The importance of design...

[JRA]

I wonder how important for all of you is the design of a bass. There are many well built instruments that sell poorly due to an ugly or poorly conceived design.

"design" implies engineering, ergonomics, general playability...things like that (at least to me), not just the "look" of the instrument.

Design is not the same as appearance.

per the OP:
i rag on fender (the company = it's easy ), and i joke about leo (couldn't play!), but his 'designs'/engineering? affords others the opportunity to improve upon his work, at least. i wish all EBs were so easy to alter, for a specific player.

i think good-looking instruments (it's subjective) are a must for some, but looks have nothing to do with playing the things.

there are some functional design flaws in "traditional" basses which have been used for many years. It boggles my mind that they still do the same thing to this day.

i'd be interested in knowing what you're referencing....it might give me/us some ideas, or workarounds, or at least some things to think about. TIA

 

[rojo412]

i'd be interested in knowing what you're referencing....it might give me/us some ideas, or workarounds, or at least some things to think about. TIA

Well, things like the location of truss rod adjustments, for example. Or even the designs of truss rods chosen to be used. Both of these things are important to me and practically unchangeable in most stock instruments. While some argue that these things are just fine or have worked for decades, I've certainly seen other companies come up with better ways of doing them over the years. And coming from the standpoint of a tech, builder, and avid bass owner and user, I definitely see a benefit in the advancements of designs in this area.

More debatable and certainly easier to change aspects are the choices in pickup design, options for passive pickup selection and control, and better designs in hardware construction. In essence, these things aren't deal breakers in my book. I may not love what certain specs have been chosen in these arenas and am well aware of how to modify them. But once I start doing the math and realize that changing all of that AND still fighting more permanent design issues... that's where I basically just choose to move along.

And if I'm coming from the viewpoint of a bass builder and designer, starting from scratch, I basically look at all of the things I see as "bad ideas" and just opt out of doing them in my own work.

That actually brings me to a point on pickups shapes, which I think is something that could drastically be improved. Unfortunately, there are standards that have become prevalent in many designs that not only are difficult to cut into a body, they are limited in replacement by their sizes, shapes, and even the lack of ACTUAL standards to them.

While I can't account for some people's lack of understanding that the plastic cover around a pickup has nothing to do with the sounds translated from the coil designs below, I'd argue this:
A soapbar shaped cover can house a number of designs. From a traditional single coil, to a split single, a dual coil, a quad coil, etc. If there were a bass with a somewhat standardized size of cover already installed (say, the P2 or EMG40 for example), the options for change are much better. Should the owner of that bass want to make a change, in this day and age, the options are fairly wide spread. And while the OEM company may feel that their idea was perfect to begin with, let's face it: people are fickle and the ability to tailor something to your needs is NOT a bad thing at all.
So if you start with a bass that has a cover shape cut into it which can allow options, you can either choose the pickup that sounds the same as one from 70 years ago... or you can opt for any number of other designs that are available. And if this was something which was built in from day one, there's no need for massive changes to be done by a tech with a router and/or chisel, thereby making the instrument able to be easily converted back to stock if it becomes necessary.

 

[Gyver]

James Tyler Guitars. High-quality instruments but I cannot get past the headstock.

 

[SunByrne]

I disagree to the extent that these things are subjective.

I don't disagree. I should have put "better" in quotes. I meant technically better, but that doesn't necessarily imply subjectively better.

The Railboard looked great, in theory, to me too. Then I bought one and found it really alien to play as well as othe issues... Swapped it for a nice maple 10 string and never looked back!

And here's a perfect illustration of that. The Railboard appeals to the engineering side of me—it seems like it has to be technically better than your typical bass guitar—but in the end it results in a design that's so radically different it's foreign. There are so many fewer resources for learning how to play it, for instance. That's what I was getting at when I said we are, in part, slaves to history. The bass guitar has a lot more of it, and that matters.

 

[Chef]

"beauty is in the eye of the beholder"

So, you're saying I get to decide for everyone?

I see what you did there...

 

[BergerHead]

The Spector NS, the Warwick Streamer & the Steinberger L series = 1 hand to fit them up; the best step out of the all times classics P & J and the true genius strike on MM Stingray and the G&Ls by the great Clarence Leo Fender. Not to forget the Dingwalls ... all these forms highly follow function.

 

[MotorCityMinion]

I don't like the design of Fodera or Warwick head stocks from a aesthetic perspective but if one of those basses accidentally was shipped to my house, I'd give it a shot.

Is it me, or some of the bass builders have a poor understanding of the value of design?

Yah, It's you. I would not wear shorts with shoes and no socks then post a public picture of it because I have bone white chicken legs. Are my legs poorly designed or any less valuable?

 

[Relayer71]

James Tyler Guitars. High-quality instruments but I cannot get past the headstock.

View attachment 3886707

That guy must be full of himself; who needs their name printed so many times?
I don't even mind the shape that much.

 

[Relayer71]

I don't like the design of Fodera or Warwick head stocks from a aesthetic perspective but if one of those basses accidentally was shipped to my house, I'd give it a shot.



Yah, It's you. I would not wear shorts with shoes and no socks then post a public picture of it because I have bone white chicken legs. Are my legs poorly designed or any less valuable?

They are less valuable to a leg modeling agency, yes.

 

[OogieWaWa]

Random thoughts on the topic, because sometimes newer isn't necessarily better.

On the design of Electric Bass Guitar: Three words, each important. Let's see, guitars appeared in the 1500s in parallel with upright basses. For centuries, people behind the tenth row wished that if the sound could be amplified, they could hear the folks with strings better. So the electric technology finally appeared and was adopted in the 1930's. You work with what you've got, right? The someone said "Hey, now I can't hear the bass," but nobody really did anything much about it until 1951. Somehow, with one early notable exception, the design could have been independent, or just follow either the UB but (the exception being much) smaller, or the guitar but bigger path; and we know how that worked out. If it ain't broke, why fix it?

Anyway, it's all the "Guitar" part's fault, blame those guys.

Along the way, the only real choices you had back when were wood or metal. Wood was lighter, easier to shape, cheaper and it sounded and perhaps looked better, simple choice. But later, metal gave us things like worm gears and truss rods, which made things a lot easier. The truss rods had two ends, so that limited things to picking which end you wanted to be adjustable, and it's obviously not as high of a priority as the tuners for the end users. Just put it somewhere that it doesn't look bad.

There is probably something to be said about having some mass at BOTH mounted ends of the string. Headless basses just look silly to me, just a personal thing. And maybe not having all the mass in one centralized place provides more stability. Tightrope walkers use a balance bar with weight in each end, not all in the middle, right?

Totally eliminating coloration of the tone by using materials other than wood, and signal generation other than electromagnetics, is arguably NOT an advantage. Yeah, stiffness is important, not changing every time the weather changes is important, getting a good signal is important, weight is important, but getting a good tone is importanter. Otherwise we'd actually all be playing a synth bass and skip the whole vibrating string thing all together. All that sweet but austere tone stuff that our ultra-modern design strips away, you'll just want to put back in down the signal path later anyway.

If it isn't sitting on the floor, the next choice is a strap for holding up pretty much anything. Despite the potential ZZ Top spin, the last thing I want is something mounted on my gut, leaning down towards the floor or swinging wildly every time I took a step. That would probably have straps anyway.

As kind of mentioned earlier, good engineering is nice, but there's a very good reason all successful manufacturers have someone equally important to make it look/feel palatable before production in the design decision chain.

Anyway, "In theory, theory and practice are the same; but not in practice."

 

[Arie X]

another aspect to consider is what's going on behind the scenes at any given company. boutique small scale builders have much more leeway than a giant corporation where decisions are often "group inspired", budgets are strict, and timelines get crunched as the next trade show pops up and priorities change and funding gets consumed by other projects. many otherwise excellent designs often get negated to crap in a corporate setting. type A personalities bully other group members, the ceo wants moroccan bathroom tile from his buddies company inlaid into the fingerboard claiming that people aren't thinking outside the box enough, etc...

i design manufacturing tooling where i work and while i have been doing this for over 30 years,
i still have to go through a long approval chain headed up by people who have degrees in non-related fields and are clearly out of their depth and only seem to want to be seen and heard "weighing in" and "engaging". recently i designed some quick and dirty tooling for a total required output of 2 parts and a month later i'm still hearing from people with "ideas" further driving the work away from the original intent -q & d tooling for 2 parts.

small single owner builders who make poor designs well, that's on them or the client wanted it which basically means it's still on them for allowing it in the first place. larger builders often have a lot of "stake holders" involved and competent work sometimes gets pushed aside in the corporate bs system.

 

[Gilmourisgod]

Customer expectation weighs heavily too, google “broken Gibson Headstock” and you will get a quick lesson in how even blatantly bad design (short grain, no volute) that no competent carpenter would ever do, gets “baked in” to a brand. People get used to the “Classic” (bad) design, and won’t buy anything that deviates from that look.

 

[Craig4003]

I don't disagree. I should have put "better" in quotes. I meant technically better, but that doesn't necessarily imply subjectively better.

But you can't even decide what's technically better until you have clear goals and metrics. To say that an optical pickup is "better" than a magnetic pickup in the sense of providing a signal that more accurately represents the vibration of the string is not really relevant to any particular application. The sounds people like to hear from electric guitars and basses are intimately associated with the resonant peak that you get from a magnetic pickup in an RCL circuit. It's not a hi-fi kind of sound, but it is what people want to hear. So it seems to me that a blanket statement that optical pickups are "better" at best reflects an unstated goal that may be at variance from what is actually desired -- a false goal, in other words.

On the other hand, I would love to find an acoustic-electric guitar that actually sounded like an acoustic guitar. None of them do, in my experience, though some are better than others. If an optical pickup could do better than a piezo pickup for that purpose, that might be very interesting. But even there, the sound of an acoustic guitar is much more than the vibrations of the strings, so we'd have to see how well it worked in practice.

 

[Arie X]

Customer expectation weighs heavily too, google “broken Gibson Headstock” and you will get a quick lesson in how even blatantly bad design (short grain, no volute) that no competent carpenter would ever do, gets “baked in” to a brand. People get used to the “Classic” (bad) design, and won’t buy anything that deviates from that look.

yep. to be fair though i've seen many voluted necks cracked and snapped as well. i owned an lp with a repaired crack. that truss rod access pocket doesn't help.

 

[JRA]

thanks for responding, rojo!

the location of truss rod adjustments

i've gotten used to the headstock location as 'best' --- is there a better one?

A soapbar shaped cover can house a number of designs.

So if you start with a bass that has a cover shape cut into it which can allow options

great thinking! i agree with the idea wholeheartedly: dig/route one or two holes = put in whatever you want!

 

[luciens]

View attachment 3886659

per the OP:
i rag on fender (the company = it's easy ), and i joke about leo (couldn't play!), but his 'designs'/engineering? affords others the opportunity to improve upon his work, at least. i wish all EBs were so easy to alter, for a specific player.

I'm a little bit of a Leo Fender geek so this has always been really interesting to me. That he didn't play at all, but still came up with these basses. And despite their problems, they took over the entire planet.

What's also interesting is, what he himself judged to be his very best bass design - the L2K - is nowhere near as popular. A G&L, even though it's a true Fender, just like the Fender is, if you know what I mean, is notorious for having terrible resale value - even as his earlier designs from Fender are the most valuable in their old, collectable forms.

In other words, his most improved design seems to be the least popular and non-adopted of them all.

I know I'm just restating the obvious, I just think it's a really interesting case where design matters but in a non-intuitive way. Even with all the improvements in the L2K, and it is a better design in just about every way, it doesn't actually help it get played more than his "inferior" design, the P and J bass.

L

 

[JimmyM]

Who doesn't like a snazzy looking instrument?

 

[JimmyM]

I'm a little bit of a Leo Fender geek so this has always been really interesting to me. That he didn't play at all, but still came up with these basses. And despite their problems, they took over the entire planet.

What's also interesting is, what he himself judged to be his very best bass design - the L2K - is nowhere near as popular. A G&L, even though it's a true Fender, just like the Fender is, if you know what I mean, is notorious for having terrible resale value - even as his earlier designs from Fender are the most valuable in their old, collectable forms.

In other words, his most improved design seems to be the least popular and non-adopted of them all.

I know I'm just restating the obvious, I just think it's a really interesting case where design matters but in a non-intuitive way. Even with all the improvements in the L2K, and it is a better design in just about every way, it doesn't actually help it get played more than his "inferior" design, the P and J bass.

L

I don't know a band alive who will tell you that their newest album isn't the best album they ever made even if it's clearly not. Maybe after its sales cycle is over they'll tell you, but not until. Same goes for inventors. Of course Leo wouldn't say that the old Fenders and MusicMans smoke the G&L's because he owned G&L and no longer owned Fender or MusicMan.

 

[JRA]

In other words, his most improved design seems to be the least popular and non-adopted of them all....Even with all the improvements in the L2K, and it is a better design in just about every way, it doesn't actually help it get played more than his "inferior" design, the P and J bass.

yeah, i know! (and agree!). the P-bass is the most limiting/limited ax i've ever played! i have one, and i like it, but its limits are manifest/real....since it was the first: we drink the kool-aid and we cave....then we sport an NBD and sing its virtues. crazy me/us!

also: cats my age (i'm 70), as a group: don't want changes = "if it ain't broke..." and a lot of younger players like anything that might represent the 'historical' = "cool!"

i like leo's contraptions because i can throw together an ax from parts i choose. thankfully, there are a lot of fender-style aftermarket parts...but i still end up playing and gigging an homage.

but when i refer to leo's fender axes as "parts basses" i know i'm insulting someone who is high on the kool-aid. that's what they are, though, and in my mind that was his true genius.

 

[rojo412]

I've gotten used to the headstock location as 'best' --- is there a better one?

In my honest opinion, the heel is a better place. And I'll tell you why...

1) While the original heel adjust was/is one of the STUPIDEST designs ever foisted upon us bassists (having to remove the neck and/or pickguard), there are very simple tweaks that have come along to make it better - a channel and the ability to adjust it with a hex wrench. So when done right, it's amazingly functional. No need to remove the neck, less chance of screwing up a tool or truss nut (when done right).
2) With the heel adjust area, you can spread the strings out to turn the wrench, very easily. The string tension is relatively low in that area and you can leave the bass tuned to pitch.
The same can't be said with the headstock adjustment. The short area between the nut and either the tuners or string retainer setup leaves strings in that area very tight. Typically, adjusting the rod there will kink and/or gouge the strings, even if you detune them, which kind of messes with the neck adjustment process as it is.
That is, assuming you don't have a super long wrench for this, which is not common. But even with that as an option, you run into...
3) Removing wood from that area is definitely not the best move for headstock strength. Volute or not, unless you're supporting that with something stronger than wood, it's making that area weaker, no matter how you slice it.
Removing wood from a heel area is no issue either because that is typically the fattest part of the neck AND it's only job is to bolt to the body (or set neck or neck through to the body).

So yeah, if I have my druthers, it's heel all the way.

Honestly, the MM style heel adjuster wheel is one of the best ideas ever come up with for this. You don't even need a specific tool! Use an allen wrench... or a drill bit... or some other stiff object that fits it, then make an adjustment with no issues.
If there were dual-action truss rods out there with that wheel as an option, that is what I'd use in builds every time. It's easy, elegant, safe, modern, the best idea in practical design for that application.