FDC484950

I think Status pricing has always been on the low side considering what they offer. Look what a Wal, German custom shop Warwick or a Fodera cost and it’s not as bad as it looks at first. It’s also linked to supply and demand. Clearly enough people are prepared to stump up more than £3K. There is a plethora of options for musicians on a smaller budget so I don’t see anything changing soon.

I had the active one briefly. Poor quality of fit and finish, nut too high, swirl marks all over the maple fretboard, poor neck alignment. Plugged in it was very polite and EQ sounded artificial and not particularly musical. It went back pretty quickly. IMHO if you’re looking for a P with and added J pickup, maybe a passive version would be better (American Performer isn’t much more).

Bebop phrasing is neither swung nor straight but is somewhere in between. As a starting point try to sound the first note of a pair long and the second note short. Over-exaggerate this at first, playing dead straight 8ths notes, then gradually being in a touch of swing. You’ll hit the right feel pretty soon. The other important point is phrasing - Charlie played a saxophone, which is much better at creating beautiful lines and phrasing via breath, so pay attention to legato (long) notes and phrases, and the staccato (short) equivalent. Try singing parts first (doesn’t matter how bad you are as a singer). It really gets the phrasing into your head. Then try to “sing” through the bass. Finally - Donna Lee has a lot of chords and is an odd melody as it starts on beat 3, so it has a backwards feel. Make sure you genuinely know the part off by heart as it’s easy to kid yourself you’ve got it when you’re actually scrabbling for notes.

Well, you know now.

I don’t think they do anything. As I read it, it is just finished to period correct specs with neither ageing nor relic treatment applied.

Re: other brands - their original higher end brand was always marketed as a boutique instrument - multi-layered laminates with fancy woods, electronics and hardware and a ton of personal attention. What Fender used to produce, even in the holy grail days pre-1965, was a basic workmanlike instrument made in the simplest, cheapest way possible with materials easily available to hand. Wood is not as available as it once was - many manufacturers now have to chamber the body because they cannot get light woods - but other than that any Far Eastern factory can produce a bass that’s every bit the equal of a vintage Fender from the early 60s. What they cannot capture is the mojo or the effect on the bass of being played for 50+ years. The Fender custom shop offers the ability to buy a replica that will be a cut above the regular line in terms of wood and finishing options but it’s still just a nice version of a very simple instrument. To me, paying £4K+ for a basic 3-piece painted body/1 piece neck with a BBOT and a single, very cheap passive pickup and big standard tuners is madness, but it’s clearly doing just fine without me. Then again I’ve never played a Fender I really liked so I’m not their target customer.

It’s a tale of woe but there are some salient points: Don’t sell to the US. It’s a long-established fact that their customs are some of the most picky and demanding in the world - they regularly hold all types of goods on spurious requirements. When I worked in shipping 15+ years ago properly documented shipments with all the right paperwork would be held up for days or weeks. There is also a high level of theft in US courier networks. CITES now allows an exception for musical instruments but certain species are still restricted (like Brazilian rosewood) - so importers have to ask. If you must ship - put the wood species on the invoice for all the different types of wood (and anything else organic). Given the very precise nature of Mother of Pearl it’s not surprising that UPS knew little about it or held it up as the US Govt is very strict in this area. All export documentation should contain the harmonised commodity code. This will delay all imports as it’s used for calculating duties and taxes. It’s not enough to rely on the shipping courier to either ask for it or provide it. Just because you are a private customer shipping, does not mean you can avoid jumping through the same hoops as companies have to. It’s annoying but it is what it is. UPS is decent enough by allowing you to ship and declare a large insurance value where most couriers no longer do this. However when anything goes wrong they are largely useless. I have sent 3 shipments recently via next day before 12pm and all 3 have been routed to the wrong warehouse and delivered a day late. I have made repeated attempts to ask for compensation but all I get is “someone will contact you in 1-2 business days”. The last shipment was 2 weeks ago. At least they all arrived undamaged. When you purchase, do it via PayPal or credit card so you have some way of claiming back compensation in case of the above. Given global shipping turmoil it’s probably not the best time to ship outside the UK. I’ve given up on it.

What, like a Gus? No thanks

FWIW I disliked the older Warwick upper shoulder edge as it’s sharp and digs into your forearm (if you happen to play that way when sitting down - not everyone does). The Stage 1 and Stage 2 suffered from this. The Corvette $$ shape is much nicer. It doesn’t look like they’ve altered the upper shoulder curve on the newer Streamer models.

Is anything not boring to you?

Well, to be fair one was on order from last year arriving next week and one was also ordered but didn’t turn up until December, so only one “bought” in 2022 it’s actually a surprisingly similar feeling. However I suspect the source of my gas is a low boredom threshold

Au contraire, by storing them in gig bags in a wardrobe and therefore not becoming day-to-day familiar with seeing them, each time I pick one out it’s like I’ve bought a new bass. I’m hoping this cures my GAS - but with 3 new basses in 3 months I’m not sure it’s working…

Considering he started off playing double bass in jazz clubs around Newcastle, worked hard to generate and sustain success and (co-) wrote some great songs, fair play to him. I’d do the same but I would probably have done it a decade or two earlier

Wasn’t Laurence a regular contributor to Making Music magazine? IIRC it was a free, A4-sized mag that used to be distributed in music shops in the 80s and 90s. It was a fair while ago but I remember he had a good writing style.

Buy what you like. Who cares whether you can play it or not?

Will Lee and Darryl Jones are fabulous bass players but I don’t think that clip really flatters any of the musicians on show. Particularly the overplaying drummer!

A swing and a miss for me. The neck and headstock are totally jarring with the body shape. The body looks a bit like an offset G&L Fallout but is nowhere near as attractive.

IMHO the only improvements that have ever been made to the 4-saddle BBOT are grooves in the baseplate to keep the saddles aligned, and slots to retain the strings instead of holes - makes it so much easier to change strings (unless you just cut them off).

The Charvel may look a great bass and have great features in theory. You need to play it. It might be crap. The problem at this price point is that although overall quality for the price had increased enormously in the last 20 years, you have a reasonable chance of getting one that’s a dog - either the fit and finish or the playability could be poor. For me a 5 is not a 4 with a thicker string added, it’s a different proposition. Few manufacturers build a 5 from the ground up, they just make a slightly bigger 4. It doesn’t work as the B string sounds rubbish. If I were in the market for a traditional looking 5 I’d get a Sire V7 - I’ve owned one, and although a touch weighty with neck dive, it was manageable (and lighter tuners fix the dive). You can probably pick up a used one for half your budget or less, and IMHO there’s nothing else in that price bracket to touch it. Plus if you don’t like it you’re unlikely to lose anything selling it. But by all means try the Charvel if you can - you might love it.

I bought a bass recently that’s about 18 years old. The neck and body are fine but just about every screw has a knackered head. Why on earth people can’t use the right sized screwdriver or Allen key is beyond me - but I suppose between Philips, pozidrive, JIS screwdrivers and metric/imperial Allen keys it’s not always obvious. It’s a US-made bass and it’s been a bit of a mission to get the right replacements. Fortunately the manufacturer has a list of parts but the pickup screws (which go into threaded inserts) are a very odd size and thread pitch so I had to order from StewMac in the US as I couldn’t find any manufacturers in the UK. Others, like the 10-24 1.25” cap head screws, I’ve had to have made to order - expensive, but the Allen heads on the neck bolts on the bass are so badly chewed I only want one attempt to get them off. The East preamp is nice enough (a LOT air bass boost!) but 2 of the pot shafts are quite bent. The circuit is very old so sadly not easy to drop in a replacement pot as newer versions have mini circuit boards on the pot housing. I don’t really want to cough up £180 for a new circuit so may leave as-is, but the newer version takes up much less space in the cavity so would make it easier to fit the battery, which is at the moment a bit of a squeeze. Finally, whilst this should perhaps be filed under diminishing returns, I bought a set of Gotoh GB350 res-o-lite tuners. The original tuners (GB7) were OK, if a little rough. However with a six string that is a bit neck heavy, they really made a difference. The GB7 is supposed to be 62g each vs 40g each for the GB350, but on my accurate scales they came out at 70g vs 35g. On a six, taking 210g off the headstock is not to be sniffed at, but a rather expensive fix. It may not seem like much (or even worthwhile to some) but to me these small changes lift what is already an excellent instrument.

The test of any courier is what happens when things go wrong. From what I’ve read on here you may as well take your pick and cross your fingers! I use UPS as they’re the only courier offering insurance over £1K. They appear to be reliable enough - inevitably they sometimes route to the wrong hub, resulting in a day’s delay, but otherwise seem to be OK. DPD are my favourite as the tracking is much more real-time and you get 1hr delivery slots, but they don’t offer extended cover.

Speed is basic physics, no more. We all have our limits, and it’s largely governed by the efficiency of plucking, fretting and coordination between the hands. It gives you longer term reliability of technique. This is commonly misinterpreted as stamina or strength. It isn’t. The heart of the problem will be a particular thing you’re doing that doesn’t scale up in speed. Playing slowly and gradually speeding up is OK but if your hands aren’t doing it as efficiently as possible you’ll hit that wall. As Doddy says, make sure you really know it and can play through slower at speed. As soon as you get close to where you think you’re going to lose it, break it down until you find the problem (or heaven forbid, problems). Then look at what you’re doing - is it crossing multiple strings, pedalling between a high and low note etc? Generally these types of issues relate to a specific pattern with the plucking hand. Back when I used to teach it was normally inconsistent plucking - first time through a line the student would start with index finger and fall down, second time they started with middle finger and it was fine. Speed will then come by gradually increasing tempo, with occasional bursts of a smaller chunk you are comfortable with at a much higher tempo. Finally, keep playing every day. You will hit brick walls but regular playing and a consistent approach and you will soon be flying - playing fast isn’t all that hard!

I’ve nearly bought a classic 5 a few times but haven’t, mainly because I play mainly seated and the lack of a forearm contour puts me off. Some of those pastel finishes like coral and mint are just lush but oh so rare over here…