Misdee

I had one for a while. They are very well made with a fairly slender neck but mine was a bit too heavy for my taste. The sound is inherently bright and snappy with a noticeably lean bottom end, but it sounds like it was designed to be that way on purpose, if you see what I mean. I found the sound very different to my 2024x, which has a much more low end.

Basses can very easily be heavy and still neck dive. It has passed into received wisdom on Basschat that basses need to have a certain amount of weight to the body to prevent neck dive. (Probably because it suits people with heavy basses to promote that idea when they are trying to sell them.)The reality is that it's more complicated than that. A bass with a very light body body may neck dive when in the playing position sitting down without a strap, but depending on the positioning of the strap pins in relation to the overall design, can still balance perfectly on a strap. If a light bodied bass neck dives on a strap it is not necessarily just because it has light body. More likely it's due to the shape of the body in relation to the neck and the weight of the neck and tuners. If that is the case, heavier body won't help much. Conversely, some bass designs will neck dive regardless of how heavy the body is. Body weight is only one factor, not the decisive one. If the shape of the bass and where it places the strap pins is is wrong, it will never balance properly on a strap.

Very well said. I too could ( and do) play any bass of my choosing. However, I recently bought a Harley Benton Shorty just out of curiosity and to see if I wanted to get a better short scale bass in future, just so I can stay trendy. Guess what? I get just as much enjoyment out of playing it as any bass I own or have owned. Maybe more, in fact, because I can forgive it's inconsistencies because it was so inexpensive. It sounds fine, too, especially with a bit of help from a decent preamp. I've played a few Foderas. They were all beautifully made, played great and all sounded lush. If you are looking to solve a specific problem with your instrument then they are a company who will work with you to try and solve it using their expertise and craftsmanship. Make no mistake, when it comes to boutique basses Fodera are the real deal. But what they make is not unique in terms of tone. And in many ways it's the opposite of what I want personally. I want a bass to sound quite gritty and aggressive. Kind of like a Rickenbacker or Fender ect. Fodera basses sound way too refined and polite for my tastes. That is true of most exotic wood basses. And regarding being"good enough" to play a Fodera, bear in mind that a much of what you are paying for in a boutique bass is largely irrelevant. Ornate inlays, laminated decorative woods and other adornments are mostly cosmetic. High price doesn't exclude intermediate players, only intermediate wallets. If the only people who bought professional quality musical equipment were professionals, the whole industry would collapse.

Yes, you are quite right. Teachers almost never complain about anything. I should have known better.🙂

I should have known better than to make a light-hearted and humorous remark about teachers. I only did so in the hope that my levity would offer a moment of light relief to anyone engaged in that most noble of pursuits. That was an error of judgement on my part. I can only offer my sincere apologies and hope you will be able to forgive me. It must be very difficult to be engaged in a line of work that has been in a perpetual state of crisis and " at breaking point" for at least the last 40-odd years, if you believe what teachers say anyway. I don't have any children, by the way, so your home schooling threat is wasted on me, I'm afraid. If you can think of another form of punishment for me just let me know.🙂

I had the Complete Guide book, although to be honest with you I could never get to grips with learning how to read music, so I had limited access to the information contained within it. That is my fault though, not your dad's. I can still remember my 14 year old self sitting in my bedroom trying to glean what I could from the pages. I remember buying a metronome and an A440 tuning fork like the book told me I needed to, now I think about it. I often wonder what kids learning the bass nowadays would do if they had to go back to live in the world before You Tube. Maybe they would be less scathing of old men like me still trying to properly understand the cycle of fifths. I am truly sorry to hear that your dad is unwell. Sending my very best wishes to you both. Have a smashing day with your dad.

The phrase " If we're paying teachers that kind of money how come they are always complaining about everything?" comes to my mind, to be honest with you.🙂

The thing about Fodera basses is they are meticulously crafted to the highest possible standard. From that perspective, in my opinion they are worth the asking price. In terms of craftsmanship and quality they are up there with the best that money can buy. If they are your cup of tea then whatever level your playing is at, buying one could be a very canny lifetime investment. But in other ways they don't seem that special to me. My own personal reservation about them is that most (not all,I hasten to add) of them that I have played or heard others play have a fairly generic exotic wood boutique bass sound. There is.nothing really unique about the tone . The only bass players I have heard get a good tone out of a Fodera are Anthony Jackson and Lincoln Goines. And maybe Richard Bona. But they all got a great tone out of a Fender. Alembic basses have a distinct signature sound, as do Wal basses. It's no coincidence that both those brands rely on their own proprietary pickups and electronics. Fodera by comparison lack a distinct sonic identity, for my taste anyway. To me, lots of basses sound like a Fodera. I much prefer the sound of many far less expensive basses.

I have owned a bass for the last ten years that has got vintage frets on and I haven't noticed any appreciable difference in fret wear, and it has always had roundwounds on it, albeit nickel rounds. I think the issue is that the smaller vintage frets with enable fewer fret dressings when they eventually do start to become worn.

Am I a good enough player to justify owning a Fodera? Well firstly, who am I supposed to be justifying myself to? Certainly not to Fodera, that's for sure. If I were to walk into their HQ with dollars in my hand I'm sure they would be prepared to sell to me. As for other bass players, they can kiss my derrière. If I want to buy an expensive bass I will do so and other folks can say what they want about it. It won't bother me. For what it's worth, by now I have spent most of my life fascinated by expensive musical instruments and equipment. As I have gained more wisdom and experience I have come to the conclusion that very few expensive instruments are worth the asking price. By the same token, very few inexpensive instruments are worth the asking price either. It's just a process of finding a level of dissatisfaction you can live with and enjoy in whichever price range. All this is underpinned by the fact that the musical equipment industry, like most consumer goods industries, relies upon convincing people that they have a problem, whether they realised it or not, and then offering those people an opportunity to buy something which will solve that problem and make them feel better. And don't lose sight of the fact that buying and selling basses and learning to play the bass are two completely different activities. For most people, the more time you are obsessing about equipment the less time you are stressing about learning to play better, and I very much include myself in that observation. Back when I first started playing I asked a big name bass player who I met backstage after a gig for some advice and he said to me "Just get a Fender and work on your playing." Sage advice indeed. If only it hadn't taken me so long to realise that.😐

Maybe I was wiser than I thought in my assumption that if they weren't good enough for John, they weren't good enough for me.😄

Indeed they were, along with a Gibson Thunderbird and an Alembic, from what I remember.

I remember that sunburst 61!

Let me put it this way. If this bass was a guest on the Jeremy Kyle Show, it would be a suitable candidate for a DNA test.

So the provenance is that in 1968 someone in a shop told the current owner that John Entwistle pxd this bass. And the bass itself has been refinished, repaired and modified, so it's compromised as a vintage instrument in its own right. 1968 is a long time ago and people's recollections can be unreliable, as can the information they were given at that time. I am sure that the seller is sincere in his belief that this instrument is as described, but for ten grand you need to be able to prove what you say, or else find a very trusting buyer. If I were in the market for a vintage Precision Bass I would pass on this one for all the obvious reasons, especially if I was after a celebrity-owned example. I remember going to the Bass Center back in the 1980s and they had several of John Entwistle's basses for sale, complete with signed certificates of authenticity. And they were reasonably priced from what I remember. Back in those days I wanted a shiny brand new bass with active electronics, and I thought to myself that if John Entwistle didn't want these basses why would I have them palmed off on me? In retrospect, that might not have been my best ever decision.

You are very right on that Kev! I had forgotten what an elegant and classy design it was. If Fender were to put a proprietary supercharged passive pickup on that chassis,so to speak, something like a Dark Star/ Bisonic kind of thing they would have a bass that could play great, feel great and sound great, and be right in the zeitgeist of what a lot of bass players are looking for nowadays. I'd buy one!

On a Jazz Bass I like to set my tone on full, neck pickup on full and bridge pickup on about 80 percent. Like a P Bass but not really, if you see what I mean. Generally speaking, I think Jazz Basses have plenty of low end. However, to my ears it's the complex upper-mid frequencies that really give that bass it's characteristic sound. It's quite easy for your ears to focus on the prominence of those mids at the detriment of the lower frequencies that may well be present at the same time. When it comes to basses, I have learnt over the years that it's best to let them be themselves, if you see what I mean ie let a Jazz Bass be a bit toppy, let a P Bass sound hollow with chunky mids, let a Stingray sound zingy and scooped. That Am St Jazz was/is a very good example of the classic Fender Jazz so I really don't think you have any worries regarding the bass itself. Your amp/ cab setup looks like it is pretty tasty, and as you say, it sounds fine with other models of bass. Maybe you just don't like the sound of a Jazz Bass in an ensemble setting?

It's nice to see Donny Hathaway getting some recognition in recent years for his extraordinary talents. For so many years after his death he was to some extent overlooked amongst the pantheon of great soul singers from the 1970s. The live album is just superb. Willie Weeks is on fire and the whole band are as tight as tight can be.

My first thought upon seeing this new design, too. The top horn needs to extend towards the twelfth fret, otherwise with a traditional Fender-style headstock it will neck dive in a very annoying manner. This new shape will also mean that the neck will feel further away than on a traditional Fender bass when the bass is on a strap. Those things,(along with a so-so Fender preamp) were what undermined the Dimension Bass, in my opinion. It's a shame, because I think bass players would be very receptive to new designs from Fender, if only they were the right designs. If they could make it feel like a Fender there is plenty of scope for new sounds. Get it right and they would sell plenty. So many times Fender try to recycle old parts from previous experiments into so-called new models only to fail yet again.😟

Are they anywhere near West Yorkshire and do you think they might be interested in quoting me for a bit of repointing and replastering I need doing?

I have learnt to do my own setups through trial and error over the last 40+ years out of necessity. I am so exacting about how I want a bass to play that I doubt anyone else could anticipate what I want on my behalf. I would have to keep going back to the workshop over and over again. I'm talking about basic stuff, not fretwork ect. I leave that to the professionals. However long I have played the bass, probably a third of that time I have spent adjusting the bass. If, in some parrallel universe, people bought tickets to watch some poor neurotic making minute adjustments to expensive bass guitars as a sadistic form of entertainment then I would be doing international tours and appearing on daytime television.

If I remember correctly, the Stingray with a graphite neck was loaned to Pino while his number one Stingray ( 1979 factory fretless purchased in NYC) was being repaired/serviced. (Probably having some attention to the fingerboard- Rotosound Swing Bass+ untreated fretless board = , knackered). Pino has sold loads of basses in The Gallery over the years. I think he has got a house in the area. I know he is a regular in the shop.

You are quite right. I suppose it's right up there with 'growl" and "punch" in that respect.

I love a bit of nasal, but I might be alone in that. Providing it's not thin and nasal. One of the things I love about Wal basses is the way you can set the filters to sound distinctly nasal. Bruce Thomas' tone on Every Day I Write The Book by Elvis Costello springs to mind as a fine example. Or the way you can make a Wal sound like an old Gibson bass ( but better) by setting the neck pickup filter to 7 and the bridge pickup to 3. To my ears that nasty edge to the tone is what gets you heard when other instruments are playing over you. It gives some personality, for want of a better term, to the sound.