I'm with Dave - I find that the Stones' rhythm section has become more stadium rock conventional since the advent of Jones. I've said it before: If he played with Journey, his bass playing wouldn't be much different. He would "cook" in just the same way. That is not knocking Jones, Journey or the Stones, but Bill Wyman had a weird (or let's say: uncommon) approach to bass playing and that made the Stones sometimes sound empty or hollow which was part of their charm. The Stones were never a tight band in the conventional sense, there is something disparate and even wanton, yet magic in how lead guitar, rhythm guitar, bass and drums interact with them. It's the beauty of being apparently a little messy. Jones doesn't have the word "messy" in his musical vocabulary. With him, their bass fundament now throbs and grooves continuously in perfect timing - he even drives the band, something Wyman never did, wanted or could -, whereas Wyman's bass playing was more rudimentary, for lack of a better word: derelict, and sometimes also more poetic. Wyman didn't have so much a continuous driving groove, but either played the most basic fundamentals or unexpected ornaments, yet very little in between. He played bass like a partially unhinged door in a ghost town creaks in the wind.
Chops-wise, Jones can of course play circles around old Bill, but that is not the point. And 95% of the Stones audience don't give a damn who plays bass how or would probably even prefer the newish "more powerful" Stones sound could they hear the old and new Stones side by side.
But putting Jones above Wyman is a bit like saying the Stones would also sound tighter and better if Joe Satriani or Steve Morse took the place of Keith Richards and Dennis Chambers the role of Charlie Watts.
