A recent thread on joke names for future Fender basses had me thinking about Fender’s bass names, and how different they are from the guitar names. Why did their basses get lame names precision bass and jazz bass, but their guitars got cool names like the Esquire, telecaster, and Stratocaster? Even the Jazzmaster, Jaguar, and mustang didn’t get “guitar” added to the end, yet it’s a mustang bass and Jaguar bass. So, my question is, had fender stuck with the “-caster” “-master” etc theme for their basses, what would some be? Bassocaster seems a little on the nose, but bassmaster isn’t bad. Contracaster? Resocaster? Depthcaster? What are your ideas?
I think originally they were spot on actually. What makes the guitar names cool is the strato, tele, mustang, part (the Jazzmaster really only works as a whole). When you look at how the names developed they make a lot of sense as well. The precision bass was named so because it had frets allowing perfect(ish) intonation easily unlike an upright. The Jazz Bass was released as a companion to the Jazzmaster. When Fender tried to make a new bass it got some cool names like Dimension bass and Starcaster bass; but most Fender people do not like new so P and J proliferate. Now I will go back to daydreaming about the PRS Kingfisher bass and Fiori guitar. Edit: I guess I should answer your actual question too. I think Rumblecaster would have sounded cool. The bass came out when people still had cars with rumble seats so it has that cool 50s/60s industrial tie in.
I like the rumblecaster. I get why they named the basses what they did, I was just thinking that Fender could have latched on to the motif/branding of their instruments stronger and used it throughout their lines. For instance, when you hear “Stratocaster” you know it’s a Fender guitar even though those words were never used. Likewise, had they stuck with the theme for basses, we could hear “rumblecaster” and know it’s a fender bass without ever hearing Fender or Bass.
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