model made around 1843 in France by the renowned J.B. Vuillaume,” and found it on the second floor of Robertson & Sons Violin Shop in Albuquerque with a price tag on it.

On setup, critic Michael Ullman, who interviewed Haden in 1984, wrote that “he kept the strings of his bass higher than most younger bass players.” Haden’s reason was the sound itself: “I say, when you play make your instrument sound as beautiful as possible because when that beautiful sound comes back to your ears it’ll inspire you to play even better.”

More on Charlie Haden: Charlie Haden Bass Lines and How to Get His Sound on Upright

Percy Heath: a bass, and a cello tuned like one

Heath’s first instrument was a violin, at eight. After his Army service in World War II he bought a bass and went to music school in Philadelphia, and in 1952 he replaced Ray Brown in the group that became the Modern Jazz Quartet.

In 1975 he formed the Heath Brothers with his brothers Jimmy and Albert and pianist Stanley Cowell, and started doubling on cello. jazz.com says he began by “borrowing a modified cello from Ray Brown.” Blue Note’s biography says it was a cello “which he retuned to bass intervals,” and KNKX says it was a cello “which he tuned like a bass.” The North Carolina Music Hall of Fame says he “often played cello instead of bass” with the group.

More on Percy Heath: Bags’ Groove Bass Line: Percy Heath’s Rhyming Two-Feel on an F Blues and Blue Haze Bass Line: Walk a Blues on Triads Only Like Percy Heath

Paul Chambers: a thin paper trail

No source we could open names the maker of Chambers’s bass, and we didn’t find a gear interview with him. What is documented: in Detroit he practiced at home on a school-owned bass, and jazz.com’s encyclopedia says his father, who wanted him to play baseball, would throw it down the stairs when he did. By 1952 he was taking lessons from a Detroit Symphony Orchestra bassist, and jazz.com credits him with reintroducing bowing “into the contemporary jazz language.”

On strings, the sources describe his sound, not his purchases. JazzTimes uses him as its example of gut: “The thump, fast decay and organic richness of gut are characterized by the tone of Paul Chambers.” Christian McBride, talking about bassists on mid and late ’50s records, says: “Everybody used gut strings at that time. Everybody had pretty high action, where you get that real percussive sound on the bass.” Neither is Chambers telling us what he played, so read them as the sound of the era.

More on Paul Chambers: Paul Chambers Bass Lines: Speed One Up and You Get a PC Solo

Eddie Gomez and Israel Crosby: what we couldn’t find

JazzTimes names Eddie Gomez, alongside Ron Carter, as its example of the steel-string sound: more growl and sustain, lower action for thumb position, and a smoother bowed tone. Past that, we couldn’t find Gomez naming his bass, strings or amp in a source we could open.

For Israel Crosby, including his “Poinciana” with Ahmad Jamal, we found nothing on his gear at all. That’s a gap in the record, so we’ve left it empty rather than guess.

More on them: Eddie Gomez’s You Must Believe in Spring Solo: How to Learn It and Israel Crosby Bass Style: The 1-3-6-5 Lick and Lines Like Melodies

Myths and loose ends

• “Ray Brown played Spirocores.” String shops say so. String Emporium writes, “When you think of the late great jazz player Ray Brown, think Spirocore mediums,” and Upton Bass sells Spirocores for “that quintessential Ray Brown sound.” That’s a sound comparison, not a record of what he bought. In the interviews we read, Ray never names a string brand, and in 1963 he described rope-cored steel on one bass and gut G and D strings on the other.
• “Jaco pulled the frets with a butter knife.” Maybe. His official biography says his own accounts varied, and in 1978 he only said he took them out himself.
• Forum specifics. You’ll find forum posts naming the brand of Paul Chambers’s strings, the carving on his scroll and an older pickup of Ron Carter’s. We couldn’t open those threads to check them and found nothing better, so they’re not on this page.

What this means for your sound

Cole Davis, who founded Better Bass Lessons, has tried the old-school setup himself. In a lesson on the right hand, he says: “When I was at Juilliard, I was really into the old school thing. I played gut strings. … So I played gut strings and I played one finger. And I really tried to get into that sound. But now, this is how I play. Two gut strings, two steel strings, and two fingers close to the fingerboard. It’s a personal decision.”

Ray Brown made the same point about string height in 1963: “You have to decide that according to the type of playing you want to do, and how responsive your bass is.”

And when it comes to sounding like your favorite player on a different bass, Cole’s answer in his lesson on Charlie Haden’s sound is to play along with the record: “How do you copy someone’s sound when you’re playing a different bass, and you’re playing a different string setup, and different string height, and your hands are different, and how do you do that? You do that literally by listening to them and by copying them. It will happen naturally if you listen to them and play along.” For him, that player was Haden: “playing along with Charlie Haden really helped me get a great sound.” The whole approach is in Charlie Haden Bass Lines and How to Get His Sound on Upright.

FAQ

What strings did Ray Brown use?

It depended on the bass. In a 1963 interview he said his touring bass, a small French Silvestre, had rope-cored steel strings, and his best bass, an Italian around 200 years old, worked best with gut G and D strings and metal A and E strings. He preferred gut on the top two for pizzicato because metal ones “tend to cut into the fingers.” String shops tie his sound to Spirocore mediums, but we didn’t find Ray naming a string brand.

What bass does Ron Carter play?

A Juzek he bought used in 1959. He told No Treble in 2025 that he’s played it ever since, with La Bella 7710T strings, a David Gage LifeLine pickup and Epifani amplification, plus a Gallien-Krueger MBE combo for small rooms.

What amp did Jaco Pastorius use?

An Acoustic 360. In 1978 he said, “I use an old Acoustic 360,” with two stock bottoms, and that in the studio he recorded mostly direct. On stage he ran a small digital delay, with the echo through one amp and the dry sound through another.

What is Jaco’s Bass of Doom?

His 1962 Fender Jazz Bass, converted to fretless, with the fret slots filled with plastic wood. It was stolen in New York in 1986 and turned up in a New York guitar shop in 2006 according to No Treble, or 2007 according to his official biography. Sources also differ on how the frets came out and on who owns it now.

Did Paul Chambers use gut strings?

We didn’t find Chambers saying so himself. JazzTimes uses his tone as its example of the gut-string sound, and Christian McBride says that on mid and late ’50s records “Everybody used gut strings at that time.”

What bass did Charlie Haden play?

Two are documented by dealers: a 1973 Pöllmann from Mittenwald, Germany, that Upton Bass reports was built for him and used heavily in the 1970s with Keith Jarrett and Carla Bley, and a French bass made around 1843 by J.B. Vuillaume that New Mexico Magazine found in an Albuquerque violin shop in 2025.

Did Percy Heath play cello?

Yes. From 1975, with the Heath Brothers, he often played cello instead of bass, retuned to bass intervals. jazz.com says he began on a modified cello borrowed from Ray Brown.

Will the same strings and amp make me sound like these players?

Cole’s answer: “How do you copy someone’s sound when you’re playing a different bass, and you’re playing a different string setup, and different string height, and your hands are different, and how do you do that? You do that literally by listening to them and by copying them. It will happen naturally if you listen to them and play along.”

Sources

Checked 8 October 2026.

• Ray Brown interview, Jazz Professional, 1963, at the National Jazz Archive: nationaljazzarchive.org.uk
• Ray Brown interviewed by Les Tomkins, 1980, at the National Jazz Archive: nationaljazzarchive.org.uk
• Ted Panken, “Christian McBride Selects Classic Ray Brown Tracks,” jazz.com: jazz.com
• Ed Friedland, “GearHead: Products that changed jazz bass forever,” JazzTimes, April 2012: PDF
• Karen Beishuizen, “Ron Carter Talks Double Bass Gear and Legacy in This Exclusive Interview,” No Treble, 3 August 2025: notreble.com
• Ken Micallef, “Musicians as Audiophiles: Ron Carter,” Stereophile, 10 September 2016: stereophile.com
• “Legendary jazz bassist Ron Carter is going on 85 and still going strong,” Here & Now, WBUR, 21 March 2022: wbur.org
• Max Raskin, “Interview with Ron Carter,” 15 January 2025: maxraskin.com
• Radial Engineering, PZ-DI artist quotes: radialeng.com
• Steve Rosen, Jaco Pastorius interview, 1978, on Jaco’s official site: jacopastorius.com
• “The Life of Jaco,” official biography: jacopastorius.com
• Kevin Johnson, “Robert Trujillo Helps Pastorius Family Reclaim Jaco’s ‘Bass of Doom’,” No Treble, 31 May 2010: notreble.com
• Upton Bass, sale listing for the 1973 Pöllmann, ex-Charlie Haden: uptonbass.com
• Kate Nelson, “The String Family,” New Mexico Magazine, 26 March 2025: newmexicomagazine.org
• Michael Ullman, “Jazz Remembrance: Bassist Charlie Haden,” The Arts Fuse, 14 July 2014: artsfuse.org
• Percy Heath biography, Blue Note Records: bluenote.com
• Percy Heath, jazz.com encyclopedia: jazz.com
• “Jazz April Birthday 30: Percy Heath,” KNKX, 30 April 2013: knkx.org
• Percy Heath, North Carolina Music Hall of Fame: northcarolinamusichalloffame.org
• Paul Chambers, jazz.com encyclopedia: jazz.com
• String Emporium, “Choosing Upright Bass Strings”: stringemporium.com
• Upton Bass, Thomastik Spirocore strings: uptonbass.com
• Cole Davis, lesson on the right hand and lesson on the sound of Charlie Haden, Better Bass Lessons course and transcription lesson transcripts.