zbd1960 Posted June 10, 2022 Share Posted June 10, 2022 I realised a long time ago that what really matters is the player. I don't judge people on what kit they're using. Whilst I have more of an orchestral than band background, instruments etc. are expensive and people will buy and play what they can afford. Some people are happy with less expensive kit. In the world of basses and guitars, entry level instruments are eminently playable without issues (perhaps some tweaking from a tech). This is in part due to them being made in relatively large numbers so production costs are lower meaning you can get more bang for your buck. This is less true with orchestral instruments, partly due to the numbers being made being much smaller and many of them are largely hand made. Some instruments, even entry level ones are £££ - talk to anyone who wants to play bassoon, where 'entry level' is over £3k, 'reasonable' is £7k+, and 'good' is £15k+. The 'good' category is what a professional orchestral player would have. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leonard Smalls Posted June 10, 2022 Share Posted June 10, 2022 So long as it's funky, I don't care what bass it was played on! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Sausage Posted June 10, 2022 Share Posted June 10, 2022 Not instrument snobbery but musical snobbery. I went to a Jazz Fusion jam night in Manchester in the mid noughties. I was wearing a motor head T shirt. I got up with a guitarist mate to jam and the drummer said in a derisory tone " you're wearing the wrong t shirt for here mate". I said " just play you're f*##ing drums and try to keep up" We dragged em all over the place, musically speaking. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mykesbass Posted June 10, 2022 Share Posted June 10, 2022 5 minutes ago, Lord Sausage said: Not instrument snobbery but musical snobbery. I went to a Jazz Fusion jam night in Manchester in the mid noughties. I was wearing a motor head T shirt. I got up with a guitarist mate to jam and the drummer said in a derisory tone " you're wearing the wrong t shirt for here mate". I said " just play you're f*##ing drums and try to keep up" We dragged em all over the place, musically speaking. Worst kind of snobbery, and sad how many musicians suffer from it. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barking Spiders Posted June 10, 2022 Share Posted June 10, 2022 Something that bugs me a bit is seeing retailers descriptions of x budget bass/guitar and then saying s*** like ' suitable for beginners and intermediate players' , insinuating that advanced players shouldn't bother considering it. Ballcocks. Any decent player worth his salt can make any instrument sound good. Give a s*** player an £8,000 Fodera and he'll make it sound like the cr@pp13$t Kay. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rich Posted June 10, 2022 Share Posted June 10, 2022 22 hours ago, knirirr said: Most recently it's been a guitarist complete and utter knob; asking when I'm going to get a "proper bass" and then when I eventually find a nice one and space to keep it telling me that I wasted too much money when I could have just had a beginner one from Thomann for much less. Fixed. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dad3353 Posted June 10, 2022 Share Posted June 10, 2022 32 minutes ago, Lord Sausage said: Not instrument snobbery but musical snobbery. I went to a Jazz Fusion jam night in Manchester in the mid noughties. I was wearing a motor head T shirt. I got up with a guitarist mate to jam and the drummer said in a derisory tone " you're wearing the wrong t shirt for here mate". I said " just play you're f*##ing drums and try to keep up" We dragged em all over the place, musically speaking. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteveXFR Posted June 10, 2022 Share Posted June 10, 2022 9 hours ago, peteb said: From reading this thread, inverted bass snobbery is the real issue here... People with inverted basses are peasants 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dad3353 Posted June 10, 2022 Share Posted June 10, 2022 13 minutes ago, Barking Spiders said: Something that bugs me a bit is seeing retailers descriptions of x budget bass/guitar and then saying s*** like ' suitable for beginners and intermediate players' , insinuating that advanced players shouldn't bother considering it. Ballcocks. Any decent player worth his salt can make any instrument sound good. Give a s*** player an £8,000 Fodera and he'll make it sound like the cr@pp13$t Kay. Soooooo, you've heard me playing, it seems. ... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dad3353 Posted June 10, 2022 Share Posted June 10, 2022 Just now, SteveXFR said: People with inverted basses are peasants ... or lefty. ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ezbass Posted June 10, 2022 Share Posted June 10, 2022 2 minutes ago, SteveXFR said: People with inverted basses are peasants Peasants with inverted people are basses. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteveXFR Posted June 10, 2022 Share Posted June 10, 2022 20 minutes ago, Dad3353 said: ... or lefty. ... They're just weird 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dad3353 Posted June 10, 2022 Share Posted June 10, 2022 31 minutes ago, ezbass said: Peasants with inverted people are basses. People with inverted peasants are baseless. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reggaebass Posted June 10, 2022 Share Posted June 10, 2022 Bass snobbery , well I only buy US fenders so I suppose yes , but I also have a Kay and I nearly bought a sue Ryder P bass, so not sure what that makes me 🤔 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nicko Posted June 10, 2022 Share Posted June 10, 2022 14 hours ago, zbd1960 said: Generally with musical instruments, you get what you pay for. Surely this patently false statement is the whole basis of snobbery. It's possible to compare instruments in terms of quality of components. quality of design, quality of construction but ultimately a good instrument is one that the player feels comfortable playing and that produces the sound they want. The sales price of an instrument is largely driven by the cost of labour in the country of manufacture and the perceived desirability of the product. I write this as someone who recently disposed of a US P as I always end up using my Chinese Squier P. I have a Mexican Fender branded Tele (the snobs would actually have to look at the serial number to tell), a Patrick Eggle and an Epiphone 339. These all do exactly what I want and I choose to spend the savings on expensive jeans which fit me better than the brand leader. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nicko Posted June 10, 2022 Share Posted June 10, 2022 I tend toward inverse snobbery when it comes to instruments. There is nothing worse than seeing someone with all the gear who clearly should have invested in some lessons rather than equipment. 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pete.young Posted June 10, 2022 Share Posted June 10, 2022 On 09/06/2022 at 09:10, ezbass said: I’ve been on the end of it. When I first started playing bass, I went to jams to get out and play and maybe pick up some contacts. I certainly wasn’t a musical noob, as I’d been playing guitar previously for nearly 30 years. At one jam, run by a local blues guitar hero, I heard a snide comment from one of the house band about non Fenders. As I was pretty much the only other person there at the time, with my Yamaha in tow, I can only assume it was aimed at me and my ‘starter’ bass. What an absolute tool 😠. i've had this too. My Yamaha "starter bass" is a BBNE2. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frank Blank Posted June 10, 2022 Share Posted June 10, 2022 2 hours ago, Barking Spiders said: Something that bugs me a bit is seeing retailers descriptions of x budget bass/guitar and then saying s*** like ' suitable for beginners and intermediate players' , insinuating that advanced players shouldn't bother considering it. Ballcocks. Any decent player worth his salt can make any instrument sound good. Give a s*** player an £8,000 Fodera and he'll make it sound like the cr@pp13$t Kay. This is very true. A friend of mine bought a cheap Washburn semi-acoustic years ago, about £200 worth (at least I think it was a Washburn?) We dropped in on the rehearsals of a reasonably well known band at the time and the guitarist wanted a look at the guitar. It was quite odd to see him swap his beautiful antique Gibson ES-295 for the little Washburn and plug the it into his rig, "It'll sound much the same" he said as a monstrous sound almost lifted the roof off. Funny how when my mate got it home and plugged it into his Marshall it sounded much like any other guitar played in any other bedroom. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Sausage Posted June 10, 2022 Share Posted June 10, 2022 2 hours ago, Dad3353 said: You also need Motorhead police and Umlaut Police. As predictive text split the word and gods knows how to do umlauts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neepheid Posted June 10, 2022 Share Posted June 10, 2022 1 hour ago, Nicko said: I tend toward inverse snobbery when it comes to instruments. There is nothing worse than seeing someone with all the gear who clearly should have invested in some lessons rather than equipment. 'Mon the "budget" basses! Come to think of it, what does "budget" even mean? Everyone's got a budget, some are bigger than others but why is this moniker only applied to less expensive instruments? When I wanted to treat myself post lockdown and bought a G&L L-1000, I had a budget in mind (around £1500) - does that make my G&L L-1000 a "budget" bass? Maybe to a serial Fodera purchaser it does! Ballcocks, as I saw mentioned earlier and will now steal and use in future. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lozz196 Posted June 10, 2022 Share Posted June 10, 2022 Thing is now, the “budget” instruments are perfectly giggable. My old Squier VM77 Jazz bass was incredibly good quality for a supposed budget bass, and for a while I gigged with a Korean Squier Precision which was a very good instrument. I did see a well known punk band and the bassist was using a Squier which sounded great but I did wonder why, given his history in music he wasn’t using a more expensive instrument. Until I saw the amount of beer that got thrown at the band whilst playing. I thought of his bone dry Fenders at home and it all made sense. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barking Spiders Posted June 10, 2022 Share Posted June 10, 2022 59 minutes ago, neepheid said: 'Mon the "budget" basses! Come to think of it, what does "budget" even mean? Everyone's got a budget, some are bigger than others but why is this moniker only applied to less expensive instruments? When I wanted to treat myself post lockdown and bought a G&L L-1000, I had a budget in mind (around £1500) - does that make my G&L L-1000 a "budget" bass? Maybe to a serial Fodera purchaser it does! Ballcocks, as I saw mentioned earlier and will now steal and use in future. True, I believe it's probably an industry term for 'cheap production line instruments made in Indonesia/China'. Even worse than musical instrument snobs are those car snobs / petrolheads who sneer at mass market models. So, your fancy xx can do 0-60 in 3 seconds and reach top speeds of 200 mph. Where are you going to taken that for drive then? the salt flats in Utah? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoeEvans Posted June 10, 2022 Share Posted June 10, 2022 Playing a cheap, battered bass and making it sound amazing is an inherently cool thing to do. 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nicko Posted June 10, 2022 Share Posted June 10, 2022 3 minutes ago, Barking Spiders said: True, I believe it's probably an industry term for 'cheap production line instruments made in Indonesia/China'. Even worse than musical instrument snobs are those car snobs / petrolheads who sneer at mass market models. So, your fancy xx can do 0-60 in 3 seconds and reach top speeds of 200 mph. Where are you going to taken that for drive then? the salt flats in Utah? I think that's a slightly different argument. A fancy car with superior performance often includes specific designs or technological advances that haven't got to the mass market yet. Many petrol heads admire the technology as much as the potential performance.* Compare that to a Fender bass which has no specific technology that you can't get on a much cheaper version and often doesn't feel or sound any better. * i don't think anyone should knock a fancy fast car until they've driven one, nor should they knock the feeling that some players might get when picking up a fancy bass. Those people should not judge others by their own preferences. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LukeFRC Posted June 10, 2022 Share Posted June 10, 2022 2 hours ago, Nicko said: These all do exactly what I want and I choose to spend the savings on expensive jeans which fit me better than the brand leader. As someone with odd shaped legs … what and how expensive Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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