Enjoy the benefits of a premium membership!
Upgrade Account
-
TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
Join free Log in
Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.
Fender fanned fretboard. Bets accepted...
- Thread starter Avezzano
- Start date
I avoided this thread when I first saw it, but it does give me a laugh. Who really cares if they do fanned frets or not?
Jimmy you surprise me: 95% of threads could be avoided, according to your "philosophy". Take care and good laugh!
P.s.: I care. And I bet 1% of fellow Taber's care, too. Maybe more. Who cared about smartphones, before they came on the market...
Last edited:
Plenty of fan about the Bass VI or the Dimension etc... Maybe within the Squier version or MIM, but variety is always a good thing. And Fender has always varied its offer, thru time.
If they make it... the demand will start. In addition, it could be about time they start introducing 35" scale, too.
exactly the point I'm trying to get at. A designer, innovator is very easily called an inventor.
That’s a circular argument.
And it doesn’t hold up in actual practice. A good example of that is Gibson’s robo-tuners. Trying to sell someone a “solution” for a problem that doesn’t exist - or creating a product you think your customers should buy rather than the one they actually want - is a sure formula for business disaster.
At one point Fender convinced itself bass players were looking for “innovation.” So they introduced the Dimension series of basses. Arguably one of the better designs Fender ever came up with. And the vast majority of their established customer base wanted nothing to do with it.
Last edited:
That is your respectable opinion, not a dogma. Anything (A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G) man builds/invents/innovate is a "toss a coin" bet, as a minimum. If it weren't so, you would only have successful products on the shelf. You don't actually know what, when, where a product will be successful. I would add also that the vast majority of people that bought Dimension basses (to stay on the example you made) is quite happy. Would it have been brought on the market by Ibanez/Aria/Yamaha, "probably" Dimension basses would still be on the market. But it was brought from Fender and people have some difficulty to see something different from a P or J.
Amazon was a major, huge financial disaster for years, until it was successful. The first cars on the streets were laughed at by the vast majority of people. That commented about the superior quality and reliability of the horses. Etc...
All the above said, the original question is very simply "if Fender will ever come on the market with fanned frets." And... I well know that they still have to methabolize and introduce the 35" scale, somewhere on the catalog. That objectively would be something worth adopting (am I wrong?) and commonly offered by the major competitors. I am amazed at the almost horrified, scandalized reactions to the possibility that Fender introduce the fanned fretboards! Some sort of "how dare you think about that, sacrilege, who cares, this thread makes me laugh" etc... Hey: this is a forum, right?
Sure these guys below don't know how to handle the market and their company...
ESP LTD B-1005SE Multi-Scale Bass Review
EHB | PRODUCTS | Ibanez guitars
Invalid Link Removed
Invalid Link Removed
Invalid Link Removed
Last edited:
I hope they prove us all wrong and just put out a headless P-bass with fanned frets tomorrow.
There are already fanned fret Ps and Js out there. Dingwall makes them. They’re exquisite. If you really want a multi scale P or J, I’d recommend you look there first. I just don’t see Fender jumping into that market.
Even though more and more manufacturers are dipping their toes into the multi-scale game, nobody does it like Dingwall - it’s kinda their thing and they’ve been perfecting it for decades. Their quality and playability is something Fender could only dream of at this point.
Even though more and more manufacturers are dipping their toes into the multi-scale game, nobody does it like Dingwall - it’s kinda their thing and they’ve been perfecting it for decades. Their quality and playability is something Fender could only dream of at this point.
Anything I post is purely my own considered opinion based on my own knowledge and personal experience. I’m not sure what point you felt you were making by pointing that out since I never intended or expected it be taken as anything else. I’m sure the people at TB are smart enough to know that without needing to be told.
FWIW, I subscribed to Forbes, WSJ, Business Week, Money, Entrepreneur, Wired, and Inc. I can read articles too. My own business (IT services and support) dealt with a lot of startups and established companies, many of which decided to branch out. So I have a lot of ground level experience seeing things in the real business world. And for every Cinderella business story there’s thousands of companies who bet the farm on something nobody knew they needed - and lost everything. But you only hear the tales of the millionaires who made it when they were 23. The business rags never tell the stories of the ones that lost their businesses and homes - and spent the next 20 years paying off the loans they took out to finance their next big idea.
And I can assure you the ones that were successful at bringing something new to market didn’t go into it with a coin toss and “hope for the best” mentality. The level of planning and premarket testing was systematic and excruciatingly detailed. Old business adage borrowed from the pro tennis world: “Never come up to the net with nothing.” If you want to gamble on hope, go play blackjack. The odds are statistically better and the rewards immediate - if you win.
And sure, the cherry picked list of companies you presented know their business. But so does Fender. Arguably better than any other music company considering they continue to easily outsell their closest competitors by multiples, and have done so for close to a century.
Fan frets are a niche offering. If it were clearly superior to everything else out there it would already have been widely adopted. With CNC machining it’s no more difficult for someone like Fender to do fanned frets than it is standard frets. But Fender (quite wisely) is asking the simple question: “Who are the customers? Where is the demand?”
I’ve played compound radius and fanned fret fingerboards. I even have a guitar that came with a compound radius fretboard. I personally didn’t find either fanned frets or a compound radius to be a big deal. Not something I’d be out shopping for. And definitely nothing I’d pay a premium to get. Because I found their advertised benefits to be marginal at best. And I’m apparently not alone in that opinion.
Like I said, niche product. Something Fender is happy to leave to the companies looking for a small market segment to establish themselves by going into.
Last edited:
This: "That’s a circular argument. And it doesn’t hold up in actual practice." you put that as if it is the absolute truth. One may have (and you surely have) all the possible work experience and maybe a vision about what should or should not be done (it's absolutely worth reading your reflections), yet nobody never knows for sure. And surely Ibanez is not a "company aiming at a small portion of the market" yet they decided to develop a consistent part of the bass production to the fanned ones. This would mean something, anyway. Hope you agree. But everyone is entitled to its own view. Obviously. Thumb up.
Last edited:
Fantastic piece of history about the development of the electric bass!!! Funny thing is that Phil Kubicky several years later developed his own peculiar concept of how a bass should be: he arrived basically at the same conclusion of a 32" headless bass not even knowing that the same road was already run!!! (Tks, @swink)
My comment about Kodak sitting too far behind technology curve is an example from my college textbook a few years back. They were used as an example of not adapting to the market. Make of that what you will. My point of not sitting back behind the S shaped technology curve is valid either way.
I'm hoping that the tech curve doesn't get rid of all stringed instruments...
