Respectfully, directly telling others what to think, say, do or post is crossing a line. Who died and made you god? You know that you can just change the channel, right?
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To PLAY as good as 14k bass definitely is one thing, let's just say "achievable"... But to SOUND like a 14k bass is a completely different story... Hahaha
Cool!
I very much liked its predecessor, the American Elite. But I had to add a LOT of copper shielding tape to make those Noiseless 4 pups really noiseless….
. But I considered it a great bass. Then I discovered Mike Lull basses…
Trying to ignore you, but once again, you pulled me in. Do you see my avatar? Do you buy and sell $40,000.00 basses? I do. $2k is not a lot for some people, but I would never show the kind of snobbery you are suggesting to my customers. An instrument should work no matter what price range it is in as long as it is not some black market rip off from Ebay. If you buy that junk, you deserve what you get, but even some of that ultra cheap stuff can be made to work well. Giving Fender a "pass" for allowing non functional product to leave the factory because they are not a boutique builder is just too generous for me, and I am sure the guy who saved up for a year to buy that $2K bass would feel the same. Besides, in my experience of 42 years of luthiery work, I see plenty of fails from custom high end builders. "Settling" should not be the goal here. If that were the case with human kind, you would be still playing a washtub with a broomstick attached to it. What the heck is wrong with asking for better?
Anyone who feels the need to have proof of my claims or info about who I am is free to PM me. Thanks in advance for wasting my time. As I always say, no good deed goes unpunished.
all of my fender shaped objects, with the exception of an 86 Power Jazz that used to be my brother’s, are warmoth. active J, p with a J neck, Strat, tele. Basically, for each, fender didn’t make quite what I wanted, or I could t find one I liked. In the end, the warmoths were more bang for the buck and arguably better instruments. I have heard some QC complaints about them lately too, unfortunately. Hard to gauge if it’s more than usual
This isn’t news. Fender has been essentially making the same item for 70 years, there are examples of poor workmanship from every generation. I have a late 60’s Tele with a monster neck to pocket gap, mid 70’s P with some nasty finish issues, a 90’s Boner bass with the notorious B string crack and a early 2000,s Mike Dirnt that had a neck twist that was unfixable, also I took it out of the case and 90% of the finish on the back stayed in the case, it peeled down to the Fullerplast.
Fender is a factory, having worked in factories my whole adult life, Monday morning and Friday afternoon items are frequently subpar.
Fender is a factory, having worked in factories my whole adult life, Monday morning and Friday afternoon items are frequently subpar.
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While I often can get the action and playability of a low end bass to work very well, there is little that can be done with the stock circuits and pickups to make them great. When I say "made to play like an expensive bass", I mean you can get the action low and modify the electronics to help a lot. No, I can't turn a Hondo into an Alembic....but then again, I can't turn an MTD, F Bass, Fodera, Muckleroy, Sadowsky, Ken Smith, etc. in to an Alembic either. All I can do is make it play the best it can.
I, for one, can't say when that period ended, but I do remember reading tons of posts pointing to 2008 as the time FMIC made a concerted effort to improve the quality control across their entire Fender/Squier catalog. Perhaps we're at the bad end of a "pendulum swing" effect? If so, the optimistic side of me hopes it will start swinging the other way soon.
I don't get it... You come here and start a thread bashing a brand, pointing out lots of "fails", and then when we ask for pictures to get an idea of what you're talking about, you just turn your back and leave?
Ditto. There was no flame nor accusation in my post, but like many experienced players here, I do have decades of experience to at least make a reasonable legitimate point. Photos (other requested) and basic non-anonymity about your unreasonable claims are legit questions. Without them, this is just a common rant. Which is also fine. As stated, pointing out QC issue is legit. But without context it lacks any backbone.
Maybe we both did. Early last year, I scored a great deal on a practically new, open-box Fender American Pro II Jazz in the same Dark Night finish your avatar is brandishing. I could find no flaws with it, but the best part was the setup. It was so nice, it made me really re-evaluate what a decently setup instrument should feel like in my hands.
The discontinued Fender Classic '70s Jazz neck is pretty chunky. That, combined with the vintage-style fretboard, gives you a fairly baseball-bat-like feel. That being said, I've never owned an early '70s Jazz, so I can't compare the two, only report how mine feels.
Still not getting the point. You can't be a luthier for as long as I have been and not expect all sorts of problems from Fender and every other manufacturer out there. I wake up knowing that today will bring me factory flaws from Fender, but in the past couple of months, it has increased in frequency, and I am simply pointing out that something has changed at the factory to allow for more flubs to pass inspection. The point here is that flaws are leaving the factory in higher numbers than ever from what I can see from my more than adequate exposure to the product. Keep in mind that a salesman or even a customer is not a good gauge for finding these issues. A luthier is better, but also know that not all luthiers are qualified or good luthiers, and if they don't really care, they could miss things. My point is these were pretty obvious issues with these instruments, and Helen Keller could have found them.
I will suppose he lives around a community of wealthy ppl, cause he says he's busy "fixing" a lot of Fenders day after day, all year long... That sounds more likely "argumentum ad verecundiam" to me.
Worse than that, it was a Mars atmospheric probe, so it probably cost even more to get it all the way out there than if it were staying in our "celestial back yard". The poor thing was either destroyed in the Martian atmosphere or skipped off it like a stone and got hurled out into solar orbit!
(Cosmically unlikely, but it would be hilarious if it crashed into the Tesla Elon Musk launched towards the Sun. "You look lost. Need a ride, hitchhiker?" )
Fender has no concern for quality control because there are literally a billion rubes that buy the decal and not the instrument stuck to the back of it.
drumvsbass
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What is hilarious is that anyone thinks that Fender's were good at any point in time. They weren't, they aren't, and likely never will be. Anyone expecting a FSO to play at all like an actual modern instrument is living in a dream. You want authenticity? Prepare for garbage. Evolution hobbled by nostalgia. But people will pay for it. A 6k jazz bass with dead spots all over... why? Ubiquity. Fools. The only real reason to buy a Fender is the resale value.
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