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Are there any bad basses anymore?

#102
Watchootognbout said:
Those 60's Teisco basses and those soviet era Tonika basses from Russia.
Soviet-era Eastern Bloc Basses (Orfeus, Tonika, Jolana, Cremona, Ural, etc)
Soviet Guitar - No, Comrade, No!
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Actually, my stepfather, now 86 and still going strong, gigged a Teisco P bass copy throughout the 60's, 70's and early 80's in a dance band. I've played the bass and it is perfect for that style of music. Just good solid thump courtesy of the nylon flats that have been on it for over 30 years. Nothing wrong with it.

P.S. the body is made of plywood...
 
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#103
PJ Muzikmansky said:
Actually, my stepfather, now 86 and still going strong, gigged a Teisco P bass copy throughout the 60's, 70's and early 80's in a dance band. I've played the bass and it is perfect for that style of music. Just good solid thump courtesy of the nylon flats that have been on it for over 30 years. Nothing wrong with it.

P.S. the body is made of plywood...
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Just that I cannot stand to look at them.
Cheesy 60's retro style.
Awful.
 
#106
Yes, there are. And I predict that even more are coming. Manufacturers will always seek to decrease the cost of goods sold, and there are only a limited number of ways to accomplish that. 3D printing hasn't yet been fully embraced by this industry, but when it finally is, you can expect a new pinnacle in craptacular.
 
#107
Joe Nerve said:
Under $75 on eBay and Amazon.

Yes, I bought one a while back just to see. It was bad. I think it was actually $40... an acoustic... how could ya go wrong? You could.
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Acoustic instruments are a different beast, where quality and materials actually do matter. Electric instruments don't suffer nearly as much.
 
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#110
40Hz said:
But the bigger question is: When would it make more sense to put $400-$500 into a $400 instrument as opposed to buying a $1000 instrument with all those things taken care of already? And the answer to that depends on the individual musician.
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Right, the time to drop that cash into upgrades is when the "bones" are just magic in your hands. The neck is right, the weight is right, everything fixed to the wood (frets negotiable) is just *perfect* but you want the better PuPs, hardware, etc.

To me, *thats* what you upgrade.
 
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#112
Back in the 70s, I had a no-name bass, it looked like a sunburst hollow body Gibson ES335 with f holes. There was no bottom end to it at all, the pickups couldn't go low enough. The neck was all over the place and was warped. When I tightened up the truss rod, it snapped. Another bad bass was the Hofner "Beatle" bass, the pickups were so hot that if you plucked the strings anything more than softly, it would overdrive the preamp section of my bass amp with a loud "blat". I had traded a couple of 6x9 car speakers for it and sold it for $75.

I had a 1960 Fender P Bass that I had bought for $165 back in 1973 - sold it in 1981 to stay in school. Now, I have a Squier P bass and a fretless Squier Jazz bass, both play just as well as the 60s P Bass. I did spend a lot of time setting them up and the key was to go to light gauge strings: 90, 70, 50, 30. Easy on the neck and the fingers plus you can bend them nicely, lights are not as tight as heavier gauge strings. Round wounds on the P bass and flats on the Jazz. Finding a set of light gauge flats is really tough - I ended up buying the flat strings individually but well worth it.

Recently, I picked up a short scale Epiphone EB0 bass and it was really tough to setup and I couldn't get the G string 1st fret to not buzz. Fortunately, G# is not a note that is played much. It was an okay bass, nothing special. Definitely, it had its own sound. I sold it after a while.
 
#113
This was a bad bass. Bought new in 1977. Kay KB-1. $100. The body is 3/4 inch plywood. Stamped metal bridge w/o intonation. Horrible action. I played it for a year and gave it away. It came back to me about 10 years ago and I couldn’t have been happier. But to the OP’s point: no one is manufacturing stuff like this anymore. For a beginning musician, these really are the “best of times” for better quality, less expensive instruments. (Styx reference indicates my age).
CD5DFD86-783D-46BE-BECC-22C9F47E014E.jpeg
 
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#116
allen_m said:
This was a bad bass. Bought new in 1977. Kay KB-1. $100. The body is 3/4 inch plywood. Stamped metal bridge w/o intonation. Horrible action. I played it for a year and gave it away. It came back to me about 10 years ago and I couldn’t have been happier. But to the OP’s point: no one is manufacturing stuff like this anymore. For a beginning musician, these really are the “best of times” for better quality, less expensive instruments. (Styx reference indicates my age).View attachment 3417078
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chris_b said:
Like the cheap starter basses we started with in the 60's? I don't think basses are made that bad any more. Automation and robotic machinery has made those basses a thing of the past.
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And yet that '60s-'70s crap can still command a hefty price on the 'vintage' market, go figure :0l
 
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#117
I have a candidate. If someone wants to buy this and report back, even shows the factory where it is built:

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I once flew into a City, on the way to visit my son in a college town I had to drive to. I picked up a used amp for him and wanted to test it out. I saw a familiar shaped Ibanez SR-like 6 string on the rack and picked it up. It was like picking up an empty garbage can that you think is full. The action was at least a 1/4 inch. After plucking out a couple of notes, I nearly dropped it in disgust, but managed to look at the tag, which was under $300 new. It was an Ibanez, not a knock off. Perhaps with a little TLC, that could have sounded and played good, but why would they sell something in that condition and then possibly have someone unknowingly buy and learn from an instrument setup like that?
 
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#118
ccfalkner said:
I have a candidate. If someone wants to buy this and report back, even shows the factory where it is built:

I once flew into a City, on the way to visit my son in a college town I had to drive to. I picked up a used amp for him and wanted to test it out. I saw a familiar shaped Ibanez SR-like 6 string on the rack and picked it up. It was like picking up an empty garbage can that you think is full. The action was at least a 1/4 inch. After plucking out a couple of notes, I nearly dropped it in disgust, but managed to look at the tag, which was under $300 new. It was an Ibanez, not a knock off. Perhaps with a little TLC, that could have sounded and played good, but why would they sell something in that condition and then possibly have someone unknowingly buy and learn from an instrument setup like that?
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I think Alibaba might be a cluster of exceptions. Reminds me of the late fifties/early sixties (not personal experience, I was born in ‘60) where companies with near zero experience in woodworking jumped into guitar manufacturing and turned out crap, necks that warped and bodies that split. Probably some of the companies advertising decades of musical instrument experience are substituting years for days or weeks, or moving from plastic toys to real instruments. Ebay too - I once bought an exotic wood hundred dollar electric guitar whose “wood” consisted of a thick plastic cap with embedded photo. Totally unplayable because the cap had an arm-slashing crack several inches long. I blamed Fed Ex but the seller said likely it had arrived broken, which was common. Apparently though he didn’t bother looking before shipping.

I totally get your point about setup - I’ve seen some horrendously badly setup guitars you’d think no self-respecting seller would put out.
 
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#119
Good and bad in every bunch I think.

No way to say "all" basses of one type are bad. I've heard stories of SX basses on here that were falling apart yet the one I had was rock solid and I wish I hadn't sold it.

And even "name" basses can have items that slip through on quality control. Overall the options available through the internet means there are more choices and people are more likely to complain about a bad one than they are to compliment a good one.
 
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#120
All this talk about modifying cheap basses finally pushed me over the edge. I just pulled the trigger on a used Ibanez 2012 GSR206 for $130. Going to de-fret it and see what kind of upgrades I can do to it. No hardware or components will be safe if reasonable price and complexity. Hopefully I will end up with a nice bass and glory stories like some of y'all have.

I think the last bass instrument I want to get after this is a uk-bass. I hear they will keep up with two acoustic instruments before you need amplification.
 
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