What is an expensive bass?

[TimR]

6 minutes ago, neepheid said:

 

Because you're worth it.  Don't let that pesky imposter syndrome get in your way.  And lose the "just".  Even "just" doing pub gigs you are already in the rarefied air of musicians who actually make it out of the bedroom.

 

Well I play other gigs as well, just not that many at the moment.

 

The only comment I ever had about my bass was when I turned up to a Working Man's Club cover band dep with my Jackson Charvel complete with pointy headstock and the band leader took one look at it and said "Just stick to the roots - nothing flash."

 

Not long after that I bought my current bass which looks a bit less flash and looks far more expensive than it was. 

 

Sounds like January might be an expensive month for me, currently eyeing up some £1700 basses to get rid of some cash I have lying around. 

Edited yesterday at 10:29 by TimR

[Mrbigstuff]

1 hour ago, Geek99 said:

If you mean me, I just mean “paying for the name”, “it’s us-made”, “it’s vintage” etc kind of vanity where as @Lozz196 (I think) suggested in the past, the giveback for the premium price is tapered at best 

I quoted what I was replying to?

 

But while we’re here. There should obviously be a premium on a well established name with a good reputation compared to a new brand. That goes for any product or service. How much that premium is, the market will dictate. 

[Stub Mandrel]

Expensive is so relative.

 

The two basses I paid over my 'expensive' threshold, were both made possible because I completed large chunks of work.

 

I've been through long periods where spending £50-100 could mean many months of saving. I am having to be careful now, as I need as many savings as possible to buy somewhere when dad's house is sold and split three ways.

 

So those two big purchases (and my rig) were really special; both were cheaper alternatives to genuine vintage instruments I could never afford but give me a feeling of connection to music I love.

[tauzero]

I can get a reasonable sound out of any of my basses. The Seis, though, are the nicest of them to play. Does nobody else consider playability to be the most important aspect of a bass?

[Linus27]

5 minutes ago, tauzero said:

I can get a reasonable sound out of any of my basses. The Seis, though, are the nicest of them to play. Does nobody else consider playability to be the most important aspect of a bass?

 

Yes, 100% and even more so playing fretless. For me, I am the most comfortable playing a Fender, mostly a Jazz but a Precision is fine and Japanese Fender's are my favourite as the gloss necks are my preferred finish and the build quality is incredible.

Edited 19 hours ago by Linus27

[TrevorR]

I always find the “what bass is too expensive to play down the Dog & Duck?” question very hard to answer given that this was my regular wedding, club and pub gig set up in my function/party band days. 
 

 

They were the basses I most loved to play, so those were the ones I played - wherever. OK, I didn’t pay today’s ridiculous prices when I bought them in 1993 and 2000 respectively but their second hand prices in the mid 2000s was still substantial. 
 

The Sandberg I bought this year would probably be considered expensive by many but, again, I love playing it so I do! Here it is funking it out at our local jam night.

 

 

 

[TimR]

3 hours ago, TrevorR said:

I always find the “what bass is too expensive to play down the Dog & Duck?” question very hard to answer given that this was my regular wedding, club and pub gig set up in my function/party band days. 

 

Depends how many weddings, parties and functions you're playing down the Dog and Duck I suppose. 

[peteb]

12 hours ago, TimR said:

Sounds like January might be an expensive month for me, currently eyeing up some £1700 basses to get rid of some cash I have lying around. 

 

£1.7k seems to be a sweet spot at the moment for a really nice secondhand bass! If you shop around, you should get something really cool. 

 

I have never pulled the trigger on a genuinely expensive bass, even though I have considered it at times. The most I have ever spent is £1.65k on a s/h Sadowsky 5 string a couple of months ago. The thing is that I currently have four basses that I have spent that sort of money on, as well as a couple that I paid around a grand for. I am fortunate that I am in the position where I don't necessarily have to sell these days every time that I get a new bass, unlike a few years ago! That is not to say that I didn't part-ex a nice Xotic 5 string to get the Sadowsky. 

 

[peteb]

22 hours ago, TheLowDown said:

I don't think I would adopt that approach being suitably risk averse. Maybe your hearing is so shot that the only way one can judge quality sound is from the price tag where you're only going to hear what you want to hear anyway (an inexpensive bass will, quite naturally, sound poor to your ears).

If you've got that kind of easy money, then as long as you're enjoying yourself and you think it makes the difference then that's all that matters, eh. I wouldn't want to be so dependent on the gear making me sound good.

 

I don't really know @chris_b apart from what he posts on here. However, I do know that he used to play with a guy (unfortunately no longer with us) who was an exceptional guitarist. He seems to have a lot of experience and work a lot, playing gigs at a pretty decent level. 

 

You, I'm not so sure about. Exactly how good are you, what gigs do you do and at what level? Why should I give your opinion the the same weight as his? Perhaps a little bit of respect for people who have that sort of experience and are most likely better than you wouldn't be amiss? 

 

[kodiakblair]

On 20/12/2025 at 21:12, tauzero said:

I think most of us would agree that a Fodera Yin Yang at £7kish is expensive. But where does everyone else place that marker?

Pretty simple formula for me.

 

What will it cost me in parts, materials and timber from the sawmill to build.

 

If it's another 100% more to buy then it's expensive .

[Misdee]

8 hours ago, peteb said:

 

£1.7k seems to be a sweet spot at the moment for a really nice secondhand bass! If you shop around, you should get something really cool. 

 

I have never pulled the trigger on a genuinely expensive bass, even though I have considered it at times. The most I have ever spent is £1.65k on a s/h Sadowsky 5 string a couple of months ago. The thing is that I currently have four basses that I have spent that sort of money on, as well as a couple that I paid around a grand for. I am fortunate that I am in the position where I don't necessarily have to sell these days every time that I get a new bass, unlike a few years ago! That is not to say that I didn't part-ex a nice Xotic 5 string to get the Sadowsky. 

 

Funnily enough, this thread has had me thinking about how for so long I had to sell my main bass to replace it with another one, and never had more than two basses at a time. I was always looking to get a "better" more expensive bass than the one I had and that was the only way I could afford it. That was probably true for the first twenty years of me playing the bass. I expect lots of folk  have followed the same route with similarly mixed results.

 

Nowadays I just like a bass that I can have fun playing, and that could be at any price point. The problem is I'm one of those people who has been cursed with good (expensive) taste, but I've also got a Sire and a Harley Benton that I do most of my day-to-day practising on and they are both very satisfying basses and amazing for the money.

 

I think when I reached the stage in life where I could comfortably afford more expensive basses it took away the imperative to "upgrade" before I missed the chance. That realisation helped me concentrate more on practising playing bass rather than putting time and energy into trading up to endless,"upgrade" basses and then discovering their strengths and weaknesses. Most of the time I was just swapping one dissatisfaction for another.

 

If you've got a relatively inexpensive bass that has certain things about it that annoys you it's easier to live with than if you have paid upwards of three grand in pursuit of perfection only to find disappointment.

Edited 3 hours ago by Misdee

[TrevorR]

4 hours ago, TimR said:

 

Depends how many weddings, parties and functions you're playing down the Dog and Duck I suppose. 

We did a lot of pub gigs too - a lot. And to be honest, I’d be more scared by the behaviour of heavily drunk mates of the groom or bridesmaids and bevvied up Sharon from Accountings than the average pub punter!!! 

Edited 9 hours ago by TrevorR

[Al Krow]

 

Could be a fun blindfold test to do at a future bass bash? The clip has had 172k views in 2 weeks - clearly a topic of interest! 

[Al Krow]

Also love the fact that some (definitely not all!) of the most successful musicians in the world played basses that many average gigging bassists could have afforded when those basses were in production. And for no other reason than they loved them eg Paul McCartney with his Hofner and Yamaha BB and Tina Weymouth another Hofner player are two that immediately come to mind, and I'm sure we can think of plenty of others?

[Ben Jamin]

1 hour ago, Al Krow said:

Also love the fact that some (definitely not all!) of the most successful musicians in the world played basses that many average gigging bassists could have afforded when those basses were in production. And for no other reason than they loved them eg Paul McCartney with his Hofner and Yamaha BB and Tina Weymouth another Hofner player are two that immediately come to mind, and I'm sure we can think of plenty of others?

Joe Dart's career is built off cheap frankenstein basses and his Mexican Fender, before the Musicman collaboration.

To be fair even the Musicman collab is all about creating the simplest instrument possible - he currently gigs the cheaper Sterling version.

Here's a crowd singing along to his bassline on his MIM Jazz.
 

 

Edited 7 hours ago by Ben Jamin

[Richard R]

7 hours ago, Al Krow said:

Could be a fun blindfold test to do at a future bass bash? The clip has had 172k views in 2 weeks - clearly a topic of interest! 

 

This has been done several years ago (SE Bash I think).  It needs a very, very, consistent player and an agreement on tone settings. (There can be more variation from the tone controls of one instrument than between instruments. )

But yes, it's fun to hear just how good a £125 HB can be, and how really good a £3k ACG is 😁. 

 

Most interesting at the end of that video was when those listening then played the basses. They all liked the sound of the $50 bass then they heard it blindfold, but didn't like playing it at all. So for them the cheap bass wasn't worth it. But they weren't keen on the $5k one either.

 

 

Edited 1 hour ago by Richard R

[Richard R]

6 hours ago, Al Krow said:

I'm sure we can think of plenty of others?

Dave Pegg plays mid level Ibanez and loves them.

[tegs07]

7 hours ago, Al Krow said:

 

Could be a fun blindfold test to do at a future bass bash? The clip has had 172k views in 2 weeks - clearly a topic of interest! 

I am not sure how much these comparisons really mean. There will be small differences but with the same pickups*, player, rig etc the basses will all be pretty much identical. What really matters is how comfortable the bass is to play, be that weight, shape, neck dimensions etc, then reliably - quality wiring and hardware may save some embarrassment, then aesthetics. An MDF table would serve the same function as a teak or oak one but might not look as nice or last as long.
 

* Even this is relative and subjective. Most basses that are mass produced have fairly similar pickups eg I doubt if I could tell a Mex P from a US P or a Yamaha BB when played through the same rig. They would all sound like P basses.

Edited 1 hour ago by tegs07

[peteb]

8 hours ago, Al Krow said:

Also love the fact that some (definitely not all!) of the most successful musicians in the world played basses that many average gigging bassists could have afforded when those basses were in production. And for no other reason than they loved them eg Paul McCartney with his Hofner and Yamaha BB and Tina Weymouth another Hofner player are two that immediately come to mind, and I'm sure we can think of plenty of others?

 

I think that we can confuse what is an expensive bass and what bass a pro is likely to use! 

 

From my experience of many years of gigging, working on stagecrews and knowing people who do all of that for a living, I would say that the most common bass used by jobbing pro bass players is probably a basic American Fender Jazz! Add an extra point if its's from the 70s, you've had it a long time and it's got a few marks and simple mods. Other common ones would be a P bass, a Sadowsky or a US Lakland, followed by perhaps a Stingray or a Yamaha BB. 

 

If you were to spend £1k or so on a simple s/h Am Std Jazz, it wouldn't look out of place if you took it out on tour a week later! 

 

[Stub Mandrel]

1 hour ago, Richard R said:

Dave Pegg plays mid level Ibanez and loves them.

 

He's played a lot of different things including a Hohner headless in the 80s and a Precision.

[Al Krow]

1 hour ago, tegs07 said:

I am not sure how much these comparisons really mean. There will be small differences but with the same pickups*, player, rig etc the basses will all be pretty much identical. What really matters is how comfortable the bass is to play, be that weight, shape, neck dimensions etc, then reliably - quality wiring and hardware may save some embarrassment, then aesthetics. An MDF table would serve the same function as a teak or oak one but might not look as nice or last as long.
 

* Even this is relative and subjective. Most basses that are mass produced have fairly similar pickups eg I doubt if I could tell a Mex P from a US P or a Yamaha BB when played through the same rig. They would all sound like P basses.

 

100% ^^

 

How a particular bass sounds in the mix may actually not differ that much but, equally, there's an unmistakable signature sound to some of the greats eg John Entwistle. For me, the quality of the pups and electronics makes the biggest difference here. YMMV!

 

Playability of basses on the other hand is another thing: weight, balance/neck dive, string spacing, neck thickness, how a bass sits on your frame etc. Can individually,  and certainly together, make a real difference to how comfortable and enjoyable a bass is to play. 

 

Would it be fair to say, as a rule of thumb, that the really budget basses don't major on playability? But also that playability won't necessarily improve much beyond midrange bass prices and you then start increasingly paying for branding and/or craftsmanship of boutique basses?