Just how good are our own Customs??

[TheGreek]

Just browsing through the "Basses For Sale" thread - again many "custom" basses for sale with upgraded pick ups, necks, etc - many advertised for stupidly low prices - certainly nowhere near what you'd expect to pay for a bass with the "F word" on the headstock..

As somebody who isn't a great lover of that brand - I've never been overwhelmed by any Fender I've ever played - Got me thinking - many of the basses for sale here have far superior parts, have been put together carefully, with attention to detail, been set up properly...in fact have many of the attributes we expect from top manufacturers but don't always get..

So why do our own "customs" sell for so little? After all the people who put together more well known brands probably don't give a crap about Quality control...as long as they're paid at the end of the week/month that's all they care about - where as I would expect that we do the best job we can with somewhat less experience.

How does your "custom" compare to "the real thing"??..and if we are building better basses why do people still pay stupid money for the name on the label??

[Big_Stu]

Might be me being a pedantic git (no change there then) but to me when you get a Fender-esque bitsa made of chosen parts it's more of a "bespoke" rather than a "custom".
To me a custom is something like a JayDee, or my beloved John Birch, where even the pickups and bridge is made by the luthier involved. Though the machines and strap studs aren't so it's a case of how far does that need to go?

Mine is based on an EB3, more specifically it was based on Jimmy Lea's custom EB3, but that idea didn't exactly work out, but it is what it is.

[neepheid]

When I saw the thread title, I thought it was about the agents of the taxman

[Jack]

Because normally you build a bitsa for you and not for somebody else so it's not their idea of the ideal bass. And also if someone's a professional luthier there's usually some guarantee of quality, with a hobbyist not so much.

I remember a top gear segment on kit cars once and Clarkson made some point about how nobody would want a car he built, but they'd happily pay for one made by someone as anal as James May. The point is you just dont know.

[Blademan_98]

As soon as you modify anything, it generally loses value.

I tend to keep the standard parts and sell the custom stuff separately after putting it back to standard.

(I do this with motorcycles too as the same thing applies).

[ThomBassmonkey]

If you were to buy a Fender, you know what you'd be getting (give or take the odd QC mishap). Same goes for any mass produced bass.

If you were to buy a custom, the chances are that a) it's a collection of parts that you've never heard together and it's built to someone else's specs, not yours.

That's before you even think about handbuilt basses (as most customs are) varying hugely in quality.