Belka

Congrats - I have had a similar bass for 30 years now - my first decent one. Mine is the same colour but is a later model - a G serial which is probably a 1988 model. Mine has smaller polepieces on the pickups (although they're still a hot wind compared to standard pickups) and the beefier bridge. I've tried the Seymour Duncan hotstack in mine (still have the original of course). It doesn't change the tone much at all, but its one advantage is it stops hum. The original is a true single coil and will hum a bit with both pickups on (and when it's soloed of course). It's up to you of course, but personally I would leave the finish alone. Fender Japan's Candy Apple red was one of the nicest ones Fender ever did, and as you say yours is in great condition. Also, that finish, like most of the Fender finishes from the '70/80s, is incredibly thick. I presume Bow finishing know what they're doing but I'd imagine most paint shops these days instinctively will do thinner, lighter finishes, and you may end up altering the tone, which is not what you want. Also, even with a paint job it won't be exactly like one of the earlier Jazz Bass Specials that Duff used. Those had the truss adjustment at the heel, not at the headstock like yours, and I think some of them even had the micro-tilt adjustment hole in the neckplate. The necks were thicker too. Also, one thing I forgot - I think, although I may be mistaken - that the earlier 'Duff' basses had the old 7.25" radius, whereas yours and mine have a radius which is a lot flatter - somewhere from 9.5-12". If you're really set on a white one, personally I'd hold out until one becomes available, then sell this one to fund it. You don't see them up for sale that often but they do come up. You could try reaching out to Bass Japan Direct - they might well be able to find you one.

Here's a photo of my bass collection circa 2015 in Kyiv. Apart from the MusicMan all the other basses are SPs. The birdseye fretless and the 4 string I still have now. The orange one I sold shortly after this photo was taken, and the purpleheart 6 is stuck in Kyiv (I intend to go back and get it but due to the war it's not that easy to get there and back). The sixer was made in 2004/5 when he still had Fodera parts. The bridge and tuners are all Fodera badged and the Bartolini soapbars were the ones Fodera used in the Anthony Jackson contrabasses before they switched to Duncans.

I used to live in Ukraine and knew Stas well. I still have a couple of his basses with me here in the UK (as well as one which is still stuck in Ukraine). They're very well made instruments. Going by the serial number, this bass was built in July 2009. I can't be sure but I'd guess everything is stock on it as he used those bridges and the Wilkinson tuners quite a bit on his no frills basses (for a higher price you could get fancy tops, Gotoh/Schaller hardware, etc. - at some points he used to get electronics/hardware from Fodera if they no longer needed them - their old bridges and Bartolini pickups when they switched mainly over to Seymour Duncan for example).

That's no '75 - 4 bolt neck and a white pickguard so probably late '73 - early '74. I know the '76-83 S series Jazz basses always get the worst rep for quality control, but I've always noticed that the shoddiest routing/fit tends to be on mid '70s (around '73-75 basses). QC actually picked up through the late '70s and the later S series basses are quite well put together, although as we all know the weight increased a great deal which puts people off them. I understand it's different for P basses - the early '70s seems to be one of the best eras.

I've played there 2 or 3 times - the last time being Easter weekend 2023. Both times the crowd were quite boisterous as Burns-bass says, but we didn't see any real trouble and when we played there were a couple of bouncers working. I quite enjoyed the gigs but parking is a nightmare. we had to park in some unloading bays in Marsh street across the road, then leave the gear in pub and drive to a multi-storey and park there, walk back to the pub, set up, play, and then the same in reverse order at the end of the night. The payment takes a few weeks to come through too but they always pay in the end and the manager is quite easy to get on with.

Here are Dave Richmond's own words on the Walker Brothers (taken from the Talkbass thread): I did some work with The Walker Brothers before they split up. That was at the very start of my session career just after I had left the John Barry Seven. On that Solo album with Scott there were three different musical directors. Herbie did play on some of the tracks. I can usually spot Herbie’s style of playing. As you know he played on ‘War of the Worlds’ on it you can here him playing a lot of stuff very high up at times. As far as I know he always played a Fender Bass Guitar. You can spot the difference on the ‘The Old Man’s Back in Town’ where the sound is more ‘Gutsy’. I had no idea I was playing on ‘The old man’s back in Town’ until last year. In fact I had never even heard it before. I was asked by Paul Osborne of KPM music to be interviewed on Soho Radio (a small independent radio station based in Windmill Street in Soho, London) When I arrived there they asked me about The ‘Old Man’s Back’ track. I said ‘Play it to me and I’ll tell you’ As. soon as they played it I new it was me (one guy nearly fainted, he was so excited!) It was exactly my style of playing at the time. If anyone is interested you can go to Soho Radio’s website and hear the broadcast as it went out. Just search on ‘Dave Richmond’ and it should come up.

As great as Herbie was, the album was all Dave Richmond. Live was certainly Herbie though.

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.

Thanks!

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.