70's Fenders

[Davo-London]

Folks I bought a MIA Precision in 1976 and it cost my Dad £225. I still remember! In money of today this is £1200 at 5% annual inflation.

In 1976 it was maybe a Fender or a Ric or a Gibson, but most likely a Fender. I've just put new strings on the old gal and i have to say it's a pile of crap. I like the wide frets but very little else. It's heavy, it's neck is chunky and the E-string tone is dead. In fact I could never get decent tone out of the E-string. When I first tried a Jazz I couldn't believe how good the tone of the E-string was.

I love Fenders but I will only buy CIJ/MIJ as the quality is so consistent and high.

Davo

[TheButler]

Cool. I'll buy it then

[Sibob]

You're basing the quality and consistancy of todays Fenders on a bass that is 34years old?
It probably just wants a good clean and service, but yes, the mid-late 70's Fenders were inherently heavy!

And are you not sure what the brand is? even though you've said Precision.
I'm not making sense of some of your post lol

Si

[Pete Academy]

I was playing my 79 yesterday. I may have dropped lucky, as it plays and sounds amazing.

[TheButler]

Of course, it is a game of each to his own. I love the weight, and baseball bat neck but could easily see how it'd be a problem. Equally, i love the sound, but could see how it's one, two at best, dimensions could be a problem too.

I'm quite sure that issues will extend past that of the strings. As said above, i'd send it in for a service with someone reputable. I probably don't need another one, but its tempting. Not got a 70's Jazz which you think is crap too?

Edited April 15, 2010 by TheButler

[Clarky]

My "70s Fender" Precision is the dogs nads. Light, resonant, beefy sounding, all you could wish for in a Precision. made in 1972 though and the quality and weight did shift through the decade. Sounds like you have a mid/late 70s heavy example with a pickup problem (which is probably easily rectified, unlike the weight!) I wouldn't tar all 70s Fenders with the same brush

[Low End Bee]

I worked in a guitar shop part time in the late 70s (when I should have been at school really) that was a main Fender dealer.
From memory it was commonly known that of the new Fenders 25% were good, 25% were average and 50% were really horrible.
As an example I remember a brown Telecaster that was known as 'the turdcaster' and was unsold in all the time I was there. It was heavier than an anvil, the bridge was out of line and the pickups had virtually no output amongst other faults.
It's probably in some vintage emporium for £2,500 now.
I'm guessing the 50% ers have had a lot of surgery in the last 30 odd years to get them up to playable standards.

[JTUK]

Not only Fenders... most makers had QA issues..IMV

Mate of mine hankered after a Les Paul, finally gets one, spends loads on replacement pickups..and it is still a pile of pooh.

Rics, Gibsons, Fenders ..?? all had good ones and bad ones in the 60's and 70's..maybe longer

[Low End Bee]

Never had a problem with Shergold's

[wateroftyne]

Not neccessarily aimed at the OP, but it always makes me chuckle when I read yet another account of someone picking up a 30/40 year old bass in a shop, finding it isn't to their taste, and declaring it 'a dog'.

Is the neck a banana? No? Well, If you've tried to set it up, checked the pickups etc. and it still sucks... THEN it's a dog.

My '71 Jazz was nearly for the chop, but then I changed the tired pickups and now it's a saucy beauty.

[Happy Jack]

My 74 Jazz sounded great on one setting, and only one setting. The rest of the time it was complete pants.

Then someone who actually knows about vintage basses (Vintage Ben) played it and said "You've got a phasing problem, are you sure it's been wired up properly?".

Took it to my luthier who quickly established that someone had wired the bridge pickup wrongly. It was a 2-minute fix (his soldering iron was already hot). Sounds nice now.

Bought a mid-70's Les Paul copy from eBay a few years ago. Lovely guitar, clearly it had hardly been played. When it arrived, I tried a few Chuck Berry licks around the 10th/11th frets and it choked miserably. Sounded truly rotten.

My luthier had a look and pointed out that the 14th fret was about a millimetre higher than the others. He dressed it down and it sounded really sweet. I asked him how long it might have been like that and he looked at me like I was daft and said "From new, of course - it's always been like that".

It took 30 years for someone to actually fix a problem which must have been obvious to everyone who had ever played that guitar.

[thepurpleblob]

I've got two Precisions... a 78 (fretless) MIA which, indeed, weighs a ton and a 96 MIJ which weighs nothing. Both sound like a Precision which, generally, is a very good thing. It's a classic sound. The necks are very similar in profile and very playable. Certainly smaller than the neck on my Stingray for example.

I must say, though, the Precision is the fourteen-pound lump hammer of the bass world. It has no sophistication whatsoever. On both basses the pickups don't fit the hole and won't adjust (bits of crappy foam instead of springs!!), the scratch plate doesn't sit flat, the paint finish is deplorable, the wiring was done by a monkey and breaks if you look at it, the bridge was made out of scrap by a farm labourer and the jack and pots are as cheap and nasty as they come. Apart from that, I really quite like them

Edited April 15, 2010 by thepurpleblob

[4-string-thing]

I'm still in love with my 77/78 P that I've owned since 1979! I own a few other basses, but always seem to come back to the P. Never compared it to another one, so don't know if its a good one or not, but it suits me.

[spinynorman]

Regardless of whether they're nice basses or not, there's an interesting point lurking in the OP. It's surprising what a vintage bass or guitar needs to be worth today just to have kept up with inflation. Especially anything bought before 1975.

There's a gadget [url="http://safalra.com/other/historical-uk-inflation-price-conversion/"]here[/url] where you can check the current equivalent value of any price from any year. My 1973 Gibson acoustic I just sold did even worse as an investment than my pension.

[Beedster]

[quote name='Davo-London' post='807263' date='Apr 15 2010, 04:00 PM']Folks I bought a MIA Precision in 1976 and it cost my Dad £225. I still remember! In money of today this is £1200 at 5% annual inflation.

In 1976 it was maybe a Fender or a Ric or a Gibson, but most likely a Fender. I've just put new strings on the old gal and i have to say it's a pile of crap. I like the wide frets but very little else. It's heavy, it's neck is chunky and the E-string tone is dead. In fact I could never get decent tone out of the E-string. When I first tried a Jazz I couldn't believe how good the tone of the E-string was.

I love Fenders but I will only buy CIJ/MIJ as the quality is so consistent and high.

Davo[/quote]

Mods, do we have that 'yawn' emoticon yet?

[Cat Burrito]

Just to add similar sentiments to most of the replies in mentioning my 1978 P-bass that plays like a dream.

[Mykesbass]

[quote name='Davo-London' post='807263' date='Apr 15 2010, 04:00 PM']Folks I bought a MIA Precision in 1976 and it cost my Dad £225. I still remember! In money of today this is £1200 at 5% annual inflation.[/quote]

That's working on the Retail Price Index - if you go for how long it would have taken the average person to work to pay for it, today's price would be £2,600. Sorry, but the £1,200 struck me as a bit low so I went of and became an anorak for a few minutes

[4-string-thing]

[quote name='Mykesbass' post='807530' date='Apr 15 2010, 07:41 PM']That's working on the Retail Price Index - if you go for how long it would have taken the average person to work to pay for it, today's price would be £2,600. Sorry, but the £1,200 struck me as a bit low so I went of and became an anorak for a few minutes [/quote]

Using spinynormans widget, my P that I paid £240 for would now be worth £910, quite a bit less than I would hope to get should I ever sell it.

[Rich]

[quote name='Beedster' post='807492' date='Apr 15 2010, 07:00 PM']Mods, do we have that 'yawn' emoticon yet?[/quote]

[Beedster]

[quote name='Rich' post='807572' date='Apr 15 2010, 08:17 PM'][/quote]

Apologies Rich, it appears we do

[Davo-London]

Dullards aside, we have quite a range of views, which is comforting. I guess I had one of the 50% dogs. I'm not the sort of guy that changes gear all the time so the poor tone/output from the E-string probably affected my playing style. Amazing really. I'm glad that a lot of you guys have good 70's P's. That's good news.

Davo

[OldGit]

[quote name='Davo-London' post='807263' date='Apr 15 2010, 04:00 PM']Folks [b]I[/b] bought a MIA Precision in 1976 and [b]it cost my Dad [/b]£225. I still remember! In money of today this is £1200 at 5% annual inflation.[/quote]

As a parent I have to say "[i]Who[/i] bought it?"
Perhaps you should give it back to your dad to sell

[TheButler]

[quote name='OldGit' post='807726' date='Apr 15 2010, 10:11 PM']As a parent I have to say "[i]Who[/i] bought it?"
Perhaps you should give it back to your dad to sell... to TheButler [/quote]

[Davo-London]

No no I'm never getting rid of it.

Davo

[beardybass]

Not really relevant, but I have a Japanese jazz that I bought here about 2 years ago for 55000 yen, which at the time was somewhere in the region of 250 quid. It's an absolute beauty! Nice and crunchy sounding, but with a good bit of variation tone wise if you can be arsed to fiddle with it.

Basically, going on this and the other ones I tried in the shop, I'd really recommend them to anyone who's after a new 'un.

I would love a 70's jazz, but I don't have the coin, I don't get on very well with P's because my hands are only little :ph34r:

Been a while since I've played one though, so if anyone fancies letting me play with theirs, (purely for research purposes of course) I'll take good care of it :brow:

Edited April 16, 2010 by beardybass