Is it a good bass for $750 and for a first time bass owner? I have played for almost 3 years and I am wondering if this is the right bass for me.
Without your profile filled out it's hard to tell if it's right for you. If you are playing outdoors a lot, in rainy weather, where your sound doesn't much matter, it might be the bass for you. If you want to actually play in any other situation with a reasonable sound, a $750 Roma ply from Bassesonline.com may be a better deal.
My encounters with fiberglass basses have always been unpleasant. The ones I've played have had a thin, nasal tone and smelled bad to boot. A new middle-school age student came to his first lesson with one of these, rented from school. Unplayable. I would take EJ's advice and hunt around for a decent plywood for under $1000. They're out there.
I recently sold my roth fiberglass bass for $275 and was very happy to get that for it. Not that is was in bad shape, it was just a terrible bass. I sold my bass to a guy in ohio. Where are you buying this bass jmnhorn? Maybe its the same one!
Well, Ron Cater did an add for it: See attachment. My brother in Law got one of these for a hundred bucks. He plays in a jump-blues band, figured it be fine through an amp and EXTRA sturdy . It sounded SO BAD with a pickup that he sold it a week later. He lives in Iowa, it might have made it to Ohio............ COULD THIS BE THE SAM ADAMS BASS?
I bought my bass 4 or 5 years ago and I sold it about 2 or 3 months ago. (Bought and sold in the cleveland, ohio area.)
I have one in my middle school classroom. I cant say it is a good bass. It has a very thin sound and does not play well. It was cheap(free) in need of repair. I use is to show kids but it is not that inspiring. Peace Benton
That ad looks like it's about 100 years old. In those days, Ron probably needed some bread. By the way, the guy that came out with these things, Jerry Finch, is an old friend of mine. They were born here in Denver. He called me up and said come down, I got somthing to show you. He had one of these things laying on the floor.....he took an axe and let the bass have it. It flew across the factory floor without a scratch. They are awful though.
This would be a fun project to just do a photo gallery of all kinds of stunts that you'd try with this thing.... Surfing, Canoeing, sledding, oh the places you'll go!
My boys, take a close look at the after-length (between bridge and tail-piece) You'll see one of those sliding gel-type mutes........................Message? This damn bass is so freakin' loud, I gotta roll up my mute!!!! Ohhhh, also, notice the bow......Message?. This thing bows like a MOFU!!!
A fine bass for learning on, a horrible bass for advancing on. Own one, learned on it for 6 months then upgraded to a hand carved. Don't expect good tone, lots of projection or much else. You can certainly make a lot of left hand progress though.
I acquired a Roth-Finch fiberglass bass a few years ago for almost nothing. After playing around with it for a while (pun intended), I thought it might be best to duct-tape over the f-holes and use it as a floatation device in a flood or maybe just to take a little ride down our local river some summer afternoon. Lloyd Howard