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Mojo

deeptubes

deeptubes

Feb 21, 2011
1,884
881
#1
Mojo is a word that gets kicked around this site, but what is it? I know what it is to me, but what is it to you?

I think some would define mojo as wear and tear, scratches and dings, but I think there is more to it than that. To me, mojo is not the wear itself but the stories behind the wear - who, what, where, when, why, and how. It is conditional. In order for an instrument to be "mojo-ized", it must be cared for. An abused instrument does not have mojo, it's just beat up.

What are your thoughts and opinions?
 
#2
Imo, that's just wear.

Mojo goes deeper than that, it permeates the fibers of the wood and transforms a board into a cosmic generator of tone. Mojo is easliy absorbed by the elements of the earth, which is why mojo will be found in clay dots instead of plastic dots. Mojo can seep into the coils make the pickups sound better than the thousands of others made the same way by the same person on the same winding machine. The secret powers of mojo make one instrument sound and play far superior to its visually identical twin.
 
#3
GlennW said:
Imo, that's just wear.

Mojo goes deeper than that, it permeates the fibers of the wood and transforms a board into a cosmic generator of tone. Mojo is easliy absorbed by the elements of the earth, which is why mojo will be found in clay dots instead of plastic dots. Mojo can seep into the coils make the pickups sound better than the thousands of others made the same way by the same person on the same winding machine. The secret powers of mojo make one instrument sound and play far superior to its visually identical twin.
Click to expand...

Cosmic Generator of Tone!
 
#7
While "mojo" as it pertains to overpriced vintage instruments is, as has been stated, just a marketing term for people to justify market prices that aren't inline with utility value, some instruments do have a "mojo" factor insofar that they are just way above average sounding and playing instruments, regardless of vintage or road wear.
 
#9
An instrument's mojo will connect with you when you hold it. It is not automatically an old instrument. I used to work at a music store. I would tell my customers "We don't pick basses. They pick us." In many ways it is true. I once missed out buying an average ordinary wine MIM Fender Jazz. I hung on the wall of our store for weeks. But MAN did it play GREAT. I wouldn't let myself buy it because.... well........ it was a wine colored MIM Jazz. I went back to buy it on a day off and it was gone. Now, you may think I'm nuts, but that bass had something about it that called out to me. Its mojo connected with mine.

So, I think it is different for different people. I tried not to feel the mojo of what was an ordinary new bass. But it was there.
 
#10
Those who don't believe in mojo have my sympathy. Mojo isn't a look, it's how you feel when you play the bass - look, feel, sound. The seller doesn't decide if a bass has mojo, the buyer does. If you don't know what mojo is, no one can explain it.
 
#13
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It's the secret of awesome carne asada
 
#14
FYI. Mojo is just what came to be the word used in America to describe your grigri or juju bag.

When Preston Forster wrote a song in which he lamented a woman so powerful even his good luck talisman wouldn't sway her, "I got my mojo workin, but it just don't work on you"; he unknowingly inserted black southeastern regional slang into the American lexicon when his song received wide recognition after being recorded by Muddy Waters.

Since juju and by extension mojo is a personal device that only protects or brings good fortune to whomever the items it contains are personal to and are worthless until properly blessed, describing something as having mojo is a misnomer unless it is being used in reference to an item that holds some personal significance to it's owner and has been blessed by a gris gris doctor for luck, protection, to do evil against an enemy, etc., etc.,. This power is not transferable except from one blood relative to another so it is impossible to get any mojo from an inanimate object unless of course it is in your juju bag.

This is strictly a personal observation but I think most folks confuse what mojo is with what mojo does. Strong mojo attracts the good spirits and repels the bad. If you pick up a bass and it just feels so right, that bass is inhabited by a Rada (benevolent) Iwa which is attracted to your mojo. If you are walking across the street and a car runs a red light but misses you by inches. The car was inhabited by a Petwo (malevolent) Iwa but was repelled by your mojo. As with every other article of faith, if you don't act right your mojo flips and whatever purpose for which it was blessed now becomes a curse. The short story about a magic monkey's paw is a perfect example of what happens when you try to outsmart the power instilled in your juju bag.

So it is not something called mojo that makes an object special. It is the spirits YOUR mojo attracts, or repels, that makes your life either charmed or haunted.

If you feel your mojo could use a boost, you can get pre blessed grigri bags by mail.
 
#18
To me, mojo is very personal.

In other words, no bass in a shop is going to have it, no matter how beat up.

Scratches, dents and dings that give a more connected feeling to the instrument is mojo. Those dents and scrapes that make an instrument feel more a part of you, is mojo.

It can't be faked, and must be earned for each instrument. When you pick up your beat to death (from playing hard) bass, and get that feeling of "I'm home", THAT'S mojo.
 
#19
When an instrument has mojo, it can do no wrong. Every sound that it makes is music. Everyone who touches it is a virtuoso. Everyone who hears it is a historic steam engine located in the former Chestnut Hill High Service Pumping Station, now the Metropolitan Waterworks Museum, 2450 Beacon Street, Boston, Massachusetts. It has been declared a historic mechanical engineering landmark by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

The engine, which drew steam from a coal-fired boiler, was designed by noted engineer Erasmus Darwin Leavitt, Jr. (1836-1916) of Cambridge, Massachusetts, built by N.F. Palmer Jr. & Co. and the Quintard Iron Works, New York, and installed in 1894 as Engine No. 3 of the Chestnut Hill High Station, later the Boston Water Works. At its normal speed of 50 revolutions per minute, it pumped 25 million gallons of water in 24 hours.
 
#20
two fingers said:
Wow, you guys go to the Literal School of Being Literal? Literally? I think we all get what mojo is in the context of the OP's question. Literally.
Click to expand...

Sometimes when I hold a bass, I can feel the magic. Literally, it feels all hopped up on supernatural energy, Litetally, truly and honestly. So IME, that dictionary quote #2 is dead to nuts on.
 

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