bassaussie

I think it's quite common for the earliest Tele basses to have the paddle tuners. I don't think it was always the case, but there's definitely a lot of examples that have them.

DR strings sound amazing on Sadowsky, I always use them on mine. I'm not so familiar with 5 string, although have tried them, and thought they were great.

20 hours ago, No. 8 Wire said:

I'm no expert, but isnt that a non stienberger bridge and head piece? Also the fingerboard looks strange, shouldn't it be resin not rosewood?

I won't claim "expert" status, but having owned a few original Steinbergers, I can say with pretty definite certainty that Steinberger never used a headstock retainer like that.

The whole thing looks like some sort of cheapish XM2 copy.

Pretty cool of the true owner to create that listing.

Beedster makes a good point - why is the original listing still up when the actual owner has highlighted it's a scam?

Majik - RV - the R is for rosewood.

Nice bass. 👍

I was curious if the bass was inspired by Jeff Berlin's old instrument? I know his was a little different, especially in relation to the positioning of the pickups, but just thought there might be a connection.

Thanks for the info, that's perfect.

BTW - beautiful bass!

Hi all! I'm trying to find some information for a friend here. He's left handed, and wants to know if a standard Hiscox cases would fit a left handed ESP LTD D-4 bass.

Would greatly appreciate any feedback, and photos would also be helpful.

I'm pretty sure it's a Vintage brand V940FL.

That's a good question to consider, and I'm not sure there's going to be a definitive answer, because a lot of what goes into the answer really depends on how you view the instrument.

If you look at two of the greats, Stanley Clarke and Victor Wooten, both play instruments that are tuned higher than a standard bass, yet both still refer to these instruments as "basses". In Clarke's case, he's well known for his piccolo bass, which is tuned E-A-D-G, only an octave higher (so basically, the same tuning as the bottom four strings of a guitar), and in Wooten's case, it's his tenor bass, tuned A-D-C-G. But both call these instruments "basses".

You guys need to read the description better.

It's "vintage" and it's "rare".

Those two words always add another zero to the end of the number.

I can pinpoint where my love for Status basses came from (and, in the process, sadly give away my age!! )

I started playing bass in 1980, when I was 12. When I first saw a Steinberger, my jaw literally hit the floor, I couldn't believe what an amazing instrument it was. I was really lucky to do work experience in the store in Sydney that had Steinbergers, I think this was 1983, and I was hooked. Headless was clearly the future of bass guitars!

Anyway, a little after this, Tears for Fears released "Shout", and shortly after, Killing Joke came out with "Love Like Blood". I can remember watching various video shows with my nose glued to the screen just to get a better idea of what I was looking at. I think "International Musician" did an article on a Status Series II, and I must've looked at the photos a million times. I was so blown away by how modern but how beautiful they were.

25 minutes ago, ped said:

Great post Chris 

Yeah, but I'm still not clear on whether he likes them or not!

Seriously though ....  awesome post. Definitely looking forward to more posts.

12 hours ago, NickA said:

It went for around $9000. !

The mark up is due to the price of and long wait for a new one. prices "start at" £6050, £6350 for a mk 3, but there's a 3 year order backlog ..

When demand surges (Tool have an album out, someone from Rush kicks the bucket) people want one and want one now.  Then people see how quickly they're gaining value and the collectors and chancers step up.

Nice basses, not £15,000 nice ... but up there with Alembics and Foderas I suppose.  Weird thing is, equally special basses ( Smith's, ACGs, maybe Overwaters and a few others) can't command a fraction of the price and lose value as soon as they're played.

Bill Wyman's Wal is up for auction right now, expected cost £40,000+ and there's a £10k offer in.

 

I think you've summed this up well - some instruments seem to have this mythical quality to them that people respond to.

And really, at the end of the day, the price of any instrument is based on what the market will bear. If one sells for 15k, or 40k, or whatever else, so be it.

You look at the guitar world, and there's plenty of examples of instruments where the price is purely based on the fact that there's a queue of people lined up that outnumbers the instruments available on the market - 50s Les Pauls, Explorers and Vs, and more close to home for this site, Zemaitis guitars.

Educate me here. I know Wals command big prices on the used market, and I know that new they're quite pricey, but what's the selling point here that warrants the huge mark up (or at least, what does this guy think the selling point is)? Is it that he's providing a readily available bass that would be otherwise impossible to find?

On 12/08/2020 at 20:52, stewblack said:

For me it's the headstock shape, it can utterly ruin an otherwise beautiful machine. There are combinations of colours (black body and plate, maple board) which don't appeal but that's more than one thing.

100% this.

The one I always think of is Tyler guitars and basses. Apparently they're insanely good instruments, but the headstocks really spoil them for me.

Based on what you've said there, along with the rest of the thread, for me, that sounds like you'd want a Steinberger.

Have you seen his later basses, the Synapse? I don't know much about them, but they look pretty nice.

Wintoid, what's your main brief? Is it headless, or graphite, or both? Because there are other options about that are worth looking at. Not saying they'll be easy to find, but they're out there.

Headless, keep your eyes open for a brand called Clover. They're a German brand, appearance would be similar to a Status. And the model name is worth it's weight in gold - "Slapper". Priceless!

Schack is another brand that did a nice headless bass, again, it's German, and again, sort of like a Status.

Graphite wise, there's a few more traditional alternatives you might consider. Modulus used to make Fender style necks, called the BassStar. I had one for a while, and in fact, I think I sold it on here (a VERY dumb move). Sensational necks, but probably difficult to find.

Peavey had a go at the graphite neck thing for a while with a bass called the G-Bass. These were actually quite inexpensive, and very well regarded. I think these days they're a little hard to come by, as people realised how good they were.

Ped mentioned Moses above - don't have any personal experience, but have heard they're OK. And of course Status make their Fender necks as well, which people seem to rave about.

11 minutes ago, wintoid said:

Do you think how unique the Kubicki is, the parts might be a bit of a problem in the future?  I know the Steinbergers have this issue with the string claws, but it seems like someone has solved that.  I imagine the Kubicki is less common than the Steinberger.

Terrible gas here!  I will only buy one bass, and would hope to keep it for a long time.  I really do love the sound I've heard from the Kubicki, but a nice Steinberger feels like it might be easier to maintain.

I've seen far more Steinbergers around than Kubickis on the used market.

And then there's the question - which Kubicki?!!! You need to know your history a little, as Kubicki's suffer the same reputation as old Tobias basses.

At some point, Kubicki sold his company to Fender. He'd actually been with Fender for years prior to building his own basses, then did his own thing for a while, then sold his company to Fender and Fender start making Kubicki basses. Again, you can google all this to confirm the exact movements. Anyway, the original Kubickis made by his company are much more sought after than the Fender era basses. I think the preamp was changed, maybe less settings, something like that.

Just to explain my comment above about Tobias - Michael Tobias sold his company to Gibson. "Pre-Gibson" Tobias basses are really well regarded. Gibson era, not so much, so similar to what happened with Kubicki.

EDIT: Did some Googling of my own. He didn't sell to Fender, he formed a licensing agreement with them.

4 minutes ago, ped said:

I think Moses made a graphite neck for them but the idea didn’t take off but there are a few floating around 

Here’s one!

https://reverb.com/item/35148197-kubicki-nos-rare-moses-kubicki-ex-factor-neck-1998

Completely new one on me.

I always admired Kubicki and what he did with the Ex-Factor. He was one of the few manufacturers that took the headless concept, and then added to it. It was so smart the way he married the idea with a concept that had actually been around for centuries (the extension used on double basses), and ended up with something that was so elegant.

9 hours ago, Misdee said:

A  Steinberger sounds just as hefty as a Fender or Rickenbacker or any other old -school bass,  if you want it to. The L in particular could sound downright nasty.

This is really good what you wrote here. I'd made a reference to this in a post earlier, but I think you captured this idea better.

19 minutes ago, wintoid said:

Just back to the Kubicki for a moment, and showing my ignorance, but it's not a graphite neck is it?  It still seems to have that piano-ish sound I associate with graphite.

No, it's wooden, but it's wooden laminates. If I remember, it's 37 laminates (maybe Google that, I remember it being more than 30, but not sure the exact number). I believe he did this to eliminate dead spots.

2 hours ago, wintoid said:

Apart from Basschat and eBay, where would people look for a nice XL2 or Kubicki?

Possibly Talkbass?

And of course Reverb.com

The paintjob reminds me of an 80s Jaydee.

4 hours ago, three said:

A very kind comment, and this is possibly gratuitous, but here's an image of the SII (with a Streamline just visible behind it).  Also, an image of the Steinberger - a truly lovely bass

For a short period (maybe 2-3 years) I owned my L2 alongside an 80s Status Series II. Both amazing basses. The Status was amazing to play, so fast, complete slap monster. But there was something about the sound that seemed very focused, really distinct .... possibly even dated (please don't shoot me!!! ). I thought the Steinberger was more versatile, but in the way a Precision is versatile - it doesn't do much, but that thing it does seems to work well in lots of different situations. Having said that, I still regret selling the Status, it was a beautiful example of one.

EDIT: I just remembered something, about the Status sound. The preamp was probably the thing that I remember as being "dated". I had other basses with preamps, in particular a Sadowsky, and it has that sound that a lot of us are familiar with. The Status preamp dates to the 80s, and it was definitely voiced to suit the way people wanted a bass to sound in the 80s. So it's probably unfair to judge the Status on that - they produced a bass that was what people wanted at the time. I assume the voicing of their preamps has changed over the years - I don't really have much experience with later Status basses.