maxrossell

[quote name='Mark Latimour' post='969265' date='Sep 27 2010, 11:15 AM']Do you honestly believe that Fodera are making a 900% profit margin on their guitars?[/quote] No, I don't. I was using hyperbole. However there are far smaller luthiers than Fodera out there charging one-third or less of what Fodera are charging for handmade custom basses of similar quality and spec. That said, I'm pretty sure they're making at least 900% profit on their pickguards.

What's the latest bit of gear you got, why did you get it and what did you pay/trade for it? And crucially, was it worth it, or are you a bit disappointed? I'd start, but my new gear won't arrive for a half-hour or so. GO!

[quote name='clauster' post='969231' date='Sep 27 2010, 10:45 AM']Being, at heart, mostly a fan of the Precision bass, I have to say NONE![/quote] +1 Hooray for luddites!

[quote name='BigRedX' post='969195' date='Sep 27 2010, 10:11 AM']Really? In what way? It's all a question of what it's worth to you. IMO paying buying a Ferrari is a waste of money - it's only a car and not a very useful one at that as you can't get a couple of basses and your amp in the the back, but that's only my opinion, and all it means is that I'm unlikely to be buying one. I was going to ask you what you spent your money on but if your disposable income really is only £50 a month then I have to assume that you're either a student, in a minimum wage job or have made lifestyle choices that don't leave you with much spare cash. If it's one of the first two you have my sympathies, if it's the later then your circumstances are up to you.[/quote] I actually work a less than minimum wage job. I'm a carer. I'm not complaining, my situation has numerous advantages that make up for the disadvantages, and although I've never worked harder I still think it's the most worthwhile job I've ever done. The government doesn't, but f*ck 'em. I also agree with you that a Ferrari is a waste of money. The point I'm making is that when you buy a Ferrari you're not paying ten times what the car actually cost to make.

[quote name='Mark Latimour' post='969199' date='Sep 27 2010, 10:13 AM']I don't understand how you come to the view that Ferraris are justifiably priced but Foderass are not. Can you explain?[/quote] I'm not saying that Ferrari Ltd. (or whatever they're called) don't take a tidy profit on each sale, but the price of a Ferrari is largely justified by the huge development and design costs for comparatively small production runs, and the cost of parts and labour, as well as what I understand is a fairly impressive aftercare plan. [quote]Given what circumstances? If you don't know the circusmtances of the buyer, how can you say a decision is idiotic? You're saying its overpriced, but reality is its not overpriced, its just "priced" and you happen to not like the price. Why is it not overpriced? There is a two year waiting list and the basses are selling. If anything, its "underpriced" since they can't keep up with demand. Here's a thought experiment. If 2 years ago, you placed an oder for a Fodera at the Fodera pricing 2 years ago. You could take delivery of the bass today and sell it used for quite a bit more money than you paid for it 2 years ago (because of price inflation). There's a good chance if you ordered a bass today at their current prices you could do the same thing 2 years from now when it is delivered. Would it really be an idiotic move to buy somethign that, two yearsfrom now when its delivered, could be sold for more than what you paid for it?[/quote] Given the circumstances that in [i]any[/i] situation paying many, many times what a product cost to develop and fabricate is an idiotic decision, especially when similar products of similar quality are available for a fraction of the price. I don't accept that the value of an object is "whatever someone will pay for it", because it's proven that some people will buy pretty much anything with a ridiculous price tag [i]just because it's so expensive[/i]. I don't debate that people are still ordering Foderas, probably including the £12k one, and the reasons for that will be that they either fetishise the brand, or because they're under the mistaken impression that a £12k bass is six times better than a £2k bass - neither of which have anything to do with the actual cost of the instrument. I'm not going to comment on buying stuff because you think it'll accrue in value. That has even less to do with the real value of the instrument.

[quote name='cheddatom' post='969185' date='Sep 27 2010, 09:57 AM']I think your sweeping generalisation means you're risking missing out on the perfect guitarist. A good guitarist will be able to get loads of sounds out of his chosen gear. If RGs feel like the best guitar to him - who cares?[/quote] In my experience, that's not the case. With guitarists generally, the choice of guitar says a massive amount about the player's tastes and style. Ibanez RGs are a particular case, in that they're very versatile and extremely well put together and so on, but are designed for and aimed at a very specific type of player. If a guy just happened to own an Ibanez RG then I wouldn't comment, as long as he was also happy to use a Strat or a Les Paul or some kind of Gretsch or something of that variety in the band. It was the guy's insistence that he refuses to play on anything other than a precision-designed guitar aimed squarely at fast, technical players that immediately put me off. The whole idea behind the music in the band that we have is that it's played on clapped-out, gritty old instruments that you kind of have to fight with to make them work. That informs everything from the feel of the songs right down to even the lyrics. Putting a guy with an RG in there would be as jarring as having Kerry King strap on his BC Rich and play guitar for The Smiths. To me, at least. That said, our bass player uses a Warwick Thumb, which works very nicely. But it sounds really old-school, and it looks like a blind guy carved it out of a dead tree.

[quote name='Mark Latimour' post='969175' date='Sep 27 2010, 09:51 AM']Try a pepto bismol. Seriously, what else can you do but quit worrying? I'm being honest here. It is absolutely true that in life there will always be people with more than you. Who cares? Strive to be happy. That's not to say you shouldn't try to earn more money to make yourself more comfortable, but just that if you are constantly worrying about stuff that others have that you don't (or can't) have, then you will never apprecaite the stuff in your life that is good.[/quote] I can keep worrying. I believe the world would be a better place if people put more thought into this kind of thing rather than follow the system's instructions to look the other way. And I don't equate money with comfort. I don't think poverty's a bad situation to be in as long as it doesn't actually harm you. And again, I don't give a sh*t about what people [i]have[/i]. What I care about is what people [i]waste[/i]. [quote]That's capitalism and it's hardly Fodera's fault. If you want to chagne that you will need to do that by either running for parliament or voting. I won't enter further into the "worth" debate only to say that an item is "worth" what the market is willing to pay for it. Just because you don't think its "worth it" is irrelevant to any assesment of an item's market worth unless you are the customer base targetted by the product.[/quote] I'm not blaming Fodera. They're apparently trying to dissuade people from buying their stuff. If that's true then why not, even if it is a weird way of going about it. If however they're actually trying to sell their products for stupid prices, then what they're doing is moving their stuff further out of reach of the people for whom it was intended (i.e. professional musicians looking for tailored custom instruments) and in the process losing their integrity. I realise that "integrity" isn't a word that capitalism takes seriously.

[quote name='Mark Latimour' post='969166' date='Sep 27 2010, 09:44 AM']Yeah, it's ridiculous. If you really think about it, if I went into a Ferrari forum and started posting about how overpriced Ferarris are in how they are pointless and unaffordable it would, by definition, be trolling. Yet for some reason it seems to be a legitimate form of discussion to whinge about basses / amps / pedals etc that you can't afford. I could totally understand the whinging if there was some new Coalition government law implemented that said that everyone had to own a Fodera Anthony Jackson Signature with Titanium Bridge, a Millenia STD-1 Preamp and two Berg IP310s with a collection of DAM Pedals or they were not allowed to play bass. Yeah, in that scenario it would be totally justified to whinge about the price of that gear. However, its not the case. No one has to buy any bass gear at all. THose who choose to make money from bass playing need to buy sufficient gear to enable them to make money, but you can do that on a SX bass through a Beringer Amp if you want. Basses are by their nature luxury items and I can't fathom how people don't seem to understand that you will always have a scale of "cheap" to "expensive" in any category of unecessary (or for that matter, necessary) products. So long as you arn't forced to buy them, what does it matter if FOdera wants to make a £25,000 bass? Am I going to buy it? No, but what difference does it make [b]to me[/b] if someone does?[/quote] I think the difference there is that all Ferraris are incredibly expensive, and in most cases the prices are more or less justifiable. Fodera's twelve grand bass, however, makes it somewhat of an oddity, if not entirely unique, and the consensus is that a lot of the items on that price list come with entirely unjustifiable price tags attached. What's weird, if anything, is that people pointing out that given the circumstances buying anything that overpriced would be a completely idiotic move has been met by a few people saying, "yeah well you're just jealous of the people who can afford it".

[quote name='Mark Latimour' post='969152' date='Sep 27 2010, 09:26 AM']I'm not telling you to "shut up", I'm telling you that you need to get over this chip you have on your shoulder. You will be a lot happier if you just accept that there will always be people in the world who have more than you and there will always be people in the world who have less than you. Be happy with what you have, there is no need to poo poo what others have and what others don't have. ...and to some people its a days wage. The point is, I never said you [b]should[/b] spend any percentage of wage on a handbag. You need to spend what you are comfortable spending. Can't afford it? Don't buy it. By that logic everything is prohibitively expensive since there is always someone who has no money / well below the poverty line. Don't be silly, the reality is that [b]you[/b] think its prohibitive because you cant afford it. Luxury items are, by their nature, "unecessary" and relatively pricey (and by that I mean handbags, basses, sunglasses etc anything that is not necessary). Its just a question of the customer base for the product. There is no £20 handbag that looks identical. A plastic tesco bag does the same job as a handbag and is about 5p. I assume that your significant over will be encouraged to only use plastic bags to carry things in? What can bill gates buy with £1 that you can't buy with £1? As I said, the purchasing power of money is fixed based on the market, the point you are trying to make is not that the value of money is relative, but the amount of money available (which differs from person to person) makes affordability relative. That operates under the mistaken assumption that if the person with the £2k handbag didn't spend the money on that handbag, it would somehow find its way to the person without the money. That's clearly not the case. If the person didn't have the £2k handbag they'd have something else or just another £2k in the bank and people who don't know where their next meal is coming from would still be no better off. Which comes back to my point, you will always be a lot happier in life if you quit worrying about the people with more stuff than you. They will always exist, no matter how much, or little, money you have.[/quote] I won't itemise like last time cos otherwise we'll end up writing a novel between us. I suppose ultimately my point is first of all that "you'll be happier if you quit worrying about..." is a phrase that turns my stomach, and second of all that a system in which some people own so much money that they happily pay ten times what an object is practically worth to satisfy what can only be described as frivolity, while other people (who more often than not work just as hard if not harder) struggle to put food on the table, is totally revolting.

[quote name='Mark Latimour' post='969128' date='Sep 27 2010, 08:45 AM']What percentage of your wage is it okay for you to spend on something?[/quote] Well that really depends. I don't earn a lot of money, so the answer changes in function of how much I have left over after I've paid for rent, food and bills. Usually I'm lucky if it's more than fifty quid a month. Optimistically, if I never bought anything else, it would take me about four years to afford your wife's bag. I mean, in theory I suppose if I made a hundred grand a year I would have tonnes of money left over after paying rent and bills and buying food. I'm not sure I would think a two and a half grand bag was a better deal merely by virtue of it being a smaller percentage of my spending money, though.

[quote name='Mark Latimour' post='969128' date='Sep 27 2010, 08:45 AM']At a guess, in your case, I'd say its the age when you come to realise that everyone is different and you should worry less about what [b]they[/b] do and their lives and more about your own. Put simply: get over it.[/quote] I was under the impression that discussion forums are here for us to express our (frequently different) views without being told to shut up. [quote]As to your the mistakes in your post: Two months' wages on a bag: who said that two month's wages should be spent? Perhaps its just a weeks wage or a day's wage.[/quote] It's my two months' wages, and probably around the average two months' wages of young unmarried people in the UK. [quote]Probibatively expensive: why assume that anything is prohibitively expensive? Clearly its affordable to sum.[/quote] That's the point of the modifier "prohibitive". The fact that it's that expensive prohibits anyone but a select few from purchasing it. [quote]Pointlessly expesive: Just because you don't understand the point doesn't make it pointless.[/quote] Explain to me the point of a £2.5k handbag as opposed to a £20 handbag that looks identical and does the same job. If there's some salient point I'm missing here, I'm prepared to learn. [quote]Vaule of money: They value of money isn't relative, its fixed £1 for me buys the same as £1 for Bill Gates. The ability to spend it is relative, it may be harder for me to justify spending £1 than Bill Gates, but the value is fixed.[/quote] That's not strictly true, is it. For a start, £1 of Bill Gates' money is about 1/21,000,000,000th of what he has in the bank, which means that he generates at a very conservative estimate around £2,000 in interest per minute. I on the other hand am poor, so I don't earn any interest on my £1. But that's beside the point. Money's value depends on what you spend it on. To some, a two grand handbag might sound like a bit of fun. To people who don't know where their next meal are coming from (and believe me, there are far more of them), a two grand handbag is like using gold leaf as toilet paper.

[quote name='cheddatom' post='969126' date='Sep 27 2010, 08:43 AM']that's crazy IMO[/quote] Not to me. I wouldn't necessarily recommend the course of action to anyone else, but the music we make is very deliberately stylised "old school". Vintage guitars, old tweed combos, the drummer plays a 70's Premier, we're into kind of heavy-soul-blues-rock with a tad of early 90's grunge thrown in (more Pearl Jam than Mudhoney). A guy glued to a pointy guitar with a Floyd on it just wouldn't work. And I don't like to make generalisations, but guys who collect 80s-style Japanese superstrats don't tend to focus their playing on sloppy first-position chords with a big wooly low-gain sound.

[quote name='Mark Latimour' post='969110' date='Sep 27 2010, 08:27 AM']I have to assume: 1. You are very young; and 2. You are not married. My wife has handbags that range in price from £50 - £2500. She uses them all and she buys them because she enjoys them. I have bass gear that ranges from pedals that cost £30 to basses that cost Fodera like money. I use them all and buy them because I enjoy them. You may think we have "blown" a lot of money on these things, but it doesn't always work that way. You can easily prioritise your life to spend the money on the things that bring you pleasure and avoid spending on things that don't. For example, my wife's car (I don't need to drive) is worth about £100 (seriously), she buys lots of clothing from H&M and Gap. OTOH, I don't buy clothing from theose shops, but I have far less clothes. In the end, its just a matter of how you choose to spend your money. We are comfortable, have savings and give money to charity. We also choose to spend [b]our[/b] money how we want. Get over it.[/quote] Assume away. So at what age will I start thinking it's okay to spend two months' wages on a small bag to keep keys and lipstick in? Will I come to the realisation as soon as I exchange rings with my spouse, or is it a more gradual thing? And what exactly is the realisation, is it the belief that it's okay to derive pleasure from owning things that are prohibitively and pointlessly expensive, or is it more to do with the value of money becoming relative when you have lots of it?

[quote name='molan' post='969092' date='Sep 27 2010, 07:50 AM']Sorry - I thought the point was that if you were only buying things because they would 'do' the job they were intended for then you'd go for the lowest cost option. I'm a very average player so obviously I'm not allowed to buy nice basses because people will think badly of me I'm afraid I still think that calling someone a "bell end" simply because they own something expensive is a ridiculous way to behave, especially in a public forum where some of those people might see the comment and be offended.[/quote] That's not really the point, either. I said £1,200 on a bass as a rather arbitrary figure, but let's assume for the sake of the argument that for £1,200 you can get a really amazingly high-quality bass (I don't think that's a particularly outrageous statement). Or more to the point let's say that for £1,200 you can get a bass that will perfectly suit your purpose, whatever that happens to be. Or let's even extend it to two grand, for which you can get a bass made from what you want, in the shape you want, the colour you want, with all the appointments you want. What exactly then is the point of spending the extra £10,000, apart from being able to tell people that you're loaded enough to own a £12k bass?

[quote name='molan' post='969091' date='Sep 27 2010, 07:44 AM']Maybe that's why we differ in opinions - I haven't met anyone with a £200K car (there really can't be many of these out there?) but I do know plenty of people who've had £40K - £60K cars, £200 is nothing out of the ordinary for a handbag for a lot of people I know (the last one my wife bought was £350 in the sale!), £3K+ watches are definitely pretty common where I work and, mostly through BC, I've met quite a few people with basses worth loads of money. Without exception every single one of these people has worked very hard indeed have enough money to buy these things. . .[/quote] The really begs the question then, I suppose, of why you'd work all that hard just to spend all that cash on a handbag? I've met a few people who own £200k+ cars, and all except one of them had inherited the wealth. The one who didn't directly inherit the wealth was born into an extremely rich family and fast-tracked through all the best schools into a high-paid city job. People can't exactly help their circumstances, I suppose, but specifically in the case of a handbag, where there is literally no meaningful difference whatsoever between a £20 one and a £200 one, why [i]anyone[/i] would choose to blow £200 is completely beyond me.

[quote name='molan' post='968937' date='Sep 26 2010, 10:35 PM']I totally agree. I've always found that the only people who bitch about other people who own beautiful and expensive things are those that simply can't afford them themselves - the ones who shout the loudest are usually the young who don't understand the concept of accumulated wealth, or those who have reached a stage in their lives when they realise they are unlikely ever to be able to afford them. Both groups usually then resort to 'knob' jokes - still, if it keeps them amused then so be it . . .[/quote] Also, it's easy to chalk up any form of criticism to jealousy and/or ignorance. I may be young but I have a decent grasp of the concept of accumulated wealth, and I have no idea if I'll ever be so rich I can blow what I currently make in a year on a single instrument, although I sincerely hope not. It's not exactly bizarre or unreasonable to object to the concept of the profit margin on an item vastly exceeding the cost of parts and labour. I'm not criticising the idea of Fodera deliberately making his instruments less affordable if the reason is that he needs to clear a log of back orders and doesn't want to have to increase the size of his business. A business which has a blanket policy of drastically overpricing its products so that only wealthy status-hungry pinheads buy them, however, is banking on materialism, greed, vanity and envy, and perpetuating cultural aspiration towards worship of the rich. People who buy £5k watches don't get them because they have a pressing need to acquire a really good watch.

[quote name='dlloyd' post='969085' date='Sep 27 2010, 07:27 AM']That might have been said in jest, but it's possible the OP is not making a great impression with his instrument choices: Warmoth 8 string Explorer Status Graphite John Entwistle Buzzard Alembic Stanley Clarke Signature Standard I'm sure they're all nice instruments, but if the bands he's auditioning for are looking for someone to fit into a 'traditional' bass playing role and he pulls out a Status Buzzard or an Alembic at the audition, chances are they're going to be far more sensitive to potential over-playing than with someone who pulls out a Fender Precision.[/quote] That's very true. And even regardless of the playing, most bands have an idea of what their "image" is (even if the image is not having an image), and part of that is what instruments you play. I've in the past turned down a rhythm guitar player without even hearing what his playing was like because he said he owned a brace of Ibanez RGs and wouldn't consider using anything else.

[quote name='molan' post='968866' date='Sep 26 2010, 09:36 PM']You know, I genuinely think this is one of the most ludicrous comments I've ever seen on BC, lol. I'm assuming you have a £5 plastic Watch, drive a Trabant, keep your money in one those fabric and Velcro wallets and play a £50 Chinese made bass - after all, each these will 'do' the job for which they were intended. . . Personally if I met someone with all of those expensive things you listed I'd assume they'd worked bloody hard, been very successful at their careers and were reaping the benefits - and good luck to them, that's what I'd say [/quote] Actually I don't own a watch or a car or even a wallet for that matter, and my bass is indeed Chinese and I actually paid £20 for it. It's very nice. Not that I couldn't afford a watch, a car, a wallet or a more expensive bass, but, as you say, it's a matter of having what I need versus satisfying an urge to spend. I know people who own £50 watches, £20,000 cars, £20 handbags and £1,200 basses, and they're people who work bloody hard, are very successful at their careers and are reaping the benefits. Most people would think that those things are very nice indeed. But everyone I've ever met who owns £5,000 watches, £200,000 cars, £200 handbags and £12,000 basses inherited their wealth and hasn't done a proper day's work in their entire lives.

From the point of view of a frontman and singer/guitarist, and having gone through more bass players than I've had hot dinners, one thing I've learned is that when a bass player you're auditioning hears the demo and says "I'm going to play this my way", the audition is a waste of time. If a bass player is unwilling to play the line the way it was written, it means one of three things: 1. They're incapable of playing it, or 2. They don't like what you wrote, or 3. There isn't enough opportunity for them to show off their awesome technique I've mentioned it on here before, but here's the story I relate most often. It's so lame it sounds like I made it up, but I swear I didn't. A bass player turns up to audition. We say "as you will have noticed from the demos we gave you, we all play tuned to Eb standard, so you'll need to tune down a half-step." He says "Nah, it'll be fine, I'll play through it, I don't like tuning down." I try to convince him that he really ought to tune down, but he refuses. So we jam a couple of tunes, and he plays really badly because he's having to rush all over the place to get to the basslines instead of being able to use open strings. Then about midway through the audition, we're playing a track, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, in the middle of a verse, he starts playing funk slap. We stop and say "what was that", and he says "oh, I just thought I'd try something." There you have it, a bass player who showed up unprepared to make even the most basic of concessions to our style (i.e. taking twenty seconds to retune) but thinks he can just write himself a little bass solo in the middle of the verse of one of our songs because he's obviously [i]that[/i] good. These days I only ever hire beginner bass players. Why? They know they're not sh*t-hot so they don't try to show off all the time, they don't have any funny ideas about bass being a lead instrument, and they don't think that they're in a position to rewrite all your stuff to make it more "interesting" for them to play.

[quote name='Pete Academy' post='968338' date='Sep 26 2010, 01:33 PM']I left my Tobias Classic 5 outside my door after a gig. I didn't realise until a week later, as at the time I was using that and a Warwick for different gigs. I reported it to the police, phoned a load of music shops, and then set off to my local Cash Converter with a photo and some info. Five mins after I'd left CC, one of their guys rang me to say he knew where the bass was. Apparently a young kid had sold it to them for £25. They said they couldn't identify it, so it was sold to someone they knew for £80. They said they could get it back, but I had to go back the next day. I told them I couldn't, so they told me to come back within an hour. I gave them £60, so they wouldn't involve the police, and they produced it from the back of the shop. I think they were lying and had the bass there all the time, because they had an inkling it may be valuable. I didn't care, though...I was very relieved and very lucky. The fact is, when I first phoned music shops to tell them to look out for it, loads of people told me they'd had similar experiences.[/quote] I must have been lucky then, cos the Cash Coverters where my bass got pawned after it was stolen helped me out right away, and made the guy who nicked it pay extra to get it back off them. I think they gave him thirty quid for it and made him pay £100 to get it back without being shopped to the filth.

I had a worse one. I was walking home from work one day, and my path took me past a pawn shop. In the window of the pawn shop was my bass, that I had left in a shared rehearsal space I occupied. One of the c*nts in the other band had nicked it and pawned it for weed money. Fortunately I was able to get it sorted. But it was not a nice feeling.

[quote name='thisnameistaken' post='968240' date='Sep 26 2010, 11:27 AM']I hate listening to a bunch of people who haven't rehearsed playing extended blues jams[/quote] Let me tell you, when you've spent the past three years hearing nothing but sh*tty metal bands, a couple of hours of blues jam is extremely welcome.

Hey, you know, they're running a business. It all depends on who they want to cater for. When I see someone with a £5,000 watch when a £50 watch will do, with a £200,000 car when a £20,000 car will do, with a £200 handbag when a £20 handbag will do, or with a £12,000 bass when a £1,200 bass will do, I think one thing. And that thing is "bell end".

What a waste of time. Any magazine's favourite way of filling space, engaging readers and creating spinoff debates, and all they have to do is recycle a paragraph of two of biog for each player who gets a mention. That's why every bloody magazine has about ten of these kinds of "reader polls" a year. Why not write about something of actual interest instead of going "Ooh, Flea's better than Claypool" for the 100th time.

Also, as well as being way more selective about the shows I play, I've all but stopped going to see bands. The other night I went to see a jam, and I kid you not, it was the best live music I've seen in years. Just a bunch of good guys playing some tunes because they liked it. It was cool and relaxed and there was no pressure and it was just fun for the musicians, for the crowd, for everyone. I'm going back next time to join in. But it threw a really harsh contrast over the other live music I've been seeing of, which has mainly consisted of a load of awful derivative metal bands playing stadium shows to ten people in pubs. There's such a noticeable difference now between the people who play music because they love music and the people who play music because they're pretending to be Ozzy/Metallica/Lamb of God/Dream Theater/etc. that going to most gigs has become an exercise in trying very hard not to cringe.