as others have said, it depends on the experience level of your bass line
but, as kent cater himself put it: 3rd bass hasta be perfect in a good bassline

I think all basses are equally difficult in their own way. Whether it be physical difficulty with bigger drums or mental difficulty with complex parts. Basically, the parts get easier as the drum gets heavier.

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No one said that bass 3 of 5 had to play on two and four on every run!!

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Actually, my old director said this. He put me on 4 because he knew I can keep time like nobody's business and I'm just better at playing on the upbeats. Then, new instructor comes along two weeks later, who usually only includes the top three in the fancier splits. You never know what my new instructor will write, he likes to mix it up, which is good. He actually wrote the bass solo in our show this year to feature bass 4 to shut me up, because I was always complaining that he never wrote any good parts for me.

yeah none of our basses are any harder than the others... 6 and 5 may be a little easier than the others...but not much.

bass one is the hardest bass to play. it has all the really hard rolls and rudiments that the snares have and so your hands always have to be in top condition.

that being said, bass two is the hardest bass to play. it has some rolls and chop stuff and has to be able to split snugglebunny of upbeat singles.

that being said, bass three is the hardest bass to play. it is the bass that keeps the entire bass line togehter, connecting the top and bottom sounds of the bass line, while still required to have some difficult parts.

that being said, bass four is the hardest bass to play because it is the second heaviest on the field, and a lot of the sound of the ensamble. it also has many up beats and turn arounds from bass 5.

that being said, bass five is the hardest bass to play. it is the hardest physically to hold, and it is the majority of the sound of the ensemble. without a bottom bass, the girth and oomph of a line or corps or band is completely gone.

dont discriminate. all basses were created equal. straight up.

speak it sorayah!! btw...text me and tell me where you're marching this summer...

I joined a small high school marching band this year as a Sophomore and got put on 1st bass out of 3.
In our school 1 is considered the hardest and to be played by the best player and so on down the line. I'm not sure if this is true or not though because I thought it was pretty easy after I got over the weight. (Our 1st bass is actually kinda big because we don't have a lot of them...And I'm a girl)

So, we didn't do anything harder than eighth note runs which was fabulous because the second bass player sucked so much and was always out of time.
He's kind of a bad player in general but could it be that second bass is so much harder than first or third?

I think bass 2, lots of splits with bass one and weird beats but mostly splitting single 32nds.