Clever insult, you sir, get a gold star!Smarter than you anyway.
On to my ignore list you go. We'll both be happier.
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Premium price for premium sound?
- Thread starter Cole Louis Allar
- Start date
I've been in IT for 15 years... Some for the government, so I'm used to clumsy solutions!And the search function at TB has to be one of the clumsiest and least intuitive examples I've seen for how not to do a search feature if you expect it to actually get used by most people.
And I'm speaking from the perspective of an IT person who does this stuff for a living.
"So there!" yourself Mr. Pudge. Now I've said it too.
It may have been harsh, especially given that CLA is a n00b... But i think it's more worthy to post "use the search function" than "Squier [this or that]" for the billionth time. I think the ambiguous title frustrated me, like I was suckered into another damn Squier V Fender thread!
It could have been Rockbass V German Ww, Korean V Euro Spector, or Sub Ray V Stingray and not received this response.
I usually stay positive... Sorry to be a downer.
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These sorts of comparisons drive me a little crazy - so do yourself a favor and ignore the following semi-rant.
That's a faulty analogy.
Cars are cars. Musical instruments are musical instruments. Two entirely different things, made in entirely different ways, for two completely different purposes.
So while trying to draw equivalences between their respective purchasing decision frameworks may read well…it really doesn't hold up when you think about it.
Fenders are not Mercedes. They're Fenders.
People buy cars and guitars for very different reasons. And the criteria people apply to one purchase won't apply to the other except in a very general way. With a car, you can clearly establish one handles better, gets better mileage, or has a better service record or smoother ride. With a guitar, it's very difficult to even get a consensus on what constitutes "superior" sound or playability. Which is why terms like "vintage," and "classic," and "mojo," get tossed around so freely in the guitar world. Because once you get beyond something that sounds acceptably good and plays comfortably, all the subsequent distinctions come down to little more than what a specific individual player prefers.
And there's no accounting for individual taste, right?
Cars are cars. Musical instruments are musical instruments. Two entirely different things, made in entirely different ways, for two completely different purposes.
So while trying to draw equivalences between their respective purchasing decision frameworks may read well…it really doesn't hold up when you think about it.
Fenders are not Mercedes. They're Fenders.
People buy cars and guitars for very different reasons. And the criteria people apply to one purchase won't apply to the other except in a very general way. With a car, you can clearly establish one handles better, gets better mileage, or has a better service record or smoother ride. With a guitar, it's very difficult to even get a consensus on what constitutes "superior" sound or playability. Which is why terms like "vintage," and "classic," and "mojo," get tossed around so freely in the guitar world. Because once you get beyond something that sounds acceptably good and plays comfortably, all the subsequent distinctions come down to little more than what a specific individual player prefers.
And there's no accounting for individual taste, right?
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I've been in IT for 15 years... Some for the government, so I'm used to clumsy solutions!
Yeah, I hear you. And ain't it the truth.
Problem is, geeks like us get so used to working with suboptimal software that we sometimes lose sight of just how frustrating it can be for normal people (with real lives) when they try to use it.
And you gotta admit the TB search 'feature' rates pretty high when it comes to suckage points. Having to hit "more" to get to the "keywords" option…I mean seriously?
Congratulations! You've been added to the Master of Flounce's ignore list! Welcome to the club.
I just love how he tosses that line around here - as if anybody really cares that somebody on a forum is ignoring them. Sheesh!
Where does the more money than sense logic take us? Do we all have to buy our furniture at IKEA and eat at McDonald's?
Someone clould start a thread in two days from now called "which is better Squier or Fender" and the same poeople would get in the same arguments and it would go for ten pages.
Obviously Squire is the lesser quality import version of Fender, but the OP wanted to know if a higher quality instrument is required to sound good.
If he keeps blocking people he will have his very own TB experience where he posts and replies all to his own threads because everybody else is blocked. He probably isn't far from it hahaCongratulations! You've been added to the Master of Flounce's ignore list! Welcome to the club.
I just love how he tosses that line around here - as if anybody really cares that somebody on a forum is ignoring them. Sheesh!
The Swedish meatballs at IKEA aren't too bad...
No . What I'm asking is if an MIA fender is worth it sound wise, or is this whole MIA thing just a clever marketing tactic to make an excuse to charge more money. I get that MIA fenders may be better build quality wise, but that's not what I'm talking about here. Im asking about sound quality. A cheap instrument you CAN play will sound a whole lot better than a $10,000 setup played by someone who can't play.
I just think it's best to be a good bassist in general. I honestly don't think the audience will really care how much you spent on your set up, but they will care if you are not playing time, or out of key.+1
The real basis for these arguments is that some people can't accept that something is only 'good.' It's like 'good' is an insult. It has to be 'as good as something that's actually better.'
And to the 'it's better to be a good player with a cheap bass than a bad player with a good bass' crowd - it's not one or the other. The fact that Victor Wooten plays a Fodera tells you it's best to be a good player with a good bass.
Thats a Daimler Chrysler Mercedes FenderUnless, of course, it is a Mercedes fender:
If you look at the history of Fender instruments then the answer is no, it isn't a marketing tactic. There used to only be MIA Fenders. The Squier line of guitars and basses were created specifically to compete with a market that was at one point flooded with cheap knock offs. Fender took their existing products and cost engineered them as agressively as they could to hit certain price points. MIA instruments are made in many respects the same way Fender has always made them, and their price reflects the cost of doing so. This is the baseline Fender price. Fender offers lower priced instruments by subtracting cost from production, as well as (much) higher priced instruments via their Custom Shop, plus a few premium production instruments somewhere in between.
Is it marketing? No, it's not. Not unless you let the goofballs in marketing make some pretty serious business decisions. The decision to make these products at these price points is made much higher up in the organization.
Depends on what sound someone is looking for. There are a lot of various pickups out there that don't quite fit into a standard P or J routing.
In my humble opinion, a really reinforced neck assists with a solid sounding low B string. Something like a luthier made vs. a Squier isn't exactly a fair fight. Great luthiers have often spent a lot of time trying to make their low B sound much better than shop brands, which is part of how they stay in business.
Wood and construction play some role in tone. Some of us want something very sustainy with a nice slow bloom. It's easy to get a store brand bolt-on that has lots of punch and quick decay.
I'd like to know, also. I'd bet a hundred bucks that some of the electronics in a MIA Fender aren't made in the US.
And the "Premium, aged better wood" is something that i'd be all in favor of, but I very seldom see manufacturers actually spelling out that difference in their product descriptions.
The only manufacturers who seem to make a point of their wood selection process are boutique luthiers, and even then they get pooh-pooh'd by many as being phony and pretentious and just trying to charge more.
