spacey

One of the few fretless with the dots in the right place on the neck.

They let the brand name go, by greed and making Chinese chop shop basses with Fender on and by not enforcing trademarks so anyone can copy and better the design.
As a brand to be seen with Fender to me are no longer worth the money, the quality is not as good as Lakeland, not by a long way.
Your money buys a lot better bass .
Fender is no longer a premium brand of instrument other than vintage stock.

Shame, real shame, but to me Fender should only be on head stocks of the finest USA instruments.
Everything else should say Squire.

I agree on gear, at very least a vocal cab PA and good mic should be the very minimum equipment a vocalist owns, they should be able to turn up and sing with a band with their own gear at rehearsal room levels.

Once people start using the excuse they dont like the song and the band allow that excuses the learning of new songs grinds to a halt and eventually does the band.
As a successful covers band you are not there to inflict your personalised favourites and obscurities on the audience.
Once the I don't like it starts get ready for the band to stop.

Ask what happens to the gig money.
Is it split at the end of the night equally ?

Am I expected to buy anyone's equipment for them like the singers PA ?

If the answer to these two dont tick boxes, why bother.

Saw a fake Rick in a shop they were trying to fix, over 4 weeks the action went from playable to keep your laptop under the strings.
The rod nut was sinking in to the neck every time it got turned.
The verdict was, £300 of scrap.

Depends how old the band looks, old men playing cheesy x factor style pop songs never looks good.
If you are a bunch of young Adonis sp**k trumpets then you will get away with it.

Zoom b3.
You get an effects box, drum machine and usb interface with cuebase all in one.

Repaired a jaguar that the strap button would not stay in no matter what screw was used, even a 3 inch chipboard screw would not stay in.
The wood looked to have been tampered to give it a hard finish, but underneath it was like balsa wood and it had to be honed out and filled with epoxy wood resin and then drilled to get the strap button to stay.
Most unusual circumstance.
I guess in China anything goes as long as it looks good.

My personal opinion added to this is putting Fender on Chinese made instruments has lowered the brand to budget instrument from what once was Kudos instrument status.

I wonder if the same people would buy Gordon Ramseys old rolling pin ?
That pie must have been so good because he had a magic rolling pin /

It's an instrument, the talent is the player.

If buying expensive basses made you good I would be the best there is,,,

Welcome to the darkside.

They are a professional grade instrument.
In the wrong hands, they are useless, in the right hands they can take you to a different level, a bit like a craftsman having a set of precision woodworking tools.
You need to be able to use the attention to detail on them to take you beyond the darkside.
Like giving a very good driver a slightly better car, a bad driver will crash it and blame the car, the good player will appreciate the improvements over chop and screw together basses .
Things like the achievable action with no buzzing and perfect intonation, clank to boom options on one bass all put the tools in your hands to move forward.
Now you own one, you will appreciate why they go to the lengths they do to stop people putting them out of business by faking them.
(opens can of worms and gets popcorn ready)

Cowel want sp**k trumpets to empty the pockets of teenage girls of their pocket money.

He was "shaky" he was beaten half to death as a child and left "shaky".

Rule 1.
What you dont play is twice as important as what you do play .

[quote name='gsgbass' timestamp='1418088458' post='2626815']
I went back to a tube head, and a 410 cab.


[/quote] Oh Yes please Santa !

Often the case that studios have some "chefs special" basses set up with flats or unusual strings to break that round-wound metal grind tone limitation on bass sound.

[quote name='Marc S' timestamp='1418985680' post='2635441']
Also re copyright issues,
What has not been mentioned here,
is that Fender themselves "stole" / "borrowed" their headstock design from Bigsby,
Who had themselves stolen / borrowed the general headstock design from very early Spanish acoustic guitars

Here's a link to the BIgsby site
I'm searching for a pic of that very early Spanish guitar - but I have seen a pic
and a museum article on it.... if anyone else remembers where this is, please feel free to post
I think the instrument was dated around circa 1880, if my memory serves me.....

[url="http://bigsbyfiles.blogspot.co.uk/"]http://bigsbyfiles.blogspot.co.uk/

E[/url]DIT: I say this, fully realising that copying a logo and copying an overall design may be regarded as two different things
but copy the basic design of the headstock is what Fender did....
[/quote]
Its who hold the patent that matters.
Rickenbacker invented the Humbucker pickup but never patented it, they also let the guy leave with the basic Musicman design, What Rickenbacker made a music man ?
Yes in a primitive form and it hangs on the wall.
Yet they dont hold the patents so those that do call the shots.

Where nobody has disagreed with me is that Fender have brought this on themselves, they are losing customer loyalty and making the wrong products at the wrong prices.

The problem with accelerated corrosion is it will keep corroding at that rate and soon you wont be able to adjust the tail pieces or other iron bits as they will rust together.
Will only be an issue with iron bits, screws pole pieces, the chrome bits are usually just dulled up. .

There is a studio in Leeds running on 24 track tape and valve compressors and old outboard gear.
I heard a demo they had done for a soul band, the quality was totally outstanding.

I often think, if they had kept making that Ibanez Muscian we would have had the equivalent of a precision or jazz bass in the Ibanez line up, it was a classic design and brilliant bass, why they discontinued it is a mystery.
Damn right I would buy a new one.

The one I initially saw was unbranded, I was not stating that Limelight are the ones responsible for the counterfeiting ? I was of the impression that they were bista basses and people were applying their own logos ?
Surely they are not leaving the workshop branded ?
Some suggest they are ?

How is it nonsense, if it has a logo, it is a trademark counterfeit, thats the law of the land unfortunately.
It was not made by Fender, it did not leave the factory as a Fender, its a counterfeit, end of argument on that one.
However I do not doubt they play well, All parts bodies and necks are made almost exact to specification plan for year and are good quality components.
Quick fret level and set up and it will feel played in.
The thread was not particularly about Limelight, but as its going that way, the counterfeit issue, is one of legality not opinion.
If they leave unbranded as bista part death by sander basses then they are not counterfeits, once the trade mark brandings are placed upon it, then it becomes a counterfeit.
I dont think Fender give two monkeys about the brand or trademark themselves however, hence why they are on the verge of total bankruptcy, I also feel they have contributed and fed the clone market by making crap quality basses and making Fenders in China put the knife in the brand to me, probably enough to make me buy a copycat bass if I was in the market myself.

I took in one of those Fender Highway basses in a trade, you could keep pics in the neck pocket, you can not blame anyone for buying something else with quality control like that.

Its PJ pick ups with the tone closed down a bit, also where the fingers play is a lot to do with the tone, sounds played quite close to the bridge.

In digital Zero is Zero, anything above is distorted, on good tape, you got up to +3 db dynamic range and +5Db on really expensive chrome stuff.
Similar to camera film vs digital, nobody can make a digital camera with the dynamic range of slide film yet.
The down side is quite bits were noisy.