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Basses that disappointed you...

#101
Andy_D said:
I don't really understand the whole "vintage" thing.
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At Fender, you can't get 7.25" neck radius (non-vintage) basses anymore. Basswood sounds muffled. Modern electronics might sound different. "U" necks are gone.

I have a modern Epi Les Paul Special Bass, have you seen the bridge on that?? Gone are the days of simple, two double-saddle bridges.

Only special reissues or... "vintage" stuff have these things, if you're into that. Besides, to me, truly "vintage" stuff is something not in production anymore, models no longer available in any catalog.

Other than that, with the lemon thing, I too agree. Just that the percentage of lemons today is sky high.
 
#104
ilikeindie said:
wow I'm really surprised to see all the Ric hate.
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I don't think it's that. They have a signature sound. If you enjoy that; they are (mostly) very well built and crafted. I had a 4001 and from a design standpoint I was very impressed. I sold it because it had essentially a very specific sound that I didn't find very flexible. But I knew what I was getting; I simply got tired of that particular sound.

When I pick out a bass I often totally ignore the setup and most anything I can change. I am only really interested with the sound of the pups, the shape of the neck (& to some degree the shape of the body as per comfort).
A very good example is a MIJ Jazz that I bought some years back. The action was a joke, yet the construction of the neck was great, the electronics didn't seem to be too noisy; they had great range. The overall manufacturing quality was quite high. I still have it albeit the action is now VERY low and a few items have been altered to my playing; I was very pleased because of the range and quality. Had either of those factors been missing, the Bass could be a great deal & I might pass. They very last thing is color or "who plays them". Those issues can lead to disappointment.
 
#105
Sartori said:
I really don't get this one.

Wait... does everyone besides me play them with both pickups on at once? :confused:
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The bass sounded pretty good through a WT-800 and a 410XLT, but did not sound so good through my Trace Elliot AH-500 head coupled with the 410XLT. I tried soling and blending the pickups differently and got no where with it. Is it so hard to understand people generally do not like Rickenbackers? Maybe the vintage ones sound better, I have no clue. I will stick to my Spector basses.
 
#107
Jazz basses. Or at least, Fender-Jazz-style basses, I think all but one of those I've tried has been a copy. I don't think they're bad basses, but I've always found the feel and the tone disappointing when compared with more or less every Precision-style bass I've tried. I don't know whether it's the tapered neck, or the different pickup configuration - or maybe I'm just so used to my P copy that every J-bass feels weird.


Also...
Muddslide said:
I should also say active basses. Active electronics of any kind. It's great what some people can do with them. Personally I absolutely cannot stand them and will never bother with them again.
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I'm with you on this one. Admittedly I've only ever played 'budget' active basses, and I may just be too set in my ways after twelve years with only passive volume and tone controls on my guitars, but I just don't like what those preamps do to the sound. Almost felt as though the preamp was trying to compensate for the bass being a bit cheap and nasty. For balance, I should probably try a couple of high-end active basses and see what I think of those (any excuse to pop into a guitar shop...)
 
#111
I bought a 5 string peavey millennium. It was a gorgeous bass and for 120 bucks it was stunning. I was young and stupid and didn't try it out before I paid for it. I got it home, started playing around on it and for some reason I just couldn't play it without fumbling. I've never has that problem with any other bass. I ended up hating it and giving it away because guitar center would only give me 25 bucks for it. Talk about a kick in the balls.
 
#112
Epiphone Ripper- wanted a bass like Suzi Quatro (my hero) so bought a cheap version of her 75 Gibson. Sounded good to begin with, and it's a beautiful bass, but it has cheap electronics- the pickup selector switch makes it cut out, so I can't move between them, and it always sounds serioulsy pissed off! (and not in a good way) They're meant to sound low and woody- this one is always clicking against the pickups.
 
#113
Also Jack Casady signatures... the holes in the body don't project the sound, and they're very quiet to begin with- not how a semi-acoustic bass is meant to sound.

In short, I've had some bad experiences with Epiphone-however, their Thunderbird is very good.
 
#115
Gearhead17 said:
The bass sounded pretty good through a WT-800 and a 410XLT, but did not sound so good through my Trace Elliot AH-500 head coupled with the 410XLT. I tried soling and blending the pickups differently and got no where with it. Is it so hard to understand people generally do not like Rickenbackers? Maybe the vintage ones sound better, I have no clue. I will stick to my Spector basses.
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No, lots of complaints about them, especially feel-related, I totally understand, they are admittedly pretty freaking weird basses.

It's just the "mid scoop" complaint that I don't understand. To me, it only sounds scooped if both pickups are on full. I never have them set that way (I usually play just the bridge pickup or just the neck pickup), so I never get a scooped sound from them. Then again, lots of basses have a hump in the low mids, which they don't have as much, with stronger high mids.

Different strokes I guess.
 
#116
Sartori said:
It's just the "mid scoop" complaint that I don't understand. To me, it only sounds scooped if both pickups are on full. I never have them set that way (I usually play just the bridge pickup or just the neck pickup), so I never get a scooped sound from them. Then again, lots of basses have a hump in the low mids, which they don't have as much, with stronger high mids.

Different strokes I guess.
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I think it is the lack of low-mids that bothered me the most. I thrive off of the low mids for shows and when I use a bass that does not have much of that, I tend to not like it. I also was not a fan of the shorter scale.
 
#119
A side note: if you tried anything out at guitar center, there's a good chance that it wasn't set up at all. Some manfacturers don't set up their gear at the factory, especially Fender, and guitar center usually doesn't either. I've played some great sounding basses that would have probably felt good too if someone had bothered to set them up.
 
#120
In my case, it's faster to name the ones that havn't been a disappointment - the last two I currently play these days, my G&L L2000 and Carvin BB70F.

All the others I've owned or borrowed, etc, over the years always had some major problems that these two don't have: tone too nasally or muddy requiring super-human strength in the plucking hand to get any sound out of them, neck dive, pickups in the wrong place, too heavy, too gigantic and too expensive are the main problems I've had with everything else.

But the L2K does the Fender style tone without all the fit/tone problems with FMIC basses and the BB70F does everything else.

It's hard to rank the rest in terms of least to most disappointing, since the problems were all major enough for me to either put them back in the case or get rid of them.

The L2K and the Bunny are keepers that have basically ended my GAS for good.

LS
 

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