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late 70's fender's
- Thread starter chief ten beers
- Start date
OT, but...
Even then,I'd say James Brown started the Funk Train rolling with "Out Of Sight". In 1964.
While that's just my somewhat informed opinion, here's the first sentence in Wikipedia's article on Funk...
"Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, soul jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music."
More from Wikipedia...
1960s: James Brown and the development of funk
James Brown, one of the founding fathers of funkBy the mid-1960s, James Brown had developed his signature groove that emphasized the downbeat with heavy emphasis on the first beat of every measure to etch his distinctive sound, rather than the backbeat that typified African American music.[8] Brown often cued his band with the command "On the one!," changing the percussion emphasis/accent from the one-two-three-four backbeat of traditional soul music to the one-two-three-four downbeat but with an even-note syncopated guitar rhythm (on quarter notes two and four) featuring a hard-driving, repetitive brassy swing. This one-three beat launched the shift in Brown's signature music style, starting with his 1964 hit single, "Out of Sight" and his 1965 hit, "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag".
Other artists probably started doing this even earlier. James had HITS is the difference.
Being old doesn't ALWAYS suck.
Even then,I'd say James Brown started the Funk Train rolling with "Out Of Sight". In 1964.
While that's just my somewhat informed opinion, here's the first sentence in Wikipedia's article on Funk...
"Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, soul jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music."
More from Wikipedia...
1960s: James Brown and the development of funk
James Brown, one of the founding fathers of funkBy the mid-1960s, James Brown had developed his signature groove that emphasized the downbeat with heavy emphasis on the first beat of every measure to etch his distinctive sound, rather than the backbeat that typified African American music.[8] Brown often cued his band with the command "On the one!," changing the percussion emphasis/accent from the one-two-three-four backbeat of traditional soul music to the one-two-three-four downbeat but with an even-note syncopated guitar rhythm (on quarter notes two and four) featuring a hard-driving, repetitive brassy swing. This one-three beat launched the shift in Brown's signature music style, starting with his 1964 hit single, "Out of Sight" and his 1965 hit, "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag".
Other artists probably started doing this even earlier. James had HITS is the difference.
Being old doesn't ALWAYS suck.
Harry, I have read most of your 70s fender posts -- and am quite familiar with your late 70s Jazz bass. I also recall a post where you defended your position that Fullerton reissues are crap because they were made during the CBS Fender era...
btw, please skip the car guitar comparisons -- one has nothing to do with the other. That's like saying that I'd rather have a new Squire than a preCBS Precision because surgical techniques are so much better now than they were in the 1950s.
btw, please skip the car guitar comparisons -- one has nothing to do with the other. That's like saying that I'd rather have a new Squire than a preCBS Precision because surgical techniques are so much better now than they were in the 1950s.
Nope, the players did. When they started noticing that the new ones weren't better than the old ones they started looking for older ones. Now there was (and still is) a lot of bad logic and conjecture about exactly WHAT made the older ones good, but it was people playing them that started the vintage market.
Yeah, so? And the following post about Marcus doing well with his also misses the point. There were good ones. There were a lot of not very good ones, and way too many just plain bad ones, especially in light of Fender's position at the time as THE leading bass company. There really wasn't much competition, real serious market competition for Fender in that period. When Music Man came out it was the first real hit at them. Gibson didn't have much that appealed to Fender players. Ibanez and Yamaha were still trying to figure how to get out of the cheap copy league. Rick was there but appealed to a much smaller market and never tried to go against Fender really. And Alembic was just way out there with a totally different product. For 90% of the bass market, Fender was the standard. And that standard was getting lower each year.
It's not simply set-up. We set up everything that came in, but set-up doesn't make a dull dead instrument with a shifting neck/body joint come alive and stay stable. And that was a common problem with Fender instruments made in the '70s when I was selling them new.
John
Possible the best sounding bass (to me) that I have ever come across was a 73 P at a local music. I couldn't swing the price tag though. Next in a line was 74 J that was insane. That store also had a 70's reissue bass (mim) that had Fralins in it. It was very nice, and a close second. Could I tell the difference? Sure. Could the hot girls in the front row of a gig? Probably not....
No, I think there are some very telling similarities between the US auto market and the US guitar market in this period. A lot of the same mistakes made by companies that weren't paying enough attention to the actual customers. Lower quality that was thought to be acceptable, focus on keeping production numbers up instead of doing things right the first time, resistance to improved production techniques, etc. Players started noticing that the old guitars were better by many objective standards and a lot of subjective ones too. Car buyers wanting reliable and fuel efficient transportation. But Gibson and Fender responded with new "improvements" (some were, some weren't but they didn't address the customers' desires) and the Big 3 either made crappy fuel efficient vehicles (the Escort?) or kept trying to sell boats (the LTD?).
No, there are a lot of reasons to compare the two markets and the impact on what we see now when we look at old products. But comparing the AMC to a Jazz bass IS off. It should be compared to the last US made Harmony, or the Music Master, or the Kalamazoo instruments made of particle board.
John
John, I appreciate your post and opinion as you have been around many 70s Fenders. I disagree that neck pocket shift is a big problem with 70s Fenders. You almost can't make a neck pocket so tight that it will not shift if the screws are not tightened. I have heard this leveled mostly at the thee bolt Jazz basses, but that was limited to later 70s Jazzes and never Precisions of any era. I have seen neck problems with 50s/60s Fenders and new ones, so of course there were some from the 70s that had problems --certainly not most of them though. btw, my own 76 Jazz )three bolt) has a very stable neck that does not shift. It is light for a Jazz (9 pounds) and very resonant! My 74 Precision also weighs 9 pounds and the neck pocket is so tight you have to force the neck back on if removed! My problem with these 70s Fender discussion is the generalizations. My point is always that if the neck is straight and the bass is lightweight it's probably a nice piece. As far as your assessment that the Fender your store was shipped were bad, I dunno -- maybe you just pissed off your rep
Whether a car cranks, the brakes work, and the gas mileage are all objective standards. Bass guitar tone not so much. I do know that manufacturing a bass guitar is a much simpler process than manufacturing an automobile and at any rate Fender were still essentially trying to make the same instruments they had been making since the 50s/60s -- in other words, the models didn't change every year like cars do -- so the typical and fluid 70s car styling criticisms certainly do not apply to the comparatively static designs of Fenders from the 70s.
Let's see - at a very conservative estimate, let's say Fender made 1 mllion basses in the 70's. Are you trying to tell us that you know that the majority of that one million are junk? How could you possibly know that. The answer is you can't. The most you can say with any plausible conviction is that the majority of the ones you've played have been junk, which might amount to what, at the most a hundred or two? You assume a great deal when you claim they were mostly junk from your own very limited experience.
One other thing that ALWAYS gets lost in these discussions is the sociological/psychological aspect of a collector market. People are not just buying vintage instruments for their utility as musical instruments -- no one in there right mind could believe that a 60 stack knob is 20k better than a new American reissue strictly as a player! Just like no one could believe that an original first issue of Batman will read 60k better than a new reprint! By comparison 70s Fenders are still super deals, because they can had for the same or a little more than new ones, and are generally just as useful as actual musical instruments!
I won't try to speak for everyone here, but I think the main point that several of us were trying to make is to be a savvy shopper and be sure of what you are buying. Just because something is "vintage", doesn't necessarily mean it's worth owning.
I'm old enough to actually remember the 1970's and while there are many fond memories, it certainly wasn't the greatest decade in America at least.
I'm old enough to actually remember the 1970's and while there are many fond memories, it certainly wasn't the greatest decade in America at least.
We saw it on lots of Jazz basses, and on over half the guitars with the Micro-Tilt neck (Stratocasters, Tele Custom, and Tele Deluxe). Of course the Precision and the Telecaster had the four-bolt neck and were much less likely to have any issues there. And again, the idea of the 3-bolt neck isn't the problem. Leo Fender executed it very very well with Music Man and the early G&L. It was simply that Fender elected to not carry through with close tolerances on machining the necks and bodies, then they left way too much rubbing compound in the neck cavity.
As far as your assessment that the Fender your store was shipped were bad, I dunno -- maybe you just pissed off your rep
Actually, our rep was great. The first day he worked as a sales rep back in '59 he'd called on the store the owner of our store worked at then. They were long-time buddies in the biz, and Don would spend all day at our place shooting the breeze about guitars, Leo, etc. The ONLY time he ever made any disparaging remarks about CBS was shortly after Bill Schultz took over and he commented on how nice it was to have support. He was national sales head for a little while before he retired...
That's what I miss about music retail- the people I got to meet... but that's a whole 'nother topic!
John
There is no doubt that is your opinion -- though I disagree. But to be fair you must hold your opinion about all vintage instruments, no? Can you say that a 20k stack knob is worth anywhere near that because of how well it is made? How about a 50k custom color preCBS strat? Maybe collectible instruments are just not your thing.
I think it's a function of good:bad ratio.
Let's abandon our positions for a moment and consider the questionable (for the purposes of this post) reputation of pre-CBS Fenders as fine, consistent instruments and late 70s Fenders as sub-par, inconsistent instruments.
Is it at all possible that the pre-CBS era produced Fenders are 80:20 good while the late-70s produced Fenders are 40:60 good? Add that due to the passage of time inferior pre-CBS examples have been winnowed out, while late-70s examples exist largely intact.
My experience: New 1977 Mustang: good bass; new 1979 Precision: terrible bass. Used 1962 Precision: great bass; used 1966 'transition' Precision: great bass; used 1965 Precision: great bass. This is how reputations become reputations.
John, I stand by my point that neck gap has nothing to do with this. You would have to glue the neck in to keep it from shifting on any production bolt on neck bass if the screws are no tight. My own 76 Jazz neck has never slipped, but I'm not throwing the bass around my own neck like Kip Winger so maybe I just haven't tested the three bolt system under the right conditions.
Buffing compound should be removed at the factory, but it's not impossible or even hard to do afterwords.
