Beedster

The three I just sold

Likewise Greg, and I genuinely believe that some of the best instruments I've owned came out of this. My current main bass below is a case in point, it's tall all intents a worn Tony Franklin, but wow, what a lovely bass to play, lovely pair of PUPs by Jason Lollar, circuit by Kiogon, body by Fender, neck by Warmoth at significantly around 25% what the Tony Franklin would cost new Think I'm going to be posting a lot of pictures in this thread

I know, you've got to laugh though, I auditioned for a band who said exactly that. Talk about 'All the gear no idea'. There must have been £20k worth of amps, guitars and drums in the studio, they looked rather disparagingly as I wheeled in my rather old and beaten up Mesa Road Ready cab and 400+ head, and looked positively ill when I pulled out a very ordinary looking Precision. We started with Come Together and it became immediately obvious that to them 'Pro' was short for "Demonstrating commitment to the band by spending lots of cash' as opposed to some perhaps more relevant things such as, I don't know, practicing, understanding EQ and volume (oh, and reverb), learning lyrics etc. I didn't stay long

It's a little recognised fact by the like of Morrissey that in producing a decent album the talent outside of the tracking room significantly outweighs that in it; engineers, producer, sleeve designers, even dare I say label execs/PR/marketing, without any of whom his work would never have seen the light of day. The only trait that tends to be seen at a much higher level in the tracking room is ego

Off the back of this thread...... And also a PM conversation that got me thinking, a snippet of which is below....... Those three I just sold are better than nearly all Fenders I've played, including Custom Shop, they just didn' t happen to be made in Corona! I'll make a suggestion mate, give it a go, you can make great basses from cheap parts picked up on this forum or on ebay, and if they don't work out, just move it on and try again. I keep saying I'll stop but I never do, in part because it's therapeutic, and in part because my main bass, a 1970's Fender body and Warmoth fretless neck, was the result of years of trial and error. Best way of getting a custom bass is to build your own I thought this, especially the last sentence about best way to get a custom bass, would be a good conversation to take to the broader community, also in the context of this thread about 'Pro' basses and 'Pro price tags i reckon that given a few weeks looking on eBay/BC/Reverb, I can put together a pro quality bass for usually around £300-£500 depending to a degree on luck. Just amazes me that more people don't

But why should 'Pro' mean top end. Many pros in many field use equipment that gets the job done at a price point that reflects the cost benefit ratio in that context. What's the most expensive mic you can buy? It'll be bloody expensive. Is it the mic most pros would use? Mo, you're going to find far more pros use SM58s than using Neumans and the like. Even the relatively humble - by Neuman standards - SM7B has been used on some of the most famous rock and pop tracks out there, as well as in broadcasting applications worldwide and can still be picked up new for little more than £300. The term 'Pro' should not equate to best, most expensive or most desirable, just what equipment pros go to. Let's be honest, the definition of a 'pro' bass in historical terms, and in many respects contemporary as well, is the standard Fender Precision. There, I said it

Most pros throughout the last 60 or so years have probably earned the majority of their income playing basses of similar quality to the HB

Depends what you mean, some players like a bass set up in a way that would not work for other players..... I guess that a criteria for a 'pro bass' is that it can be set up to suit the player. Budget basses in the 70's and 80's often couldn't, but even the cheapest basses today generally can. I'll go back to the violin bow I mentioned above; it was like having a wand in my hand, it almost had a life of its own, having played violin for almost 40 years, that was quite a shock. I've played basses that retail at several thousand pounds and have simply never experienced that degree of price/performance sympatico. I honestly believe - based on a LOT of experience - that much above £1000, and by comparison with other instruments, there are very few improvements that can be made to an electric bass that make it a better instrument, in most cases just a more expensive one. Certainly certain woods building processes (hand versus CNC might) warrant the price tag, but when I think of my Wals for example, whilst they were glorious pieces of design and technology, as instruments they simply were not significantly better than similar instruments using cheaper components and less traditional build techniques costing significantly less. Pros, and non-pros alike, play expensive basses for the same reason that people in all walks of life have a price point that seems appropriate to them for whatever it is they are buying. Stella Artois nailed it.....

Yep, basses are basses, two bits of wood that anyone with some decent tools could build and some bits of metal that are likewise not hard to engineer. A £300 bass in the hands of a pro will sound great, and not hugely different to a £30k bass. Contrast with the difference between a £300 and £30k acoustic instrument such as violin, double bass or mandolin and there’s no contest. I’m a half decent violinist, and recently played my usual instrument, a 100 year old German blonde, with a very high end bow. I could play lines at twice the speed I can with my usual bow. Give me a Squier or a Fodera, I’ll be able to play pretty much the same stuff at the same speed and it’ll sound pretty much the same

Given his current persona, the title of his first hit is, well, ironic

Saw him described - by a vegetarian - as the type of vegetarian who makes you want to go to McDonald’s just to fosters him off

I think that's the crux. I'm not especially worried about the woodiness of a bass's tone, I think it goes back to my childhood of playing woody sounding instruments (fiddle, acoustic guitar), and longing for that glorious distorted loud and visceral tone that only the electric instrument can give you. But having said this, I've owned three or four Precisions that were decidedly woody, and the woodiness was 100% in the wood (seems obvious but I think that some of the suggestions about suggest you can get it otherwise), almost as if the instrument were semi-acoustic. The one that I remember as being most woody was a '73, ash but very lightweight, and stripped. This is N=1 of course, but I always felt the woodiness was the result of the weight, the lack of varnish BUT ALSO something about the wood itself, because I've owned other lightweight stripped instruments that didn't sound woody at all. Unlike WoT I don't use my ears, i use my chin. I plant it hard on the upper horn, and know within seconds whether I'm going to like a bass's tone. That particular bass almost had my fillings out! But importantly, in all the tinkering I've done with Fender and Fender style basses in the last 15 years, I've never come across a bass that started out not sounding woody but that became so as the result of changing any of the metal components. A change of neck can shift the core tone a bit, but everything else just brings out different aspects of the core tone itself, and if that core tone isn't woody.......

For me Morrissey lost any right to an audience when he equated the Norway massacre to McDonalds, not so much because there wasn't at some level a degree of logic in his argument - life is life and is precious whatever form it takes - but that he chose to express it when and how he did, with no apparent understanding of the potential sensitivities of people in his audience or their right to not have to be subjected to his rants. I generally have broad tolerance of people's rights within the law to their own views, political, religious and cultural, but not of people who take inappropriate advantage of social status to advance them out of context.

Well that's pretty much 100% exactly what I was going to say also Al Kelpie just delivered a stunning old Fender to Beedster Towers, and in doing so narrowly avoided being run over by Mrs Beedster and subsequently attacked by Buddy, our poorly behaved Labrador. Lovely lovely guy, and an absolute pleasure to deal with. Kelpie, hope the band gets going again soon. Al, I'll see you at Kelpie's first gig back Cheers Chris