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1976 Precision: £700 and 0 bids with 30 seconds left...


Weird War
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[quote name='Musky' post='353640' date='Dec 13 2008, 03:19 PM']Jumped over £400 in the last 30 seconds. Maybe not such a bargain after all...[/quote]

Went for £1,133. Not bad for an instrument built in a decade when Fender became a byword for cost-cutting and awful build quality. Has everyone forgotten about that, or what?

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[quote name='Weird War' post='353646' date='Dec 13 2008, 03:35 PM']Aye, that's what I was getting at.[/quote]

Ah see what you mean. I managed to ignore the 'and then a flurry' bit.

[quote]Have you had bad experiences with 70's Fenders? If so what bass was it and what were the problens.[/quote]

There's a sticky in the bass guitars forum about this, which if I remember correctly got slightly heated.

As a slight aside, someone posted in the the introductions forum looking for a black/maple 70's precision and he noted that they seemed to fetch silly money (which over £1100 is for a late 70's model IMHO). Maybe there's not so many floating about at the moment, or someone trendy is currently using one and pushing up demand...

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Two points:

Last-minute bidding frenzy, that's how eBay works. For a standard 7 day listing assume that 6 days 23 hours 59 minutes and 45 seconds are viewing time and the actual auction takes place in the final 15 seconds.

Late 70s Fender quality. I helped out in my local musical instrument store in from 78 to 79 and the standard of the Fenders coming in was appallingly low with every single one requiring far more attention than just a simple set up before we hung them on the wall. One or two required completely stripping down and rebuilding the fix things like necks with strings hanging off them at top end of the neck. Add to this all the rather dodgy design decisions such as the enlarged head on the Strats, pickup placement on the Jazz basses, and the questionable finishes like the sh!t brown and the see-thru white that looked like the sprayers couldn't be bothered to do the final coats - this one always seemed to reveal a particularly nasty wood grain too! Compare and contrast with the instruments we were getting from Aria and Ibanez which were brilliant straight out of the box, and that's exactly why late 70s Fenders have such a bad reputation.

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[quote name='gareth' post='353666' date='Dec 13 2008, 03:53 PM']Have you had bad experiences with 70's Fenders? If so what bass was it and what were the problens.

I'd appreciate your views.[/quote]

I've never had a 1970s Fender, good or bad. I'm sure some good products were made during that time, but it is well documented that CBS made a lot of money out of Fender during that decade by cutting quality and neglecting investment. The situation wasn't turned around until the early 1980s.

That's why it surprises me that these guitars/basses are fetching a premium.

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My '81 Precision (S8.. serial) that I bought new for £260 in 1982 is monstrously heavy due to cheaper Northern Ash being used instread of Leo's preferred Swamp Ash, the pick up sounded weedy compared to my other Ps (Is this due to cheaper wire of the wrong gauge being used?) and had dodgy frets that buzzed & rattled from new. I swapped out the Pickup for an EMG (not very good until I ran it at 18v) and Martin at the Gallery sorted out the frets. Its great now, but for the first 20+ years of its life it was a bit of a dog (but a very nice looking cherry sunburst dog).

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