Danelectro is the orignal cheap but indisposible electric guitar and bass. Nearly every band recording in the 60s, and many recording since then (Los Lobos, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Ian McKaye, etc) has recorded using Danelectro or Silvertone guitars, and it's still happening today. These were cheap by any standard. They were available from Sears catalogs and similar outlets. Not only were the instruments inexpensive, but every individual component was so cheaply constructed as to defy belief. They were made out of plywood, plastic, tape, etc. The action was set using wood screws that the bridge seemed to balance on top of. The lipstick tube pickups originally used actual lipstick tubes as a cover. Yet there's a huge list of artists and studio musicians who have used Danelectros.
Joey Spampinato played and recorded most of NRBQ's music with a Danelectro bass. There have also been lots of "cheap" Musicmaster and Mustang student-model basses used through the years, Bill Wyman is one (his early Stones bass was a self-defretted budget model of some kind). Lucas Skinner with King Gizzard and the Lizard wizard is another. And the other members of KG and the LW play oddball import guitars. Peter Hook used cobbled together import basses, although some of them, like his Yamaha BB, weren't cheap. It takes a special kind of musician to advertise that they are using cheap instruments, but most musicians I know will play anything that functions.
What does cheap mean, anyway? My Yamaha Drop6 Baritone is as functional of a music making device as anything I've ever played. It has Sperzel locking tuners and DiMarzio humbuckers, but it was also made in Taiwan and it cost me $200. Is an import Fender or Gibson copy that performs as well as the original but costs less "cheap"? And "cheap" is often a matter of fashion. Back in the 80s, a Gibson EB-0 was pretty cheap.
The value of an instrument isn't defined by its musical utility, especially since collectors have started spending big bucks. If Jamerson were alive today would he be playing a Squier? Who knows? I imagine his main concerns would be whether it was the same bass he played the rest of the time, and whether it had bigazz super-old LaBella flats on it. Carol Kaye plays an Ibanez SRX700. Not officially cheap, but not expensive either.
