True, but buying and returning a new bass is much easier than dealing with shipping an expensive vintage bass back and forth.
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1975 Fender Jazz: Not Impressed
- Thread starter Dr. Cheese
- Start date
I'm very much against this thing with returning bought items that there is nothing wrong with.
Edit: And no, "not impressed" doesn't qualify as "something wrong".
Yes it was. 70's Fenders were why "pre-cbs" Fenders were in such demand. I was a gigging bass player all thru the 70's, and we all knew this. The pickups were good. The rest of the instrument, not so much. Things got a lot better around '82-'84 or so.
I had a 71 sunburst which was heavy with a totally dead E string no matter what I did to it and across the board sounded dull. My SQ VM P bass is a far superior instrument in every aspect. There again I had 75 ash P bass which was a nice bass and I should have kept it.
"For most vintage guitar collectors and enthusiasts, 1965 stands as the single most important year in the history of Fender. It was in 1965 that management of Fender transferred to the CBS corporation who had purchased the company from Leo Fender for 13 million dollars (that’s two million more than they paid for the New York Yankees the year before). Fender guitars and basses from before 1965 are collectively referred to as Pre-CBS Fenders, and are considered far more desirable than anything Fender has built since."
link: Fender and the CBS Takeover
I'm probably in the minority here, but I'd rather have a 2025 USA Standard Jazz bass... than any J bass from the 60's or 70's.
Agree here. I've only played a couple 'vintage' Jazz basses - a '66 and a mid-'70s. The '66 felt great, but I was playing it unplugged so can't comment on the tone. My guitarist has a mid-70s Jazz (not sure of the year, but it's a 4-bolt neck) that is naturally worn in (i.e., a true 'relic'), and I've played it a few times, and I'd take my 2020 G&L Jazz over it all day, every day. It's not that its terrible or anything, but my G&L feels more solid and sounds better, and is easier to play (for me) because it has a 12" radius vs the 7.25". Just because it's vintage doesn't mean it's full of mojo and fantastic.
Back in 2000, just before COVID lockdowns, I played to nearly identical '78 P's in a store - both Olympic white, it would have been hard to tell them apart visually. Holding them, same thing - same feel, same balance, the action was good on both, new Fender 7250's on both. Really a tie between them. And then I plugged them in and WOW was the difference obvious. All the mojo had leaked from the one to the other. The dead one was just that - dead. Like walking a dog that didn't want to walk, or driving a car with the parking brake on - it was fighting everything I did, and just sounded bad. The good one seemed to pull my playing out of it - like it was actively involved in making the music.
Some basses just have "it" in spades, some have enough "it" to get the job done, and some just don't.
Some basses just have "it" in spades, some have enough "it" to get the job done, and some just don't.
buldog5151bass
Kibble, milkbones, and P Basses. And redheads.
The deeper you go into the 70s, the more likely it will bark like a dog.
I firmly believe that the best stuff is being produced right now.
I’d take that Spector in your avatar!
Bad manufacturing and QC practices on Fender pickups from the late sixties to the early 80’s built the businesses of DiMarzio and Seymour Duncan. I owned a long succession of 70’s Fender basses when they were priced appropriately for the POSs that they were. There wasn’t a single one that I didn’t need to swap the stock pickups out of to get a decent tone. I’m sure there were some that had great sounding stock pickups, but I lost interest in owning an old Fender long before ever playing one of those rare axes.
Vintage instruments are always a crap shoot. Some are winners and some are door stops.
Interesting what some people are saying about 'not getting on with Fenders' I have a MiJ Fender and I'd rather play my VIntage JAzz you can tell the build quality isn't as good but it just sounds better. really weird. Almost feel guilty for not liking the fender as much
The reason that "pre-CBS" became a thing was precisely because the Fenders made in the 70's were, by and large, not inspiring. And they often had obvious fit and finish flaws (store a few picks in your neck gap if you want....) - the tooling was not in great shape, and nobody seemed to want to fix it.
This is true! I had a 1972 Jazz Bass that I grew not to be particularly impressed with either. I ended up trading it for my 2022 Rickenbacker 4003 that I still have. I'm grateful that I made that trade. The man who I traded with wanted a vintage Jazz Bass and those tones while I was GAS-ing for his Ric.
I later found out that my Jazz Bass had a terribly done clear coat over its natural finish. It was a player grade bass than a collectors grade bass. GC offered me $1,400 for it in late 2022 and I declined knowing I can get a lot more for it.
