Why did Fender fail to capture the 5 String market?

[GBBSbassist]

I personally always really disliked how Fender basses looked as 5 strings, every single one of them. I assume that's why.

 

[Brad Johnson]

Haven't read the whole thread, but there's a lot of interesting points there. I think that Fender's target audience plays a massive role here, they're just happy with the classic designs and don't really want or need something more (for the most part, of course).

They company is also to blame, as they just don't put much effort in changing stuff to innovate and utilize more modern approaches to their bass (or even guitar) line. Just look at the Steve Bailey 6 string JB. IIRC, Steve said it took them YEARS to develop a 6er that was actually playable. It's like they tried to reinvent the wheel when there's already a few well made jazz style 6ers out there they could use as inspiration or starting point. If I'm not mistaken, the bass was well received and Fender was getting praise for finally stepping up and offering a 6 string, but then Steve went to Warwick, that model got discontinued and they never tried making another one. Ever.

How well did it sell?


That might have had something to do with its fate. And after having a six in that price range not sell, they should immediately do it again?

 

[azureblue]

I had the High C Bass. Weird but interesting, since I could play about everything in the first three positions. Nice arpeggios. But the tone was thin. EQ on the amp helped but the C string was thin.

I had one of the converted to 5 precisions that was popular in the 80s.I think John Carruthers. Take off the nut and bridge, punch another hole in the headstock add a 5 string nut and bridge and Bob's your uncle. This is what the original Yamaha BB5000 was modeled after. I liked the low B on it, but the bass was particular about what strings to use. I vaguely recall using thin flat wounds for teh best B string.

 

[skyline_01]

I had a Fender Jazz Plus 5 in the early 90's and it was a beautiful bass but the B string was floppy, dull and generally awful. There were definitely dead spots up and down the neck.
That being said, I have a 2009 or 2010 Fender American Deluxe Jazz 5 that I traded an SR5 for and I absolutely love it. No matter how long it took them to get it right, it seems right now.

I also had a Jazz Plus V, bought it brand new around 1994. I don't remember the B string being terribly floppy on mine but I grew to dislike the pre/pickups. It became really apparent when a bass student of mine around that time came in with his new Ibanez ATK. The sound coming from his bass was about 2x hotter and sounded thick and punchy - made my Plus V sound like utter poopie. I used the Plus V for a couple more years and then sold it in favor of a Gibson-made Tobias Killer B 5 (with Demeter pre) that a friend had. One of the best B strings I've played to this day. That bass is long gone but I often wish I still had it.

I also had a MIM Deluxe Jazz V for about 4 years. B string was much improved over the Plus V but the "Noiseless" pickups were anything but. I replaced them with SD Apollos and shielded the pickup/control cavities and it was dead quiet after that. Sounded much better too, although still not very close to a true Jazz (I mostly blame the preamp). Sold that for a L2500 Tribute (my main 5'er) and I have basically zero complaints with it.

 

[nixdad]

Nixdad, I am glad you post because it is good to her from someone who sold gear. I think many who post here make assumptions about the market based the style of music they play or crew of musicians they know. The five is less popular with some styles, but it is very popular in other styles. Fender sells a lot of fives. Just check out Gospel videos. More than a few Fender fives are being played.

Thanks, Dr. Cheese, as I appreciate your kind comments. No doubt Fender has sold a lot of 5’s through the years. My son (who currently plays a Lakland 5) is considering one of the new Jazz Bass 5’s as well. Observing from a distance, it seems to me that sometime over the past 20 years Fender chose to invest the time, money & resources into creating solid 5-string offerings. I’m certain the Roscoe Beck model from the 90’s was not discontinued because it performed poorly as an instrument, but because it did not meet Fender’s sales expectations not justifying their cost to keep it in production.

Yeah, supply and demand is the battle for small builders. But in terms of instruments, I don’t believe success is measured by volume. Walmart or Amazon can keep that business model

[/QUOTE]
Agreed!

 

[Ed455]

To me, very few 34" fivers have good B strings, Fender included. That said, my favorite fiver out of the 5 ~ five-strings I've owned is a Stingray 5HH, which is also the only 34" scale I've owned of the bunch and it has the best sounding B string. I just added a Lakland DJ-5 which is a 35" scale jazz bass. It hasn't arrived yet, but I played one in a store and the B string was outstanding. IMO Fender needs to do whatever is necessary to improve the floppy/farty B string if the want to be a more significant player in the five-string market. I've been playing exclusively five-strings for 25 years and wouldn't even consider a Fender.

 

[nixdad]

Yes, mids, mids, mids!!!
I can hear the Kookaid man say “Oh yeah” from the commercials years ago! Lol!

Mids are extremely important. I can’t recall if MM offered the StingRay 5 with a 2-band EQ or not, all I know is every single one of the ones we sold had the 3 band EQ (same goes for the 4-string StingRays we would stock.)

 

[Ed455]

Mids are extremely important. I can’t recall if MM offered the StingRay 5 with a 2-band EQ or not, all I know is every single one of the ones we sold had the 3 band EQ (same goes for the 4-string StingRays we would stock.)

My Stingray 5 has 3 band EQ. The first time I was practicing with it in the church sanctuary, my youth director came it with her eyes bulging at how good it sounded. She heard it out in the hallway and came in to see if we had a new bass player!

 

[lordradish]

Nobody wanted a low B until Anthony Jackson and Jimmy Johnson created the demand.

True, but I also wonder if the state of amplification at the time may have had something to do with it, too, at least way back in the day.

 

[furym]

Maybe I'm a minority, but I like my 2014 American Standard P V. I think the B string is fine and once properly set up plays excellent. I wanted a "classic" P Bass when I was getting going but really "needed" a 5 for Praise and Worship playing. Had the opportunity a few years back to pick up the 2014 off the classifieds here and haven't looked back. Perhaps I just don't know what I'm missing in other brands?
I think like anything else, play what you love. Guess that's how so many brands manage to stay in business.

 

[micguy]

When a small market niche opens, the numbers to begin with are often not at all attractive to the big fish. In Fender's case, their failed experiment with their early 5 string probably added to the inertia to stay with 4's - "we tried that, nobody's interested". But a small company can be very profitable by serving that niche - if the people that want it are willing to pay a premium. If the big company isn't careful, and the niche goes mainstream, they can get locked out. Tesla is a good example of a company that, for a while the big guys were ignoring - the numbers weren't big enough, "Tesla doesn't know how to build cars", etc.... It'll be interesting to see where things land 20 years from now. My guess is that Tesla will be the Apple of cars - they'll make the top 10 percent of the market (where a lot of the profit is), and leave the rest of the market (affectionately know as "the scraps") for everyone else to fight over.

 

[micguy]

True, but I also wonder if the state of amplification at the time may have had something to do with it, too, at least way back in the day.

Bass rigs today don't really handle the fundamental of an open E string all that well (much less the B). Yes, I know someone will be along shortly to explain that you don't need to reproduce the fundamental - I understand their point of view, but I also know that anyone that says that hasn't actually played through a PA system that does justice to an open B string. One reason I've gone back to 5's (after decades of hiatus on that front) is that I'm ampless for the bigger gigs I play, so the amp isn't a concern - a decent PA nowadays does tackle a low B quite well.

 

[nixdad]

IMO, MusicMan was the first "standard" brand to really step up (1987) and create a solid, affordable 5 (either $895 or $995 retail when introduced.) Solid B string, excellent neck width at the nut and where the fretboard met the body. We sold lots of all of these basses, but the MM5 is something we typically could not keep in stock.

Adding to my previous post:
I now remember that Yamaha TRB 5's were available (I believe) starting in 1985. This bass not only had an acceptable B-string, it had the spacing mosts bassists wanted and a big differentiator were the piezo pickups in the bridge that could be blended with the standard pickups.
This was a very successful seller at both of the stores I worked for during that era.

 

[stretch80]

The 60's five-string was a blind alley they went down, but the six-string baritone was a minor success whose interest went up a lot with the advent of Jack Bruce playing one in the massively popular Cream. It's hung around in various guises thru the years, but is indeed a far different beast from the currently popular 6-strings that are common now in full 34" scale.

Fender is blessed and cursed with their 'legacy' instruments, which doesn't really include 5-strings in their classic Tele, Strat, PBass, Jazz rotation. 5-string Jazzes have been far more successful in fives as single coils with their narrow aperture tend to work better in fives IF you're not going to thoroughly do your homework: This is why the Dimensions (really a nod to Leo's later success with the MusicMan Stingrays) was not the success that Stingrays enjoy. It's too big a departure from those legacy themes, and the tone was not quite as good as a Stingray, though they were plenty good-enough axes. They were just not 'Fender' enough.

The closest they came were the Roscoe Beck Fives, the best five-string they ever built: Modern or vintage tone, passive (with the brilliant pickups and switching system by the late Bill Lawrence), and it certainly said 'Fender' in spades when you looked at it. The only real problem was that it was a big axe, a little too big for some, but what a babe of an axe . . . . . . that they discontinued, like the 24-fret Jazz, the PBass Lyte, and more.

A great study in business school (and a zillion dollar bonanza for someone who could establish it) would be how businesses heavily leveraged in legacy products (think Harley-Davidson, Coca Cola, Kodak, Xerox, and the like) find a way to retain market share and steadily move to new products. I can think of Porsche (SUV's now pay for 911 and Boxster lines as niche products, geez . . . . . ) and Fujifilm (thriving, while the inventor of digital photography, Kodak, crashed; Fuji made the jump to digital with the brilliant X cameras and leveraged their imaging into medical scanning and their formerly film chemical business into health products, makeup, and organic chemistry products). Fender and their owners need to blue sky these examples, Gibson as well.

Nice analysis. I want to play a Roscoe Beck 5 some day. I'm playing a Reverend Mercalli mostly, which seems pretty close (to the RB5) in concept.

 

[stretch80]

I beg to differ....View attachment 3692919

That's a beauty! All passive, with just series/parallel switch?

 

[40Hz]

Largely because they originally ignored it thinking it was a fad. Then when it became obvious it wasn’t, Fender did a half assed entry into the market by trying to quickly modify their existing basses rather than apply the innovation and genius that characterized the creation of the PB and JB. And the early Fender fivers left a lit to be desired. The B string was basically useless on Fender’s first generation.

In the meantime other companies like Spector took it seriously and actually designed five string basses that are we’d consider real five string basses. And as a result Fender missed its chance to secure the definitive spot in the five string world that it held for decades in the four string market.

 

[Jim Carr]

Cool! Thanks.

 

[Jim Carr]

Some low B

Not fair, now he's using talent, inspiration, and technique!

 

[Jim Carr]

...The best jazz 5 I've played and owned to this day is my 2019 Sadowsky Metro Express. Everything about it is righteous, nothing lacking and only weighs 8.4 lbs.

Just got an older Metro 5. Just. Wow.

 

[Root 5]

I have never liked the asymmetrical P pickup in Fender 5s. It looks ugly and kept me from buying one.