As much as you would like them to be, these are not facts -- it is amateur sociological internet babble!
Dude,
doctoral dissertations have been written about Harley-Davidson's leveraging of company history and "the lifestyle" to sell their products. This is no "opinion" of mine, any more than it's my "opinion" that Apple uses the allure of youth culture to sell its products. This is called "educated observation," the kind made by someone with a business background and over 40 years of exposure to this kind of marketing.
Fender uses the exact same marketing ploy when it gets endorsements from and runs print ads featuring guys who famously played their instruments in the 60's. Are you seriously trying to deny that the
entire point of these ads is to give a certain historical cachet to their products? If that's in fact
not what Fender is trying to do, would you please explain to me why the
majority of their product line at all levels is comprised of exact-replica reissues of old designs or instruments that evoke those old designs in significant ways?
Again, the gist of your original post was that people are playing Fenders because it is cool to play Fenders -- for whatever reason -- and that Fenders are technically inferior or defective (like Harleys) compared to other basses. And as I have pointed out, hopefully for the last time, this is not a fact based position.
Wrong again. I said of Fenders and Harleys that "A huge amount of the appeal is the history, the community, and the lifestyle." I did not say that anyone was "playing Fenders because it is cool to play Fenders." I said that people play them because they like them, and do not merely overlook their technical obsolesence but in fact
embrace it.
I mean, come on... explain to me how a "relic'd" or "road worn" bass sounds better than a bass with shiny hardware and a fresh coat of paint. Fender (and Gibson for that matter) didn't come up with this idea of producing "new antiques" in the pursuit of bleeding-edge technology. They came up with it because a big part of the appeal of their product line is the "oldness" and tradition of the designs, and the artificial aging of new instruments emphasizes and draws attention to that oldness, even when it's ersatz oldness.
Obviously, if Fender products sounded outright horrible not many people would play them. And here is where I will admit that my Harley analogy is weakened, because for many years Harley afficionados continued to purchase, ride and maintain motorcycles that broke down with alarming frequency. They were willing to suffer with a bike that often could not be riden at all because there were things utterly apart from the riding that they perceived as lending value to the products (vibe, coolness factor, community of riders sharing a lifestyle complete with entire wardrobes of branded Harley products, etc ad nauseum). Harley-Davidson as a corporation stuck by its winning formula (traditional mechanical and aesthetic designs dating back to the 1940's) because, despite the technological flaws, the products sold well.
Fender has a similar business model. This is not an opinion, this is simply a marketing analysis.
If you look at the "mistakes" Fender has made in the history of their product designs, they almost all stem from a deviation from the traditional 1960's designs. Again, I'm not talking about aesthetic decisions like the slightly larger headstocks of the 70's... I'm talking about
functional aspects of the instruments. Remember pushbutton pickup selectors? Remember pickups hidden beneath the pickguard? Disasterous failures. Why? Because they didn't "work?" No, because they spoiled the old-school vibe that Fender players embrace.
Ultimately my point was and continues to be that people play (or ride) what they like, and should do so. I am simply interested in the reasons why people make the consumer decisions that they make, and I am convinced in the case of electric guitars and basses that the sound of the instrument is only one piece of the total equation. Quality is another piece. Appearance is another piece. History is another piece. Playability is another piece. Desireability/coolness factor is another piece. Currency of technology is another piece.
Any MBA marketing class will teach you that individuals have sliding scales of importance for factors such as these when making a purchasing decision. For example, speaking of myself, sound, quality, and playability are paramount, and I do factor in currency of technology. I have some concern for appearance, but obviously not a whole lot... I play a Stingray 5, which sports one of the ugliest expanses of pickguard in the history of solid body instruments. Coolness and history are both, for myself, utterly unimportant.
For most Fender players, currency of technology is not a significant factor. This is not my "opinion," it is a fact borne out by Fender's own product design and marketing strategies. They clearly want consumers to understand that their instruments feature older, traditional designs. Their most expensive instruments proudly incorporate technology that was outdated 30 years ago, built according to vintage specification documents dug out of the company's vaults.
So as much as you may not like it (although I cannot understand why it would matter to you one way or another if you're happy with your bass), this is not "amateur sociological internet babble." It's business strategy, it's observable and measurable in an entirely objective way, and it's what has driven the success of Fender to this day.
I would guess (and I'm totally admitting that this is a guess) that Fender sells more passive 4-string basses than the rest of the world's manufacturers combined, or at least darn close. I would also guess that Fender sells only a tiny percentage of the active 5-string basses in use worldwide. This is entirely reflective of their product design strategy and overall business model. In other words, they're accomplishing exactly what they are trying to accomplish.
