tegs07

Town called malice / The Jam

It’s not really Fender the multi-National money machine that I am referring to but Leo Fender the somewhat useless businessman but engineering genius. The shapes of the instruments can be seen as “bland” or iconic. The designs were certainly eye catching and futuristic at the time. Whether they are now is open to debate. What they were though was easy to mass produce and affordable. What is more remarkable is the development of pickup technology and positioning. Then there are all the innovations in bridge design. So yep alongside Les Paul and Mr Marshal Leo Fender is right up there for me in the legends of music history. Edit: Ugly bass added for your viewing pleasure: Edit 2: Personally I think with the innovations in technology it’s almost impossible to make a bad guitar these days. You could take pretty much any £500 instrument being produced in Indonesia and stick Fender/Lakland/G&L/Sterling or Yahamaha or whatever on the headstock, set it up nicely and people would say it’s great or average based on their personal predisposition and prejudices.

The “ugly” bases are pretty tricky to route and would not have been easy to mass produce in the 1950’s and 60’s. Those basic early shapes and pickups gave birth to rock and roll which is where music got really interesting for me.

I was simply responding to a post saying all Fenders were ugly. The aesthetics are definitely personal but kind of irrelevant to me. I mentioned Henry Ford as he took something complex and unaffordable and made it simple to mass produce and allowed mass ownership which is what Leo Fender did for guitars and basses.

It’s like saying if Henry Ford hadn’t been around there would be no impact on the history of automotive engineering. Like or loathe them there is no denying that the sound of the P, J, Ray etc are almost ubiquitous.

Yet remove them from the history of recorded music and there is a very, very big void.

Atomic - Blondie

I think I am rapidly becoming a short scale devotee. My son has started to learn bass and was given an old Futurama/Hagstom short scale. I find that I am constantly borrowing his bass as it’s so much fun to play. I struggle to play P bass due to the neck width and my initial plan was to go the J bass route but am starting to get GAS for a Fender JMJ which is just odd after decades of hating Mustangs!

Transmission - Joy Division

Guns of Brixton - jimmy cliff

Mmm typo but yes the combination is shocking. Youth of today have no idea of the horror. My house is not entirely lacking in sunburst though: Bitsa on right still a work in progress.

If it’s a 70’s bass, roadworn and preferably with cigarette burns on the headstock keep the sunburst. If not like swirly brown carpets, valour and wood chip probably best avoided. Edit: Never realised sunburst finish dates so far back. I have always associated them with 1970’s probably because so many copies then were sunburst..

Brother wolf sister moon - the cult

Brassneck - Wedding Present

More of an Oasis man then 🤮 Bummer in the Summer - Love

Nowhere man - yep those 4 Liverpudlians again

All day and all of the night - The Kinks

Really saying something - Bananarama & Fun Boy Three

Panic - The Smiths

Doin the cockroaches - Modest Mouse

Blood Sugar Sex Magik - RHCP

Stoned immaculate - Dub Syndicate

Who’s been talkin - Howling wolf