Misdee

One of many bass gear regrets is that I sold my '73 Precision ( Olympic white , maple board, A-width nut) for £200 in 1989. That was the going rate at the time, but still...😟 I remember going to America in the mid-1980s and the guitar shops were full of 70s Fenders at very reasonable prices( except in NYC where everything was overpriced) because there wasn't a huge demand for them. Nowadays they are just as sought after everywhere in the world.

Both sound great, but in a sense their is no comparison because they are so radically different sonically. Some very tasty and tidy playing there too, if I might say.

Steely Dan- their outtakes and demos are better than most other bands albums.

I'm really looking forward to watching this series! We live in a society that has a built-in prejudice that encourages us to think of older people as increasingly useless and problematic. This program seeks to challenge those assumptions through the prism of rock music. It has all the right ingredients to be compelling car crash television.

A sad day for sure. I remember when Vigier basses first arrived on these shores via the Bass Center in Wapping. They were stunningly beautiful basses in those days. Nick Beggs had a white fretless one he played on TOTP with Kajagoogoo. It looked amazing, the zenith of bass exotica at that time ( about 1984). Vigier retiring another indication of how that era is getting to be rather a long time ago. Every day I am confronted with reminders of that fact closer to home ie my knackered prostate, grey hair, creaky knees ect, but the realisation that I will now never be able to buy a new Vigier or Pedulla is what really brings it home to me that I am getting old.

I've only ever had a very quick dabble on a very old Hofner, but the action was so high it was just about unplayable for me unfortunately. I have seen some old pictures of Robbie Shakespeare playing a Hofner, probably back in the early to mid 1970s. I can see how these basses would be great for reggae. I'd love to have a proper go on a decent example of a violin bass and channel my latent dub tendancies via a nice rubbery set of flatwounds.

I must confess, nowadays I think that a straight P Bass looks more elegant in its simplicity than a PJ. And I do use the P pickup far more than the J. Thirty( and indeed fourty) years ago, who could have predicted the seemingly unassailable revival of the P Bass? Nowadays it's P Bass Uber Alles or risk being denounced as a heretic. But I remember when adding a J pickup to any P Bass was considered an act of kindness, enabling it to sound more articulate and making it more suitable for contemporary styles of music. I know younger bass players might not believe me but it's true! And as for flatwound strings....

Tom bought some GHS strings from me. Perfect transaction, prompt payment, an absolute pleasure to deal with.👍

That is very true, but their are also other reasons why traditional Fender pickups are imbalanced between the P and J, most notably string excursion. The closer to the bridge the pickup is the quieter it will be.

Well, there's PJs and PJs. My most favoured bass is a conventional Fender- style PJ (USA Lakland 44-64 with a Jazz neck), albeit with some pretty hot pickups that seem a bit better balanced in terms of output than a typical Fender PJ setup. By comparison, my Yamaha BB2024x PJ sounds radically different, despite being a bolt-on neck PJ, same alder body and rosewood fingerboard construction as the Lakland. It's a completely different animal.They are both great, just very different to each other. Yamaha have somehow nailed all the problems of imbalance between the P and J pickups. A traditional Fender-style PJ is idiosyncratic in so much as you have to allow for the P pickup sounding a bit more dominant than the J to some extent or another, depending on the pickups and how they are adjusted. It's not necessarily a big deal, just something you have to be aware of and work around. I think a J pickup can make a P Bass much more versatile and ( to me) more useful. Obviously, if you don't use a bridge pickup anyway then it won't be useful to you at all. Some folks think that they can hear a difference in the P pickup just because a J is wired into the circuit, even when it's not on use. This is very much what I would call a theoretical problem rather than one that you would actually be troubled by in real life. Part of the reason I love my Lakland PJ is the Lakland PJ pickups on it sound so raunchy and are much better balanced in terms of output between the P and J than most other PJ sets I have tried. Fender-style PJs always take me back to my youth and the basses I learnt to play on. I know where I am with a decent PJ and I know how to make it work for me.

What sets bass players like Jeff Andrews and Marcus Miller (and Jaco, for that matter) apart is that they have a deep knowledge of jazz theory. And they also have the chops put that knowledge into practice. That Yamaha BB 1500a looks and sounds a good fit for Jeff considering his mainstay was a P Bass with Jazz pickups.

+1. Jeff Andrews was surely one of the most accomplished bass players on planet earth. I think he never became as acclaimed as he should have because he stuck to fairly purist contemporary jazz fusion and the NYC scene. He could very easily have done sessions, played more mainstream music and made a big name for himself like Marcus Miller has done. Maybe Mike Stern hooked Jeff up with Yamaha. I wouldn't be surprised.

I suppose you have to look at the new prices in context. If a MusicMan Stingray is now retailing for over three grand then what is a fair market price for a handmade British bass like Status? Everything is going up for everybody, it seems like. Ultimately, any business has two options; cut profit margins or pass the extra costs on to the consumer. I would much rather Status Graphite stayed in business albeit with higher prices than be forced to pack it in. I have always found Status to be a first-rate company run by very decent people. I would still consider buying another bass from them at these prices.

43,mm must be what it was then. 20 years ago is a long time! Whatever it was, it was noticeably wider at the nut than a traditional Jazz Bass (38mm) and that's what threw me a bit at the time.

I had that catalogue! Chris Minh Doky used to play one, as did the late great Jeff Andrews.

Smashing basses, I remember them well. I would have bought one but the only thing that put me off was I couldn't get used to Jazz Bass with a 40mm nut, silly as that may be. Cracking basses nevertheless. I remember it getting a rave review in Bass Player magazine back in the day.

I had one for a while. They are very well made with a fairly slender neck but mine was a bit too heavy for my taste. The sound is inherently bright and snappy with a noticeably lean bottom end, but it sounds like it was designed to be that way on purpose, if you see what I mean. I found the sound very different to my 2024x, which has a much more low end.

Basses can very easily be heavy and still neck dive. It has passed into received wisdom on Basschat that basses need to have a certain amount of weight to the body to prevent neck dive. (Probably because it suits people with heavy basses to promote that idea when they are trying to sell them.)The reality is that it's more complicated than that. A bass with a very light body body may neck dive when in the playing position sitting down without a strap, but depending on the positioning of the strap pins in relation to the overall design, can still balance perfectly on a strap. If a light bodied bass neck dives on a strap it is not necessarily just because it has light body. More likely it's due to the shape of the body in relation to the neck and the weight of the neck and tuners. If that is the case, heavier body won't help much. Conversely, some bass designs will neck dive regardless of how heavy the body is. Body weight is only one factor, not the decisive one. If the shape of the bass and where it places the strap pins is is wrong, it will never balance properly on a strap.

Very well said. I too could ( and do) play any bass of my choosing. However, I recently bought a Harley Benton Shorty just out of curiosity and to see if I wanted to get a better short scale bass in future, just so I can stay trendy. Guess what? I get just as much enjoyment out of playing it as any bass I own or have owned. Maybe more, in fact, because I can forgive it's inconsistencies because it was so inexpensive. It sounds fine, too, especially with a bit of help from a decent preamp. I've played a few Foderas. They were all beautifully made, played great and all sounded lush. If you are looking to solve a specific problem with your instrument then they are a company who will work with you to try and solve it using their expertise and craftsmanship. Make no mistake, when it comes to boutique basses Fodera are the real deal. But what they make is not unique in terms of tone. And in many ways it's the opposite of what I want personally. I want a bass to sound quite gritty and aggressive. Kind of like a Rickenbacker or Fender ect. Fodera basses sound way too refined and polite for my tastes. That is true of most exotic wood basses. And regarding being"good enough" to play a Fodera, bear in mind that a much of what you are paying for in a boutique bass is largely irrelevant. Ornate inlays, laminated decorative woods and other adornments are mostly cosmetic. High price doesn't exclude intermediate players, only intermediate wallets. If the only people who bought professional quality musical equipment were professionals, the whole industry would collapse.

Yes, you are quite right. Teachers almost never complain about anything. I should have known better.🙂

I should have known better than to make a light-hearted and humorous remark about teachers. I only did so in the hope that my levity would offer a moment of light relief to anyone engaged in that most noble of pursuits. That was an error of judgement on my part. I can only offer my sincere apologies and hope you will be able to forgive me. It must be very difficult to be engaged in a line of work that has been in a perpetual state of crisis and " at breaking point" for at least the last 40-odd years, if you believe what teachers say anyway. I don't have any children, by the way, so your home schooling threat is wasted on me, I'm afraid. If you can think of another form of punishment for me just let me know.🙂

I had the Complete Guide book, although to be honest with you I could never get to grips with learning how to read music, so I had limited access to the information contained within it. That is my fault though, not your dad's. I can still remember my 14 year old self sitting in my bedroom trying to glean what I could from the pages. I remember buying a metronome and an A440 tuning fork like the book told me I needed to, now I think about it. I often wonder what kids learning the bass nowadays would do if they had to go back to live in the world before You Tube. Maybe they would be less scathing of old men like me still trying to properly understand the cycle of fifths. I am truly sorry to hear that your dad is unwell. Sending my very best wishes to you both. Have a smashing day with your dad.

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.