I don't know about the early 70's Fenders, but my '75 Jazz bass displaces more water than a Nimitz class carrier. It is HEAVY!
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1971 P bass value
- Thread starter Dallyd31
- Start date
I don't know about the early 70's Fenders, but my '75 Jazz bass displaces more water than a Nimitz class carrier. It is HEAVY!
Indeed, they offered natural ash/maple fb in the early '70s as well and those basses were heavy! The standard sunburst/alder/rosewood basses were very light! Just saying.
No doubt. Mine was indeed natural. No idea if it's ash or maple though. Any way to tell?
Yeah, my '78 jazz bass is 12 pounds heavy.
Ash (natural) body/ maple fingerboard. As my '78 above ^ ^
Ok. Gotcha. I recall hearing, probably wrongly, that maple was used for some bodies at that point, early 70's, as well.
AFAIK, maple was not an option for bodies back then, so I'd say it was ash.
From what I understand, as the 70s wore on, CBS Fender started sourcing northern(?) ash since it was cheaper. The flip side to the savings was that it was waaay heavier.
Back to the topic of value, how about a 1967 P, sunburst in really clean condition ( a few dings, chips and scrapes). 100% original with clean original hard case.
Is $3700 relatively fair ?
Is $3700 relatively fair ?
Leo wasnt with Fender since 1964, the 70s was CBS owned, yes CBS the Television station. It was all profit margin, so if they saved some bucks with heavy bodies then thats what it was.
My 70s P is close to 11 pounds but well built and thats not to heavy for me, id be complaining at 12+
I know when he left. I was just saying being cheap wasn't exclusive to CBS when it came to Fender.
I don't believe that late Mr. Fender ever had the intent of creating expensive instruments and if one digs deep enough to compare list prices of Gibson and Fender from the 1950s they will likely come to the same conclusion.
CBS went into mass production head-on during the early 70s - arguably even before that - and simply didn't have the QC process in place that would've been able to handle the number of instruments that were being - at that point in the game - pretty much slapped together...
My $0.02 only...
He did. Most of the early (Leo era) Stingays are 10+ pounds. To be fair so were/are a bunch of other basses like Peaveys (T-40s), Alembics, Foderas, and modern Stingrays(5s); Plenty of others too. Here is an interesting story: Several years ago I had a long conversation with Chip Todd (he is the "T" in T-40 and they guy who designed the T-40 and T-60, if you didn't know), and he told me they purposely sourced heavy ash because people believed that heavy ash helped with sustain and tone.
He clearly did not. In fact, the coveted "clay dots" used until around 1965 were actually punches from asbestos floor tiles removed at the old Fullerton factory. Leo was focused on the bottom line and didn't waste anything!
There was a spread sheet floating around at the fender forum years ago where a guy had been recording Fender bass weights for 70s Fenders and had quite a sample. The average weight until around 77 or so was less than 10 pounds with a few outliers. After 77 they tended to get heavier but still averaged around 10 pounds with some outliers. This 70s Fender weight business has been retold so many times that common folklore has them all weighing 11 plus pounds now and that's just not the case. My 76 Jazz weighs nine pounds and so does my 74 Precision, btw.
My '76 (sunburst/ash/maplefb) jazz and '77 (natural/ash/rosewood fb) jazz basses were heavier than my '78 (natural/ash/maple fb) jazz bass. By the way my '78 jazz bass weighs about 12 pounds. Just saying.
I believe that if your bass is 12 pounds it is an outlier not the norm. Why do you say "about" 12 pounds, have you actually weighed it?
