Agreed, gear nowadays is as good as it's ever been. And the inexpensive stuff is impressive these days.
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Anyone else feel like expensive basses are arbitrarily priced?
- Thread starter Menorahman
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Agreed, gear nowadays is as good as it's ever been. And the inexpensive stuff is impressive these days.
Strawman argument. An eighth of an inch top is cosmetic, not intended for tonal purposes.
Maybe *gasp* it doesn't actually cost that much to make guitars and basses. Low end instruments are so good now because the automated process has advanced and become less costly. Companies would probably have to go out of their way to make these instruments worse.
Wow. You win. I'm selling my Foderas and adding to my Squier collection (and I do have lots of them) based on your expert and deep knowledge of tone woods and Foderas. Well informed people like you are one of the reasons I love Talkbass.
I don't see this thread as such. It's about the "PRICING". Not downing the products because they're expensive or being too poor to afford one.These 'looking down our noses at expensive basses' threads seem to come up on a regular basis. My suggestion is this. Purchase one of these 'expensive' basses with a favorable return policy. Try it out. If you don't connect with it, if you don't 'get it'...return the instrument. You are only out shipping both ways. This is assuming that you can afford an 'expensive' bass. If more folks did this we would see less of these threads. I'm trying my best to recall the last time a Fodera owner started a thread bemoaning the existence of high priced instruments. I can't come up with one. Please point me in the right direction.No, I don't own (nor can afford) a Fodera.
M. M.
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Okay fair point, Viking. However, luthiers talk like a sliver of wood makes a difference. People buy into it just like they believe let's say a rosewood board is so drastically different from ebony or maple. Physically ebony makes for a better fretless fingerboard but is it different sounding? If it is it's so small it wouldn't matter in a mix.
Funny thing to me is the instruments that we "cherish" as vintage are being reported in sometimes a bad light. I've read and spoke with a decent amount of bassist who remembered how these instruments were not so cherished back at their conceptions. But the same is true with alot of things in life.
FF
Wow. You win. I'm selling my Foderas and adding to my Squier collection (and I do have lots of them) based on your expert and deep knowledge of tone woods and Foderas. Well informed people like you are one of the reasons I love Talkbass.
Where as artisinal cheese makers love rubes like you because someone has to pay for their new jacuzzi. Keep thinking your African hyenawood with a thirty fifth of an inch of bubinga makes enough of a difference to justify spending into the five digit range.
I should add, a 1000 dollar bass is better than a 200 dollar bass but there's a point of diminished returns between a few grand and 10k. After upgrading pickups, hardware and electronics and getting a better set up, it's all airy-fairy subjective stuff like whether Dan Lakin or Mike Lull makes a better bass. People believe all kinds of nonsense but it doesn't make it real.
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A lot of builders don't buy into the whole tone wood thing. When it comes down to it, pickups and strings matter most. I mean, any change to the bass is going to change the tone at least a tiny bit, but after a while there are only so many different sounds a bass can make.
He's right though, I'm not talking about the quality necessarily. I even said in the OP that I'm sure the expensive stuff is real nice. I just take issue with these instruments being overly expensive after a certain point just for the sake of being a high price item. Build quality can only get so good, and I don't see how building by hand could be more perfect than using a machine. And I'm sorry, but no plastic pickguard should ever cost $300.
I've played a few vintage instruments: 1962 P Bass, 1965 Jazz, 1959 Les Paul, 1960 Telecaster guitar, a couple of pre-CBS strats, and an old Bass VI. I can't for the life of me understand why these instruments are so revered. Not that they were bad or anything but just nothing special. Even the owner of the Les Paul said it wasn't really any better than the new stuff.
Some people find noiseless single-coils to be heresy simply because that's not how they were made in the past. Well, if builders in the 60's knew how to take the hum out of single-coils, I'm pretty sure they would have done it and not given it a second thought. The vintage sound is just the sound people happened to stumble upon back in the day, completely arbitrary. If vintage and modern tones had their timelines switched, people would be worshipping the 'modern' stuff instead.
Not necessarily for the Rolex, unless you periodically ship it back to a Rolex service center to have the movement retimed. Rolexes tend to run fast as time goes on, as clearances in the bearings and wheels loosen up. My Explorer II is running about three minutes per month fast now, out of spec, and needs to go back for an overhaul, about $500 to $600 - ugh.
Is it because basses are electronic driven that there is such a debate? I don't want derail the thread but I've read tons of threads on whether wood has gone, etc... At the very least there is considerable disagreement because you get high-end owners who feel and hear the difference side-by-side with Squire owners saying the same thing. You rarely hear this argument when it comes to acoustic guitars, and other non-electronic instruments. I play trumpet and you rarely hear a player say their middle school horn plays like a Monette or a Bach Stradivarius. That being said Wynton Marsalis could make a lead pipe sound good and Victor Wooten Would play an ironing board with strings better than me on my Sadowsky.
I think if you really sat down and figured the numbers for the material, man hours of work, tools, and finally all the costs of running a business (rent, shipping, computers, phone bills, etc...) the prices we pay for these "boutique" basses are very reasonable compared to any other skilled profession.
But I do suspect the bolt-on Fender copy builders (including CS) may be squeezing slightly higher margins than the NT builders like Alembic, Thompson, Fodera, Wal, Smith, etc... Same with the ones that machine their own hardware and design and solder together their own electronics, as opposed to using OTS stuff.
Anyway, my point is this, none of these guys are getting rich building 10k basses for our enjoyment.... certainly not as rich as the cosmetic surgeons selling a set of ta-tas for 5 grand or the divorce lawyers that get to clean up after them.
But I do suspect the bolt-on Fender copy builders (including CS) may be squeezing slightly higher margins than the NT builders like Alembic, Thompson, Fodera, Wal, Smith, etc... Same with the ones that machine their own hardware and design and solder together their own electronics, as opposed to using OTS stuff.
Anyway, my point is this, none of these guys are getting rich building 10k basses for our enjoyment.... certainly not as rich as the cosmetic surgeons selling a set of ta-tas for 5 grand or the divorce lawyers that get to clean up after them.
Your use of the term 'overly' implies that there is some universally correct value for an item. I'd love to see a formula for that. So would every economist ever.
Your view doesn't take into account consumer preference at all. If everything in the world were reduced to material and manufacturing cost, it'd be very easy to set prices because that's basically what commodity trading is. It's a large market for trading lots of the same thing. I guess we could have P-bass futures.
And why do you take issue with this? What's the issue? Are you being forced to buy a bass you don't want to buy?
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