Perception of quality

[Supernaut]

I don't know about higher price indicating higher quality but I do know that a good set-up on any bass can make it feel like a million bucks. 

[Machines]

I see basses like cars. 

A Dacia is likely to be perfectly serviceable to get you from A to B and not break down, but a BMW will be more comfortable and make you feel more 'special' doing so. As someone else posted, it's all about your means. Can afford a BMW but drive the Dacia ? If you can be happy with it and just see it as a tool and not bring psychology into it, you'll save a fortune.

My bass journey so far has landed me at mid range stuff, my main bass is a Yamaha RBXJM2, followed by a Sire M5 and MIM P. Nothing there worth more than £400, but i've had Musicman(s), Overwater, Warwick, Dingwall etc. All of them were far superior to what I have now in craftsmanship, but if I just get on with playing music rather than twiddling knobs there's not enough 'extra value' to justify the money.

[tegs07]

3 minutes ago, Machines said:

I see basses like cars. 

A Dacia is likely to be perfectly serviceable to get you from A to B and not break down, but a BMW will be more comfortable and make you feel more 'special' doing so. As someone else posted, it's all about your means. Can afford a BMW but drive the Dacia ? If you can be happy with it and just see it as a tool and not bring psychology into it, you'll save a fortune.

You could buy a low mileage used BMW rather than a new Dacia...

[DiMarco]

I seem to not be able to look at cheaper basses. I have tried to make it make sense but my heart is just not into it.
Picked up this yesterday as living proof I have most probably outgrown 'cheap'.

Guess I should stop thinking about it too much and just use the means I now have to enjoy making music as much as I can.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the subject guys.

Edited April 26, 2021 by DiMarco
3 edits because typos lots of typos

[Barking Spiders]

I live not far from a well known specialist bass store and have tried out a Ken Smith, vintage Fender Jazz, Fodera, Sadowsky and others over £1k. They're all great and if I made a living as a musician or was stinking rich I'd get a few. But I'm not and for my needs sub £500 models are totally fine.I

[NancyJohnson]

55 minutes ago, MacDaddy said:

Hi Ed. I know people who work in Disability Awareness, can you let me know which bars are using the disabled toilets like this?

ta.

You remember when I played at that place in Putney?  There wasn't even a door on the utilities, just a curtain.

[Al Krow]

10 minutes ago, DiMarco said:

I seem to not be able to look at cheaper basses. I have tried to make it make sense but my heart is just not into it.
Picked up this yesterday as living proof I have most probably outgrown 'cheap'.

 

Congrats on the new bass and welcome to the Yamaha club!

11 minutes ago, DiMarco said:

Guess I should stop thinking about it too much and just use the means I now have to enjoy making music as much as I can.

A great deal of truth and wisdom in that statement for us all 😊

[BigRedX]

22 hours ago, Woodinblack said:

There is a man that didn't observe their local high street on opening day a few weeks back, and the massive queues outside primark.

There are some people who appreciate good clothes and how they look in them, and others who have them simply to keep themselves warm in winter and stop them from being arrested for indecent exposure in the summer.

Musical instruments are the same. Some people like to obsess over their choice of musical gear and others simply want to make a noise in a band. Neither are right or wrong.

For full disclosure: I do own one item of Primark clothing; I needed a pair of conventionally smart dark coloured trousers that I will probably wear on a handful of occasions at the most. I could have bought something from one of my favourite designers or had a pair tailor-made, but on this occasion Primark at £10 fitted the bill perfectly.

Edited April 26, 2021 by BigRedX

[Dad3353]

5 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

... Some people like to obsess over their choice of musical gear and others simply want to make a noise in a band. Neither are right or wrong...

Just a tad reductionist here, methinks. There is much skill in getting 'budget' gear to sound as one wishes, and hunting down extravagant stuff is not, in itself, a guarantee of musicality. Your remark is basically the extreme ends of a bell curve; most is in the middle.
(... and yes, my rugby shirts are inexpensive, but Dior didn't have any in the range, so ...)

[Supernaut]

19 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

There are some people who appreciate good clothes and how they look in them, and others who have them simply to keep themselves warm in winter and stop them from being arrested for indecent exposure in the summer.

Musical instruments are the same. Some people like to obsess over their choice of musical gear and others simply want to make a noise in a band. Neither are right or wrong.

For full disclosure: I do own one item of Primark clothing; I needed a pair of conventionally smart dark coloured trousers that I will probably wear on a handful of occasions at the most. I could have bought something from one of my favourite designers or had a pair tailor-made, but on this occasion Primark at £10 fitted the bill perfectly.

Interesting point about clothing. 

I believe some people do not understand that just because you can afford 'luxury' fashion, doesn't mean you should or will even look good in it.

Someone's clothes that fit them well will always look better than someone's clothes that do not - whatever the price tag is. 

[Woodinblack]

23 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

There are some people who appreciate good clothes and how they look in them, and others who have them simply to keep themselves warm in winter and stop them from being arrested for indecent exposure in the summer.

...

For full disclosure: I do own one item of Primark clothing;

Don't get me wrong, this isn't me knocking Primark, if you want something cheap and functional, it is a place to get something. What I am surprised at is the queue - in both Yeovil (where I live) and Bath (where i went last weekend) it was THE ONLY shop with a massive queue, all the others either had none or a very little one.

This is nothing about keeping warm or stopping being arrested, you can get budget clothes of a decent quality in many places, this is a specific desire to get things from Primark.

[Al Krow]

2 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

Don't get me wrong, this isn't me knocking Primark, if you want something cheap and functional, it is a place to get something. What I am surprised at is the queue - in both Yeovil (where I live) and Bath (where i went last weekend) it was THE ONLY shop with a massive queue, all the others either had none or a very little one.

This is nothing about keeping warm or stopping being arrested, you can get budget clothes of a decent quality in many places, this is a specific desire to get things from Primark.

Bear in mind that Primark are not online, so the stores reopening was the first chance for fans of their clothing ranges to get their product in months. Combine that with the need for social distancing and that probably explains the queues.

Fast fashion, waste, consumer culture, exploitation of workers here and abroad and damage to the environment. Now that's a whole 'nother can of worms...

[Lozz196]

Chairman Mao said “Never underestimate the need for cheap socks”

[ped]

I suppose the best comparison I can make is with P basses, having played and owned several at different price points, from £70 to £2000. The cheaper basses always sounded fine, or near enough fine with some basic tone shaping. The difference to me is mostly in two areas:

- The feel. Somehow the better instruments felt like they were more complete, as a single item as opposed to some hardware screwed down. Mostly apparent in the neck, where the cheaper instruments often had sharper edges, frets and generally rougher/drier feel. This however doesn't mean the instruments weren't fun in a different way - playing a cheap bass can be a thrill of it's own.

- The setup. A cheap bass that allows a super low/flat setup is possible, but luck of the draw - and it may shift and need constant adjustment. The better basses I tried (not necessarily the most expensive) were able to support a wider range of setup because of better fretwork and hardware. This is obviously personal taste because some people like a super high action and to be honest there' something quite rewarding and fun about spanking a plant with strings miles off the fretboard.

So with regards to @DiMarco's point about switching to a super cheap bass and noticing the difference, my experience was that I didn't notice the incremental changes going UP in quality over a long period, but busting down to a £70 bass was definitely an eye opener, in that I was amazed the bass was even playable at that price and that I could probably make it more playable myself, but going back to my normal bass felt such a step up.

In some ways it's amazing how much variation is possible with a relatively few components screwed together, but I think a vast amount of the money in expensive instruments does (or should) go into the final setup and being built in a way that means the instrument works as a whole. As a result you get less variation from one copy to the next and a better reputation for cranking out winners. If you don't, it can be the death knell of your brand. That's not to say that some companies use a higher price point to alter the perception of quality, as discussed here - but in such a specialised niche as this, mud sticks. 

[Dazm66]

The lockdown era has introduced me to the wonders of home recording. As part of my learning I thought it would be interesting to record all four of my basses as 'dry' as possible, playing the same baseline,  to see what they sound like recorded for future reference. If I'm honest, although there are clear tonal differences, they mostly just sound like me!

[BigRedX]

My choice of bass is decided by the following criteria:

1. In the studio: whichever bass I own is the easiest to play in order to get the part recorded with the minimum of fuss and smallest number of retakes

2. Live: whichever bass I own best fits the image of the band while still allowing me to play the bass lines.

[Al Krow]

3 hours ago, tegs07 said:

You could buy a low mileage used BMW rather than a new Dacia...

Or equally buy a low mileage used Dacia... 

[tegs07]

Just now, Al Krow said:

Or equally buy a low mileage used Dacia... 

Then I would have to drive it ..

[Dood]

True Story Number One:

Many years ago, with not a sign of a single grey hair,  I was allowed free reign in the UK's premier bass emporium to choose a new bass. I had interest free credit, disposable income (whatever that is lol) and a hunger for something that I would play for many years.

On offer, the very finest bass retail had to offer, including vintage and classic. £3000 for example would buy a whole lot of bass back then. 

The bass that I bought that day and played solidly for the next, I don't know, 15 years? Sells for max £450 secondhand here. It was my very first six string too.

 

True Story Number Two:

Not sure how many years ago, I went to a local music store to pick a new acoustic guitar. Like bass, I've been playing guitars (and as equally obsessional about them) since the age of 8(-ish).

I know the staff in the store and, well, they hatched a plan of "blind testing" for me to find out what it was I was looking for. In the blind test, on sound and playability I kept coming back to the same guitar, which, is still in my possession today, it's so good.

When I finally lifted the blindfold, as it were, I'd been playing Martins, Taylors, Ovation,  and other high end brands, but the guitar I walked away with, which was just lush in comparison was shop floor priced at £500. 

 

[Al Krow]

2 minutes ago, tegs07 said:

Then I would have to drive it ..

Not if @Machines (of Skynet command) bought it, surely? 😁

[tegs07]

4 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

Not if @Machines (of Skynet command) bought it, surely? 😁

Terminator? 

[MacDaddy]

FWIW I have a Dacia. It has all the 'mod cons' you would expect to find in a BMW, and the ride is no less comfortable than any BMW I have been in.

Had I wanted a BMW I would have bought one.

But I don't sell drugs, cut people up, and I tend to use my indicators, so I didn't  

[Al Krow]

20 minutes ago, Dood said:

True Story Number One:

Many years ago, with not a sign of a single grey hair,  I was allowed free reign in the UK's premier bass emporium to choose a new bass. I had interest free credit, disposable income (whatever that is lol) and a hunger for something that I would play for many years.

On offer, the very finest bass retail had to offer, including vintage and classic. £3000 for example would buy a whole lot of bass back then. 

The bass that I bought that day and played solidly for the next, I don't know, 15 years? Sells for max £450 secondhand here. It was my very first six string too.

Controversial, but love it!

So you're essentially saying that there comes a point when it really is all in the fingers once a bass gets to a certain decent standard? Couldn't agree more with that.

For me it would be a Spector Euro5 LX (and tbf to @tegs07 that probably qualifies as a Jag XF rather than a Dacia); that's as good as a bass needs to get for me. Next step is for me to get as good as I need to for it, which is a way off yet!

Zero temptation / desire to get anything more upmarket - in fact I'd probably be stressing too much about risking putting a ding in the thing to actually enjoy playing it.

Go on, spill the beans, which was that "revelation bass" for you then?

Edited April 26, 2021 by Al Krow

[peteb]

5 hours ago, MacDaddy said:

FWIW I have a Dacia. It has all the 'mod cons' you would expect to find in a BMW, and the ride is no less comfortable than any BMW I have been in.

Had I wanted a BMW I would have bought one.

But I don't sell drugs, cut people up, and I tend to use my indicators, so I didn't  

If you turn up for an audition with an American Fender (for example), it sends out a certain message. The band leader can see that you are using a bass that many pros use and has the comfort of knowing that you are working with a tried and tested reference sound and image. Of course, it makes no difference what bass you bring if you can’t play, but it makes a good first impression.

Similarly, a Dacia does not have the badass image that a black BMW does if you are intending to break into the extreme entrepreneurial world of selling drugs. What kind of cr*ppy drug dealer am I buying gear from who drives a Dacia?? It just screams disrespect me, invade my territory and rip me off. Of course, after you have cut half a dozen rivals and knocked a few reluctant punters around, then the message might get through that you are indeed a badass – but if you had the beemer you probably wouldn’t need to…!

Edited April 26, 2021 by peteb

[tegs07]

Many of the nicest basses I have played have been around £500 second hand and Indonesian made.

Edited April 26, 2021 by tegs07