Things You Wish Leo Had Done Differently...

[BassShark]

Both of those.

Jack mounted in plastic pickguard (modern P) is asking for breakage.

P pickups sound better to me "reversed".

The Jazz bass circuit is quirky and awful. Max volume at 85% up? Hum until 100% both pickups? That's not a good design at all.

Re Jazz Bass pickups being noisy if they're not both 100%, that's because they're reverse wound/reverse polarity and function as a humbucker if both are full up. Think of a humbucker equipped guitar with a coil split switch...soon as one coil's turned off there's hum. Major noise in a high gain guitar amp but guitar players deal with it. It's probably better to think of it as a bonus that it's quiet with both PUs full up. Actually for 1960, for Fender to think of reverse wind/reverse polarity pickups was pretty slick! Re "max volume at 85% up", that's down to the taper of the pot, not the circuit or pickups.

 

[M.R. Ogle]

I know why... it still sucks.

 

[BassShark]

that bass was designed to be thumb-picked.

Not so much designed to be thumb picked as that's how they guessed players would pluck the strings...understandable since they were creating a brand new class of musical instrument. That they kept the below-the-strings "tug bar" until 1973 is another matter (and CBS kept it there for 8 or 9 years after buying Fender). It sure looks cool there though!

 

[dStar]

Both of those.

Jack mounted in plastic pickguard (modern P) is asking for breakage.

P pickups sound better to me "reversed".

The Jazz bass circuit is quirky and awful. Max volume at 85% up? Hum until 100% both pickups? That's not a good design at all.

Jazz Bass pickups are a humbucking pickup that is just widely spaced apart.

 

[JimmyM]

Jazz Bass pickups are a humbucking pickup that is just widely spaced apart.

I guess that's one way of looking at it

BTW, all you have to do with J pickups is match output. They don't have to be up all the way to cancel hum.

 

[BassShark]

I'm doing some maintenance today on a Jazz and a P bass, and it reminded me how much I hate the way Fender's basses have their pickups mounted - on foam pads with those long screws with the heads that strip so easily. It's mostly the screws I don't like but the foam is bad too.

Anyone else have slightly irrational pet hates with these ubiquitous basses?

The screw heads shouldn't be stripping. Make sure you're using the right size screwdriver and maybe get a better quality one and make sure it's not worn. (Incidentally, I stripped the pickup screws the first day that I had my brand new Precision Bass in 1975 trying to turn them with a small flat bladed screwdriver instead on a proper sized Phillips!)

It's a good question, though. What's amazing is how much Fender got RIGHT considering they had nothing to reference when designing a brand new class of musical instrument in nineteen-freakin'-fifty-one. Sixty-four years later the 34" scale length, pickup placement, and general body shape are still just about industry standard. Consider how wrong Gibson got it two years later... (I mean, a Gibson EB-1 has its charms but which would you prefer to play for 3 sets a night, a '51 P-bass or an EB-1?)

Of course, the design wasn't perfect, but my only serious criticism of the original Precision Bass is the pickup, which is basically just a 4 pole piece Broadcaster pickup without the metal elevator plate on the bottom and doesn't have a lot of low end and there's really no good place to rest your right thumb if you play fingerstyle...resting your thumb on the edge of the bobbin is a bit awkward compared to the later plastic covered P and J pickups and eventually can result in the death of the coil. One thing I kinda wished Fender never changed was the strings-through-body anchoring.

As an older-than-dust dyed in the wool Fender bass player I must admit that over the years I've come to even love the imperfections...

 

[mikeswals]

I wish the J Bass pickups were split coils so they were both silent when solo and more output.

 

[davy4575]

34" scale and 35" scale, 24 frets, deeper cutaways, made P's with long J necks. I have close to that in my Fender Zone P/J, but its not quite the same as a P or J. I love the neck though I wish it had a couple more frets and the cutaways were still deeper.

 

[ReidK]

Not so much designed to be thumb picked as that's how they guessed players would pluck the strings...understandable since they were creating a brand new class of musical instrument.

It was actually a pretty logical guess based on existing practice at the time. Since fingerstyle guitar players were (and are) accustomed to plucking bass lines with their thumbs, it seemed reasonable that people playing bass lines with their fingers on a guitar-shaped instrument would do something similar. They didn't realize that this new class of musical instrument would inspire new techniques as well.

Reid

 

[BazzTard]

DON'T PUT CHEAP PLASTIC PICKGUARDS OVER A PAINTED FINISH !

and why is it so big? who did he see playing and thought "I need to protect the WHOLE bass"?

Oh, and yeah, having to unbolt the neck to adjust it!

And.....side jack pulease!

actually,his basses had (have) many BAD features.

but they sound so good !

 

[7dollarbologna]

Yea, kept his namesake business.

 

[JimmyM]

Yea, kept his namesake business.

He wished he had, too. All he had to do was change doctors and he was cured of a long-lingering illness. In the end, though, I think it worked out for him...he always had a successful business.

 

[zontar]

Yea, kept his namesake business.

I said the same thing.
Fenders today could still be similar or the same, but with other options as well.

 

[Batmensch]

I'm pretty happy with the way he did it.

 

[alaskaleftybass]

On the Jazz have one small master tone and one pickup blend.

 

[Neon Blues]

More matching headstocks!!!!
More available colours that don't need to go through the Custom Shop.
Easier accessible truss rods, Musicman did it perfectly.

Other than that, nothing.

 

[mtdkingstonheir]

He didn't do anything wrong, except for giving a good number of us TBers GAS for a lot of pre and post CBS basses and guitars.

 

[Bass4LifeRS]

Take a look at the stuff coming out of the custom shop and the reissues. Leo got it right the first time...

View attachment 534401

He may have gotten it ok at the time, but the ergonomics of the bass is for that exact position he is displaying there using thumb or pick (made for guitar players), not for the modern more upwards angled playing position using fingerstyle. With modern position the ergonomics are far from perfect, right arm countour especially is too far back making the forearm land on the edge and even the belly cut is offset.

 

[Funkmabassup]

Its gotta be the clumsy thrussrod access, the fact that fender custom shop produce those expensive custombasses with vintage adjustment in 2015 is absurd too me, I guess ppl still like inferior instruments cause thats how they used too be back in the old days. I would love too see the cellphone-producers doing the same thing

 

[BassChuck]

If he had known in 1951 how people would be playing and what they would expect from an electric bass in 1999 he'd probably would have done a few things differently.