Guild/Fender/DeArmond Ashbory...?

[SanDiegoHarry]

So I did a forum search, found a few pieces from a while back...

I've never owned one, but I recall when they came out that they were pretty cool to get that big 'upright' sound from a tiny package... I gather they have changed over the years and now are list for all of $270 (made in China now, I'd guess).

The wiki page says they are made by Fender...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashbory_bass

I found this web site:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashbory_bass

Selling them for $247 - -

Anyone have the a newer one and have any comments?

 

[T-Bird]

Hi.

Tried a Guild back in the 80's, not too comfortable and twice the price of a regular mid quality bass.

We have them in europe too, ~360€. If the price was anything near the price over there, I'd buy one.

There's also quite a few DIY "ashborys" out there too, dreamy .

Regards
Sam

 

[JTE]

The first ones from the mid to late '80s were a bit pricey, but very nice. Fender (FMIC) bought Guild in very late 1995, and when Fender created the Korean import line they called DeArmond, they included the Ashbory in that line. I believe it's the only thing they still have that says "DeArmond" on it (assuming it's still made at all).

The early Fender/DeArmond ones had some severe problems with poor strings, but they reformulated them several years ago. I was a Guild dealer (1977-1988) and had one in the store. It was cool, but of very limited utility. We showed our sales rep an idea for putting an Ashbory in the upper horn of a Pilot bass. He thought it was cool, and they were talking about making a prototype/custom model for us, but it never panned out.

I picked up a DeArmond one around 1999 or so, and I still have it. It's fun to play, especially things like Jack Bruce's lines ("White Room" and "Badge" are great on the Ashbory) and "Fever". I did use it for a few gigs but it's real problem is that the bass is very awkard to hold and play. The very short scale makes intonation a challenge, but it's a great voice to play with.

There's not really a lot of difference between my Korean one and the Guild versions, except the DeArmonds have much better tuning machines.

Jack Bruce used one for at least one song ("Kwela") on his album "A Question of Time".

jte

 

[Tao4Now]

It's a great little instrument and not very expensive. I said a bit more about it in this thread:

http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=404740&highlight=ashbory

largesound.com is where I purchased mine, and I'm very happy with it.

Edit: forgot to mention that the strap button mod (very simple and easy to do) is a must to correct awkwardness issues, and the mod works quite well when coupled with a mandolin strap.

 

[Hughsie]

Anyone have the a newer one and have any comments?

Got one as a gift yesterday. 'Crafted In Indonesia', apparently (according to the headstock). Played around with it for a couple of hours last night - a lot of 'getting-used-to' coming my way, but it does sound great.

I was doing a search on here for other Ashbory threads last night (well, 4AM, when I'd finally put the bloody thing down!), and I forgot to subscribe to any of them (did I mention it was 4AM?!?) ... but another TBer put a link to his band page with lots of cool sounding fusion stuff on the Ashbory - I even remembered to bookmark it!

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And these links are interesting too: the 'official' Ashbory site is

http://www.largesound.com/

...although maybe it's not updated too often, as it still says 'Dearmond' on it (unlike the instrument itself).

Then there's a bit of history at

http://web.archive.org/web/20030811130840/www.ashelec.demon.co.uk/ashbory/