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Starter Basses Today And Back In The Day!

#81
50 years ago there was Gibson, Fender Fence Palings that sounded like tin cans up top and boom boxes down below (It was the amps but we didn't know back then) and junk.

The junk came in varying degrees but all uniquely qualified as junk with genuine ear stuffing pick ups that really hurt the ears.

Gibson's were a work of art compared to whatever else was available and you got even volume and tone across the strings very unlike the Fender boom and ear split options.

I own several Fender's today and they are nice instruments but again, that is because the amps improved, the guitars were always better than they sounded back then. The Gibson's will still wipe the floor with tone and note articulation. When you play a run, everyone will hear it. Still get amused when a younger drummer I play with comments on hearing notes he never heard before in some songs.
 
#82
M.R. Ogle said:
Yes, The deflated basketball theory. I'm "borrowing" that!

I'm actually (in retrospect) thankful for the cheap guitars and basses we had available to us poor kids during the 70's. I bought my first one for $25, a terrible "National" in brown burst that was nearly unplayable. But, I figured I had nothing to lose by turning every screw on it that I could find.

And I did. And sometimes... it made it play BETTER. Pretty soon, I'm tearing into the electronics and changing out pickups and painting them with automotive spray paint. And then my friends ask me to look at their guitars, because they're shorting or something. And it just builds from there. When DiMarzio pickups became available, I must have put a few dozen in for friends. Then more aftermarket parts, etc, etc.

Without those crappy guitars, I would not have started tinkering. And I would probably not have a guitar repair shop today.
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Your National probably was one of those from some Japanese company that simply bought rights to the name. The American Kay/National/Supro/Valco conglomerate went belly up very late in the sixties, shortly after introducing their Moderne line. (I almost typed Moderna; a sign of the times, I suppose.)

But why on earth would you use automotive spray paint on the pickups?
 
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#84
rantbot said:
How so? You can't play at all with a deflated ball. But you can certainly play on an ultra-cheapo violin, no matter what the pros say (at least, as long as it's not so cheap that it's falling apart). In fact, a pro who will stoop so low as to actually play one sounds rather good. Try that with a deflated basketball.
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But you *can* play with a deflated football. Ask Tom Brady.
 
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#86
godofthunder59 said:
When I started out you got a Fender ( maybe a Gibson or Rickenbacker) or a piece of junk from Japan, there was no middle ground .
Starting in the mid 70's some good affordable stuff started showing up from Japan.
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I don't know when you started out, but by the mid-sixties the "middle ground" would have been filled by Harmony, Kay (perhaps), Magnatone, Supro, and imports like Eko and Hagstrom. By the end of the decade the Hagstroms were much improved, and the Eko ABGs of the following decade simply are superb instruments.

I would almost put Magnatone in top-tier but am undecided.
 
#88
This...Ugh
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#89
It all changed for me in the early 2000's when I became aware of Rondo and SX basses. All of a sudden, it seemed that cheap Chinese and Korean knock-off's could be viable, usable, giggable instruments. I started playing bass in 1959 and got my first electric bass in '65 (a '63 P sunburst/tort ), and at that time I'm not sure if anything other than some Japanese knock-off's existed. My '63P was $240, and included a Sano accordion amp.

When the SX basses hit the market it seemed almost impossible that a <$100 bass could be almost as good as my old '63 Fender, yet there it was front and center and 100% giggable right off the Rondo showroom floor (Rondo still had a storefront in Union NJ back in those days) … amazing …
 
#94
Dr. Cheese said:




I was out and did my regular reconnaissance at my local Fender (where I bought my US Geddy,) and saw some interesting stuff today. I saw a new Affinity J5, and as usual, it is a great budget bass. Frankly, I think the Affinity takes a better set up than my Squier Contemporary Jazz V. If I bought that bass, gave the trussrod a turn and shimmed the neck, I know it would play like a dream.

In contrast, I saw a no name import, probably from the Seventies or early Eighties, that looked about like my first bass and was about as crappy. The action was bordering on unplayable and that is why I did not last long on it.

Beginning bassist's have it 100x better than folks who started when I did.
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There is a world of difference. Oddly enough some of the old Danelectro and Silvertone basses that were in the under $100 price range actually sounded and played good and go for quite a lot today.
 
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#95
I wouldnt lump all 70s imports in the bad box: I have handled some very very good basses by Lotus, Aria, Lincoln, Electra (and Westone), and several others from the 70s that are fine decently crafted instruments....I will put my Sekova EB-3 up in this list too
 
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#96
I started playing guitar about 1969. Beginner stuff was the relatively generic offerings from Radio Shack, Sears, K-Mart, Penneys, etc. Filth and junk. A lot of that crap came into the store I managed ('77-'88) in futile attempts to "repair" them. This was stuff that was selling out of the Sears catalog for way less than $100. There's was some decent stuff, but the price was higher. The Fender Music Master was a quite serviceable instrument, but more expensive thant those other things.

Now the lowest end stuff I see can be played in tune without discomfort, and also looks like a real instrument. And given inflation way less expensive.
 
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