Belka

17 hours ago, Cliff Edge said:

I bought a set of LaBella DTB 760FS a short while ago, not from Amazon but a well known music retailer, because I admit they were the cheapest I could find, and put them on my Stingray. I wasn’t really happy from the start but I carried, on thinking they would bed in. But D and G strings just sounded thin and the overall feel of the strings wasn’t what I’m familiar with as a long term user. The packing looked kosher to me. But today I took them off and put on a used set of TI Jazz flats that were on the bass before. Instantly better. So not just Amazon methinks. 

I've recently bought a new set of Ernie Ball strings, along with a set of DR Lo-riders, Newtone nickels and LaBella RX nickels as I wanted to experiment and find a good set for one of my 5 strings. I don't know if it's just me but they all sounded thin and somewhat scooped. The LaBella had a decent enough B string (nowhere near as good as their old 'Slappers' set though) but none of the others were particularly impressive - thin, scooped sounding strings seem to make for quite a hollow B. 

I wonder if due to problems/price rises in the global supply chain quality is going down or something. Most US manufacturers at least buy their wire from only a couple of suppliers so it might explain why various companies are suffering.

2 hours ago, Hellzero said:

Les guitares et basses électriques.doc 3.46 MB · 4 downloads

Thanks!

3 hours ago, Hellzero said:

Nope, you should also read Klaus Blasquiz's book "The Fender Bass", who, IIRC, is the only author to have met and interviewed Leo Fender himself as well as a lot of people involved in Fender's history.

 

So the Lollipop tuners were introduced in 1966, first on the P-Bass and the binding was first used in mid to late 65, but as usual with Fender this does absolutely not mean that the new features were used immediately as he aldo used existing parts first...

 

Noel Redding joined the Jimi Hendrix Experience in September 1966 and switched to bass at that moment and seemed to have used any bass available at the beginning, including a Dan Electro in Evreux France on the 18th of October 1966 for their first official concert.

 

He then switched to the Jazz Bass for a while, but according to all footage not before 1967, so maybe he bought his Jazz Bass at the moment and it's a 1966, not a 1965, with Lollipop tuners indeed and no binding, but that's absolutely not unusual if you know Fender history...

 

The Noel Redding Signature bass based on his main Jazz Bass is a recreation of a 1965 Jazz Bass with Clover Leaf aka Elephant Ear tuners.

 

Still not sure about this to be honest. It's just that I've seen quite a few basses purported to be from late '65 with unbound fingerboards and lollipop tuners, but I have never seen a '65 or '66 bass with binding and elephant ear tuners. I mean, I've just never seen one. Not saying they don't exist but if they do they must be very rare.

Andy Baxter has two late '65 J basses with unbound fingerboards and lollipops at the moment (neck stamps on both show late '65). I've scoured Google images and the vintage stores, and I can't find a single example of a '65 Jazz with binding, or any J bass that has binding and elephant ear tuners.

Binding did appear in mid-late 1965 on Jazzmaster and Jaguar guitars however - perhaps this is what Leo meant. 

On 26/07/2024 at 13:44, Hellzero said:

Thanks @Cliff Edge, but you don't seem to know that it's something I'm known for and that I also wrote a mémoire (in French) about vintage instruments, which has been shared here. 😉

 

It's as hard to date a pre CBS, CBS or post CBS Fender than a Dan Smith era model and you have to take everything into account including stamps, known facts and the absolutely non reliable serial numbers.

 

The instrument has to be disassembled to asses its origins and to be able to date it even if some are reluctant to do so.

 

Check with my pseudo and you'll see that I've done this a lot of times just to help when others would have asked for money.

Just out of interest, do you have a link to this memoire -  would be very interested to see it.

On 27/07/2024 at 08:12, Hellzero said:

In fact, officially, it's late 72, early 73 for the transition from 4 to 3 bolts on the Jazz Basses.

 

I don't know why this 1974 is always put upfront.

 

When in doubt, this website is a goldmine, with, sometimes, a very tiny minor "oversight" in the text itself: https://www.guitarhq.com/fender.html

There are some minor errors I can see on that site. It says that binding on J bass fingerboards appeared in mid to late '65 while lollipop tuners came out in '66. That's definitely an error - it was the other way around - the lollipops appeared in late 65 while I've never seen binding on a '65. I think I've even seen some early Jan 66 models still without the binding. Noel Redding's original Jazz is an example of a late '65 with the lollipops. 

Don't mean to be too negative though - it's obviously a very useful site.

That's almost certainly a refinish with a non-original guard. Sonic blue was phased out as a custom colour in 1972 and from around 1974-1980 Fender only produced black pickguards for P and J basses (the white ones only reappeared in 1980 for the International Color series). Of course, there's always the small chance that it really is a factory special order but without documentation to prove this it has to be considered a refinish. 

27 minutes ago, Dad3353 said:

Magnetic pick-ups don't react to sound at all, only to changes in the magnetic field around them (the vibration of a steel string, mostly...). That's why single-coils pick up hum, from external magnetic fields such as unsuppressed lighting systems. One cannot 'hear' this hum, as it's not phonic, only magnetic. The 'tonewood' does not react to this hum, either, nor to an E-bow. Pick-ups don't react to acoustic phenomena. 

If that's the case, why do old strings sound deader than new ones, both acoustically and amplified? 

17 minutes ago, mowf said:

https://reverb.com/uk/item/83363525-fender-jazz-bass-1965-all-original-w-a-beautiful-sonic-blue-refinish-ready-for-its-next-gig

 

Another one of Schrödinger's basses... simultaneously all original AND refinished.

 

Its 'original' white pickguard is also clearly not original  - from the neck pocket it looks like sunburst so would have been tort on there originally. 

17 hours ago, Quatschmacher said:

Unusual to see the Japanese ones with 70s spacing. Most of the ones I’ve seen have 60s spacing, despite being a reissue of a 70s bass. 

Fender Japan changed from '60s to '70s spacing on their '70s reissue Jazzes sometime in the late noughties (2007-2009ish). The serial number of this bass dates it as 2010-2011 so the pickup spacing is no surprise. I don't think it's got anything to do with export/non-export models - the '60s spacing on the '70s reissues is an anomaly that lasted from the 1980s to the late noughties and has now been corrected.

27 minutes ago, tauzero said:

 

Surely G♯ A♯ B. Let's not encourage this mixing of sharps and flats. Although in Cm, I suppose that should really be A♭ B♭ C♭.

The thing is, there are more minor keys than there are major (natural minor, melodic and harmonic), and this song sounds more harmonic minor than anything with the flattened 6th (Ab) and major 7th (B) being fairly prominent throughout. So to be enharmonically correct I think it would be Ab, Bb, B.  The Bb is a chromatic approach note to the B and technically an accidental here.

Quite unusual for a pop song these days

I may be wrong though.

As far as I know the bassline on 'I'm too Sexy' was played by the sadly recently deceased Phil Spalding, not Richard Fairbrass. 

Actually, the two stamps show the same distortion in the '7','5'and 'A'. (the one above is a bass sold on Talkbass, the lower picture is the one at Charlie Chandler's). Same month too. I'm pretty sure that neck is legit.

I don't doubt that there are dodgy guitars out there but in most cases the problem is actually that they are cut and shuts, they're non original custom colours, or they're stolen (or any combination of the three). Faking an entire instrument or even neck is going to be a pretty rare occurrence.

The paler padauk necks really were a thing in 1965. It's a very hard wood which could account for why it looks new. There are more examples, all from 1965 in the pictures below, including one showing a prominent unfaded neck stamp. 

Apart from the replacement bridge and tuners the rest of that bass looks legit to me. The tuners are obviously new - you can tell by the thread being a lot longer than on original pre-CBS tuners. The bridge is obviously a replacement as up until around '67-68 the saddles were threaded. The bridge on this bass where the saddles aren't threaded but are adjusted with a screwdriver rather than an Allen key were used from around '68-83.

The only other thing is the missing decals on the neck, but it does look genuine as it has the correct round laminate fingerboard. These are hard to fake as outside of Fender from 1962-1983, nobody really made them (I have seen a couple on lawsuit era Japanese Tokais, perhaps, and Fender brought them back for the 2013-2017 AVRI line. Musikraft will still make them too). 

Interestingly this bass appears to have a Padauk fingerboard, which Fender used on a handful of basses in 1965 when they stopped using Brazilian rosewood but before they switched to Indian  - this could make it more attractive to buyers.

Electronics look correct, the sunburst looks right for the era, and the scratchplate looks fine too.    

My 1987/88 Jazz Bass Special. I got it in either late 1993 or early 1994 when I was 15/16. Around 1998 it was converted to fretless but the frets went back in a couple of years ago. The only other alteration is the Seymour Duncan Hotstack (Duff McKagan mod) jazz pickup (still have the original single coil in the case). It's missing the F cap on the tone/TBX control and the finish on the bridge has oxidised badly (it was brown/olive rather than black even when I got it, but it's more blue now) but the QC on these was great so it's still good to play after all these years.

19 hours ago, Baloney Balderdash said:

Who says that?

 

I mean anyone who would would kind of not be up to date with the development for the last 10 years or so.

 

Also I don't think Stanley Clarke would play one as his main if they were (though of course that is an Alembic, still however a short scale bass).

 

I agree, to me it seems like in the last 15 or so years short and medium scales have never been more popular. I've not heard any bassist/musician of note say anything disparaging about them at all. Perhaps you do get some negativity from some clueless music shop workers, and there are still a load of stupid myths about instruments that have been doing the rounds for years, but short scales seem to be an essential for a lot of today's top session players  to have in their arsenal. 

On 15/04/2024 at 14:14, Pow_22 said:

 Thirdly ive seen a few MIJ 70's reissues that nail the vibe albeit with incorrect pup spacing.

It's worth saying that from sometime in the mid-late 2000s Fender Japan started using the correct '70s spacing on their reissues. These later basses are also a lot lighter than the '80s/90s versions, which get into boat anchor territory like the originals.

On 15/04/2024 at 14:14, Pow_22 said:

 

Honestly, listening to that on decent headphones, I preferred the sound straight into the soundcard with no DI box. The Reddi and the Minnow were fairly inoffensive, but apart from making the signal louder I don't think they improved anything, while the Caveman and the Bassrig seemed to suck all the high end out of your tone. Straight into the soundcard had the most dynamics to my ears. 

I can understand the use of these boxes when going straight into a PA without an amp, as they can make the signal less sterile, but as effects to make you sound better in front of an amp (or mixing desk if recording), IMO it's the Emperor's new clothes. I'd include the Noble in that category too. 

To be fair to the Bassrig, I have heard people demo it and it does sound good with some saturation/drive on it, but as a clean DI it's nothing special. 

I don't know if any tabs for it exist, but to help you out I think the chords are the following: The introduction is all in F7, the verses go from F, Eb/G (you play G), to Bbsus4, to Bb. The chorus is Gm, C, D/F# (you play F#). The keyboard solo is like the chorus but it moves up to Bb (technically it should be Bbm but the bass is playing roots, the guitar is playing 5ths or power chords, and the keyboard is soloing, so there's no really strong/obvious minor quality to it) to Eb, and then, F/A. There's a kind of middle 8 which is like the verses, but you don't invert the Eb chord, and the outro is all in F again, before a chromatic figure down from F to D, setting up the chorus chord patterns again. 

I've played this before. To me the home key is F - it's certainly the tonic during the verses. The chorus could be heard as being in Gm in but it's really a ii/v pattern, followed by a d in its first inversion. It's much better to interpret a song like this through more of a jazz approach to theory than the classical that most people are more used to and look at the functions of the chords rather than looking at the sharps and flats and assigning a key based on that. 

I was at the Dog and Duck last night when I saw Charles Berthoud sitting in with a blues band. It was terrible - he kept playing so many notes and was slapping and tapping over everything. He was also playing a class D amplifier that had no heft. Nobody in the crowd was dancing due to the lack of groove. Eventually the band got sick of him and invited a Basschat greybeard onto the stage to sit in. From the moment he plugged his (modified) Harley Benton into his vintage '80s Trace Elliot everything changed. The power and heft of his whole notes and the tasteful use of minor pentatonic shapes (no matter whether over a major or minor tonality) had everybody up on the dancefloor grooving away. I later saw Charles outside pacing up and down nervously and chain smoking,  a bit like when Clapton saw Hendrix for the first time. 

True story. There's a lesson for us all there I think. 

Here's mine

3 minutes ago, dclaassen said:

You just need to install Sklar's "producer switch" onto your favorite bass.....

That's actually a good point - I think a lot of producers/artists judge as much with their eyes as they do their ears. A variation on this is turning up with a nice reissue Fender and claiming it to be vintage - I doubt whether anyone could ever really tell the difference. 

19 minutes ago, chris_b said:

 

A situation he should have been able to predict.

 

Sessions range from bringing your own gear and playing what you want, to playing the notes the producer wants on the instrument the producer wants. If you see interviews with US A list session guys, they bring 5 or 6 basses, from a Hofner Club to a Precision with flats. They say they usually end up playing the Precision/flats basses.

To be fair I think most pros would be able to predict this today, a lot less so in the late '90s when I presume this occurred. Sean Hurley famously tells a similar story about working for Robin Thicke with his 5 string Lakland, although he was given a P bass to redo it with rather than being sent home.