Misdee

The phrase " If we're paying teachers that kind of money how come they are always complaining about everything?" comes to my mind, to be honest with you.🙂

The thing about Fodera basses is they are meticulously crafted to the highest possible standard. From that perspective, in my opinion they are worth the asking price. In terms of craftsmanship and quality they are up there with the best that money can buy. If they are your cup of tea then whatever level your playing is at, buying one could be a very canny lifetime investment. But in other ways they don't seem that special to me. My own personal reservation about them is that most (not all,I hasten to add) of them that I have played or heard others play have a fairly generic exotic wood boutique bass sound. There is.nothing really unique about the tone . The only bass players I have heard get a good tone out of a Fodera are Anthony Jackson and Lincoln Goines. And maybe Richard Bona. But they all got a great tone out of a Fender. Alembic basses have a distinct signature sound, as do Wal basses. It's no coincidence that both those brands rely on their own proprietary pickups and electronics. Fodera by comparison lack a distinct sonic identity, for my taste anyway. To me, lots of basses sound like a Fodera. I much prefer the sound of many far less expensive basses.

I have owned a bass for the last ten years that has got vintage frets on and I haven't noticed any appreciable difference in fret wear, and it has always had roundwounds on it, albeit nickel rounds. I think the issue is that the smaller vintage frets with enable fewer fret dressings when they eventually do start to become worn.

Am I a good enough player to justify owning a Fodera? Well firstly, who am I supposed to be justifying myself to? Certainly not to Fodera, that's for sure. If I were to walk into their HQ with dollars in my hand I'm sure they would be prepared to sell to me. As for other bass players, they can kiss my derrière. If I want to buy an expensive bass I will do so and other folks can say what they want about it. It won't bother me. For what it's worth, by now I have spent most of my life fascinated by expensive musical instruments and equipment. As I have gained more wisdom and experience I have come to the conclusion that very few expensive instruments are worth the asking price. By the same token, very few inexpensive instruments are worth the asking price either. It's just a process of finding a level of dissatisfaction you can live with and enjoy in whichever price range. All this is underpinned by the fact that the musical equipment industry, like most consumer goods industries, relies upon convincing people that they have a problem, whether they realised it or not, and then offering those people an opportunity to buy something which will solve that problem and make them feel better. And don't lose sight of the fact that buying and selling basses and learning to play the bass are two completely different activities. For most people, the more time you are obsessing about equipment the less time you are stressing about learning to play better, and I very much include myself in that observation. Back when I first started playing I asked a big name bass player who I met backstage after a gig for some advice and he said to me "Just get a Fender and work on your playing." Sage advice indeed. If only it hadn't taken me so long to realise that.😐

Maybe I was wiser than I thought in my assumption that if they weren't good enough for John, they weren't good enough for me.😄

Indeed they were, along with a Gibson Thunderbird and an Alembic, from what I remember.

I remember that sunburst 61!

Let me put it this way. If this bass was a guest on the Jeremy Kyle Show, it would be a suitable candidate for a DNA test.

So the provenance is that in 1968 someone in a shop told the current owner that John Entwistle pxd this bass. And the bass itself has been refinished, repaired and modified, so it's compromised as a vintage instrument in its own right. 1968 is a long time ago and people's recollections can be unreliable, as can the information they were given at that time. I am sure that the seller is sincere in his belief that this instrument is as described, but for ten grand you need to be able to prove what you say, or else find a very trusting buyer. If I were in the market for a vintage Precision Bass I would pass on this one for all the obvious reasons, especially if I was after a celebrity-owned example. I remember going to the Bass Center back in the 1980s and they had several of John Entwistle's basses for sale, complete with signed certificates of authenticity. And they were reasonably priced from what I remember. Back in those days I wanted a shiny brand new bass with active electronics, and I thought to myself that if John Entwistle didn't want these basses why would I have them palmed off on me? In retrospect, that might not have been my best ever decision.

You are very right on that Kev! I had forgotten what an elegant and classy design it was. If Fender were to put a proprietary supercharged passive pickup on that chassis,so to speak, something like a Dark Star/ Bisonic kind of thing they would have a bass that could play great, feel great and sound great, and be right in the zeitgeist of what a lot of bass players are looking for nowadays. I'd buy one!

On a Jazz Bass I like to set my tone on full, neck pickup on full and bridge pickup on about 80 percent. Like a P Bass but not really, if you see what I mean. Generally speaking, I think Jazz Basses have plenty of low end. However, to my ears it's the complex upper-mid frequencies that really give that bass it's characteristic sound. It's quite easy for your ears to focus on the prominence of those mids at the detriment of the lower frequencies that may well be present at the same time. When it comes to basses, I have learnt over the years that it's best to let them be themselves, if you see what I mean ie let a Jazz Bass be a bit toppy, let a P Bass sound hollow with chunky mids, let a Stingray sound zingy and scooped. That Am St Jazz was/is a very good example of the classic Fender Jazz so I really don't think you have any worries regarding the bass itself. Your amp/ cab setup looks like it is pretty tasty, and as you say, it sounds fine with other models of bass. Maybe you just don't like the sound of a Jazz Bass in an ensemble setting?

It's nice to see Donny Hathaway getting some recognition in recent years for his extraordinary talents. For so many years after his death he was to some extent overlooked amongst the pantheon of great soul singers from the 1970s. The live album is just superb. Willie Weeks is on fire and the whole band are as tight as tight can be.

My first thought upon seeing this new design, too. The top horn needs to extend towards the twelfth fret, otherwise with a traditional Fender-style headstock it will neck dive in a very annoying manner. This new shape will also mean that the neck will feel further away than on a traditional Fender bass when the bass is on a strap. Those things,(along with a so-so Fender preamp) were what undermined the Dimension Bass, in my opinion. It's a shame, because I think bass players would be very receptive to new designs from Fender, if only they were the right designs. If they could make it feel like a Fender there is plenty of scope for new sounds. Get it right and they would sell plenty. So many times Fender try to recycle old parts from previous experiments into so-called new models only to fail yet again.😟

Are they anywhere near West Yorkshire and do you think they might be interested in quoting me for a bit of repointing and replastering I need doing?

I have learnt to do my own setups through trial and error over the last 40+ years out of necessity. I am so exacting about how I want a bass to play that I doubt anyone else could anticipate what I want on my behalf. I would have to keep going back to the workshop over and over again. I'm talking about basic stuff, not fretwork ect. I leave that to the professionals. However long I have played the bass, probably a third of that time I have spent adjusting the bass. If, in some parrallel universe, people bought tickets to watch some poor neurotic making minute adjustments to expensive bass guitars as a sadistic form of entertainment then I would be doing international tours and appearing on daytime television.

If I remember correctly, the Stingray with a graphite neck was loaned to Pino while his number one Stingray ( 1979 factory fretless purchased in NYC) was being repaired/serviced. (Probably having some attention to the fingerboard- Rotosound Swing Bass+ untreated fretless board = , knackered). Pino has sold loads of basses in The Gallery over the years. I think he has got a house in the area. I know he is a regular in the shop.

You are quite right. I suppose it's right up there with 'growl" and "punch" in that respect.

I love a bit of nasal, but I might be alone in that. Providing it's not thin and nasal. One of the things I love about Wal basses is the way you can set the filters to sound distinctly nasal. Bruce Thomas' tone on Every Day I Write The Book by Elvis Costello springs to mind as a fine example. Or the way you can make a Wal sound like an old Gibson bass ( but better) by setting the neck pickup filter to 7 and the bridge pickup to 3. To my ears that nasty edge to the tone is what gets you heard when other instruments are playing over you. It gives some personality, for want of a better term, to the sound.

Regarding the weight of Wal basses, I remember reading that Pete Stevens had a stock of particularly dense mahogany that he kept for the body core of fretless basses because he thought it improved the tone. This made them a bit heavier. For my taste a fretless needs a bit of an edge to the tone to make itself heard , probably because you lose the top end you take for granted from a steel string on metal frets.

Yamaha BB 2024 is a great call! That bass is a beast. Seems like it was designed to rock, but still has great subtleties to the tone. A unique sounding bass, for sure.I don't play mine very often, but I would never part with it. It has a something in common with a Wal in so much as it has its own unique tone with a very consistent midrange that makes it present in the mix.

I think the wood combination in Warwick basses really does emphasize an aggressive, up-front sound. Wenge is so dense that it gives crystalline high end as well as midrange punch.The bubinga body on a Thumb accentuates that even more. Even the Streamers with a maple body and wenge fretboards can sound pretty nasty in the right hands. I loved Stuart Zender's tone on the first Jamiroquoi album, for example. Low action and light gauge strings for plenty of grit and grind.

I remember half- fretless basses from around the time I started playing in the late 70s/very early 80. Probably saw them in the Ibanez catalogue and the Kramer catalogue too( for those too young to remember,back in those days before the internet, we had catalogues.) Come to think of it, I also remember an Ibanez poster in a local guitar shop featuring Alphonso Johnson. Who no one round our way had ever heard of. Still never seen a half fretless bass in the flesh. Probably a good thing these basses never caught on, not least of all because if you were selling one on Basschat you would invariably get comments saying " if only the top half/ bottom half was fretless I would snap this up."

Well, from a collectobilty point of view, in the fullness of time the Fender VB will have a greater rarity value and therefore potentially a better resale value than the Sadowsky. There will always be a demand for Fender basses, especially relatively esoteric ones. If you have to sell the VB and put a substantial amount of money to what you can currently get for it to buy the Sadowsky, that is one consideration. The Sadowsky may well be a fine bass but ultimately it will always be a Japanese copy of the NYC version. In contrast, an American-made VB is the ultimate version of itself, if you see what I mean. The Sadowsky and Fender VB are in essence different versions of the same thing ie an active Jazz Bass. That is another thing to consider. Some would see swapping one for another as a sideways move. The Sadowsky might (or might not) play a bit better than a Fender bass straight from the factory, but bear in mind a decent luthier could easily make the Fender VB play just as well as the Sadowsky. Which bass sounds better /best is a highly subjective opinion. The Sadowsky preamp is a very good one, for sure. It plays a big part in giving those basses their own signature sound. On the other hand,the VB preamp and wood combination were tweaked by Victor to cater to his needs and taste. You don't find many koa/rosewood/mahogany bodied Jazz Basses, that's for sure. That bass was something a bit special for Fender, from what I remember.