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Things You Wish Leo Had Done Differently...

#101
jamro217 said:
My '68 P bass has a strap button on the back of the headstock. (I don't know if it's stock or if I bought it from a jerk.) If you have a long enough strap and can tie the end around the neck where the truss adjustment hole is (so you don't drill into the headstock), maybe it would sit better. You'd look like a folkie with an acoustic, though. If that is going in the wrong direction, maybe try getting a 2" replacement neck screw and mounting a strap button to the top facing, bridge end hole of the neck plate.
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The "hootenany strap button" was stock on P and J basses from about '60 until '69 or '70 (earlier Precisions don't have it). The idea was to appeal to country acoustic guitarists who were accustomed to tying the strap on the headstock with the shoelace type string supplied with guitar straps at the time. It's not a bad idea for someone who finds their bass to be neck heavy while playing seated, I didn't think of that! You don't need the button on the back of the headstock,although that certainly is simpler than tying it on.
 
#102
BassShark said:
What made Leo such a visionary was that he was aware that he wasn't a musician and consulted with local musicains whose opinions he respected for input. Asked them what they would like to have in a guitar what they thought was needed that didn't exist. I think the fact that he wasn't a guitarist actually helped Leo, since he lacked the predjudices of set-in-their ways manufacturers like Gibson who couldn't bring themselves to produce "a plank of wood" like a solidbody guitar until Leo's Broadcaster/Tele forced them to.

A few years later I think he stopped doing that and went the other way, trying to get jazz musicians to accept the Jazzmaster, which he designed with them in mind...a futile effort...
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The Jazzmaster is a great guitar. The wiring is versatile, but the roller pots have got to go. The pickups have a p90 Gibson/strat neck pickup tone, and the neck is the right scale length. Comfy body and a whammy bar. Just what every rock'n'roller needs. Too bad he couldn't identify his market. It's NOT an L5.
 
#104
BassShark said:
The "hootenany strap button" was stock on P and J basses from about '60 until '69 or '70 (earlier Precisions don't have it). The idea was to appeal to country acoustic guitarists who were accustomed to tying the strap on the headstock with the shoelace type string supplied with guitar straps at the time. It's not a bad idea for someone who finds their bass to be neck heavy while playing seated, I didn't think of that! You don't need the button on the back of the headstock,although that certainly is simpler than tying it on]
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Can't justify adding holes to instruments unless there's a good reason to.
 
#105
jamro217 said:
The Jazzmaster is a great guitar. The wiring is versatile, but the roller pots have got to go. The pickups have a p90 Gibson/strat neck pickup tone, and the neck is the right scale length. Comfy body and a whammy bar. Just what every rock'n'roller needs. Too bad he couldn't identify his market. It's NOT an L5.
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Yeah, wrong target market for a great guitar. Elvis Costello has good taste. :)
 
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#108
jamro217 said:
The Jazzmaster is a great guitar. The wiring is versatile, but the roller pots have got to go. The pickups have a p90 Gibson/strat neck pickup tone, and the neck is the right scale length. Comfy body and a whammy bar. Just what every rock'n'roller needs. Too bad he couldn't identify his market. It's NOT an L5.
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He couldn't identify his market, right, but there are major flaws in the Jazzmaster's design. Not enough downpressure on the bridge, the simple addition of a tensioning roller and placing the trem assembly closer to the bridge as on some modern versions would've helped a lot. Altogther, the Jazzmaster trem is a step backwards from the Strat trem anyway. The whole "rhythm" circuit with its roller pots was pretty useless for most players (it was taken from a 1940s homebrew design by Forrest White). The Jazzmaster was optimized for seated playing (by jazzbos/session men) hence its "offset waist" feature, and for many players it's a fairly big, even clumsy, guitar.

A Jazzmaster is the exact same 25.5" scale length as a Strat or Tele BTW, in fact a Jazzmaster neck bolts right onto a Strat without any modification. Only the shape of the headstock is a little bigger. You might be thinking of a Jaguar, (an even less useful guitar...) which has a 24.5" scale length.

As someone who was around at the time I can tell you that before Elvis Costello and Television, no one wanted either of them at all. They were $100 guitars pre-New Wave/Punk Rock and $200 guitars after...for a while, anyway. Of course, no one wanted a Flying V in 1958 either, but you get my point.
 
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#111
BassShark said:
...
As someone who was around at the time I can tell you that before Elvis Costello and Television, no one wanted either of them at all. They were $100 guitars pre-New Wave/Punk Rock and $200 guitars after...for a while, anyway. Of course, no one wanted a Flying V in 1958 either, but you get my point.
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I was also around at the time, and there at the end, you make my point as well! :) But yeah, there were years where you could find them at pawnshops cheap. Ahh, the good years... :)
 
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#112
bholder said:
I was also around at the time, and there at the end, you make my point as well! :) But yeah, there were years where you could find them at pawnshops cheap. Ahh, the good years... :)
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The Gibson Flying V was ahead of its time (and essentially just a funny looking Les Paul, same pickups and scale length), the Jazzmaster and Jaguar sort of an abberation. They were ahead of their time in a way, being embraced by a generation that wanted to disassociate themselves from mainstream rock. Playing what was by then perceived as a "loser guitar" was perfect to that end. Plus they were cheap. More than for any of their attributes, Jazzmasters and Jaguars were probably chosen by Punk/New Wave guitarists as a decent guitar that was cheap and a middle finger to the Strats and Les Pauls of Establishment Rock...
 
#115
BassShark said:
The Gibson Flying V was ahead of its time (and essentially just a funny looking Les Paul, same pickups and scale length), the Jazzmaster and Jaguar sort of an abberation. They were ahead of their time in a way, being embraced by a generation that wanted to disassociate themselves from mainstream rock. Playing what was by then perceived as a "loser guitar" was perfect to that end. Plus they were cheap. More than for any of their attributes, Jazzmasters and Jaguars were probably chosen by Punk/New Wave guitarists as a decent guitar that was cheap and a middle finger to the Strats and Les Pauls of Establishment Rock...
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Another perfect example of Leo's market finding him rather than the other way around, though.
 
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#116
I'm not seeing any mention of my own issues with Fenders in this thread, which is making me think that I'm way off base, but...

Both P and J basses have always seemed a little, well, chunky (both literally and in their style of construction). Over the decades, couldn't Mr. Fender/FMIC have lightened the body (maybe chambering it?), or figured out a less blocky way to attach the neck to the body? I love the sound of Fenders, and enjoy my fretless MIM J, but I usually play sitting down and also wish the trademark headstock was reduced 10% or so, with some lighter tuners. Now that I think about it, I guess I wish the whole instrument were slimmed down/shortened by a few percent. I feel like I have to adapt my body to the shape/size of the bass, rather than the other way around.

That said, icons become icons because they captivate people and work well enough to satisfy the majority of customers. It's not like a first-gen Ford Mustang is perfect, either, and the Eames Recliner has always seemed too low and fragile to me. Fender basses work really well, despite the issues. That's why we all end up with 1 or 7 of them, right?
 
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#117
MrAtomic said:
I'm not seeing any mention of my own issues with Fenders in this thread, which is making me think that I'm way off base, but...

Both P and J basses have always seemed a little, well, chunky (both literally and in their style of construction). Over the decades, couldn't Mr. Fender/FMIC have lightened the body (maybe chambering it?), or figured out a less blocky way to attach the neck to the body? I love the sound of Fenders, and enjoy my fretless MIM J, but I usually play sitting down and also wish the trademark headstock was reduced 10% or so, with some lighter tuners. Now that I think about it, I guess I wish the whole instrument were slimmed down/shortened by a few percent. I feel like I have to adapt my body to the shape/size of the bass, rather than the other way around.

That said, icons become icons because they captivate people and work well enough to satisfy the majority of customers. It's not like a first-gen Ford Mustang is perfect, either, and the Eames Recliner has always seemed too low and fragile to me. Fender basses work really well, despite the issues. That's why we all end up with 1 or 7 of them, right?
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Leo did do a lot of these things, after leaving Fender. He kept moving.
 
#119
bholder said:
Leo did do a lot of these things, after leaving Fender. He kept moving.
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bholder,

I'm asking this out of my own ignorance, not as a challenge: could you direct me to a resource or tell me more about when Mr. Fender lightened the bodies and headstocks of his basses, and what models were routed or reduced in size? I ask because I also own a Stingray and if anything, it's heavier and blockier than my MIM J Bass, and I can't tell much difference in the way the neck is bolted to the body (besides an increase in the number of bolts on the Stingray).

All I can think of is something like the Jaguar, but that's a shorter-scale instrument, rather than a streamlined P/J.
 
#120
BassShark said:
Fender bass necks had a quite slim profile from the late '50s until the late '60s. I never liked that '70s U-shaped profile (or the early '50s U-shaped "Louisville Slugger" shape either). The bodies were lightweight and had nice deep contours until the mid '70s.
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Thanks! That's good to know, as I've not had the opportunity/privilege to play a Fender from the 1950's through the mid-1970s. I'll certainly keep an eye out for chances.
 
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