I have an xavier tele for my soon and it is pretty good. I wish they offered these in a non aged version.
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Xaviere "Slick" SLPB Basses
- Thread starter Dradder
- Start date
It wasn't the drugs that screwed up people's heads back then; it was dealing with all those knobs...
Now I'm curious what all the controls do.
There's an interview with Phil Lesh floating around, in which he says something along the lines of not having been able to remember at the time what all the knobs on his bass did, and so he sure as hell doesn't remember now. He apparently tended to just set 'em and forget 'em.
My understanding is that Jack Casady was much more involved in the tech end of putting all the different knobs on his Guild Starfire, so he probably had a better idea of what they did.
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Try being in Canada. Our Dollar's so low right now that a Slick or GFS anything would be the price of a used MIM or new Squier CV. lol
I have to admit I'm intrigued.
Ash bodies and an alnico pickup are nice on a $250 instrument and the brown wood and sunburst versions look pretty good. The bridge is pretty glaring though. Why is there a shiny bridge on an instrument where everything else is "aged". I look forward to reading a review when someone buys one. I'd have to swap the bridge and probably add a tone knob though.
In the end though, if I had $250 to drop on a P-bass I'd probably go with an Ibanez TMB100 or save another 50 bucks and get an LTD Vintage 214.
Ash bodies and an alnico pickup are nice on a $250 instrument and the brown wood and sunburst versions look pretty good. The bridge is pretty glaring though. Why is there a shiny bridge on an instrument where everything else is "aged". I look forward to reading a review when someone buys one. I'd have to swap the bridge and probably add a tone knob though.
In the end though, if I had $250 to drop on a P-bass I'd probably go with an Ibanez TMB100 or save another 50 bucks and get an LTD Vintage 214.
Good point. I think the answer might be that these Slick SLPB basses are not so much "reliced" as they are "half-reliced" -- or "half-ass-reliced." Still an interesting looking item for someone who might want to do a little DIY work to finish up the relicing, or even not bother at all, and just play the thing.
Yeah. these are definitely not true-reliced, but they're not bad. What appears to be slightly copper colored hardware generally fools the eye at first. I just don't know why they couldn't have done like AXL Badwater basses and at least make all the hardware equally fake-cheezy-reliced.
Here's a Badwater Capricorn that sells/sold for about the same price.
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I played the earlier AXL p-bass'ish model (discontinued IIRC) and wasn't impressed, but it at least shows what can be done at the price point. I'm also a bit suspicious about the Slick headstock for which there appear to be no close-up pictures. It might be satin, but it looks oddly un-abused compared to the rest of the bass.
If they could take the Slick and give it the hardware and headstock finish of the AXL, they'd have a much more convincing package.
wintremute
mediocrity at its finest
- Oct 16, 2014
- 6,942
- 29,551
- Disclosures
- Endorsing Artist: Langstrom Carrot Farms
Agreed. Those Badwater Capricorns look seriously ravaged -- in a good way -- over on the AXL site:
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The apparent shiny newness of the Slick SLPB headstocks has already been commented upon around here. If I were to pull the trigger on one of these SLPB's, it wouldn't be for several months, after I relocate back to the US, and the headstock would be one of the things I'd put on the to-be-futzed-with list, along with scuffing up the bridge and maybe vintage tinting the neck, which looks pretty raw and new and unfinished, from the little bit that can be seen on the GF website.
Possibly. The hardtail style bridges on the guitars don't look quite as shiny. However, except for a few aged screws and picukps
, the tele style bridges and all the headstocks seem are quite pristine.
I really do like the look of brass machine heads, but why not just go with pristine bodies or open pore sandblasted bodies and make brass machine heads, saddles and maybe knobs a notably visual feature of the instruments? I think what we have here is a bass that doesn't quite know what it's trying to be.
It seems that the relicing is just there to justify the use of thin, money-saving paintjobs. Why not just sell a bass with a thin paintjob? Lots of folks like the feel of woodgrain under their fingers anyway.
To give credit where due, here's a Slick model that gets it close enough to "right" for my taste.
Doesn't appear to have too many worn-through spots (just a few on the edges), all the hardware matches and all for only $200 bucks! Just a thin-finished guitar that embraces it's butcher block front like an 80's Peavey and I even like the no-frills paddle headstock. This is what they should be doing for the basses (though not the paddle headstock, I like the peavey'esque bass headstock they've got).
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I dunno; the Slick guitars have been on the GF website for a while, and the photos show them looking similarly half-reliced as the new basses. But then again, maybe GF just never got around to updating the pics from when the Slick guitars were first put up.
Here's some of the ad copy about the Slick guitars:
They look roadworn because we don't lay on a thick glossy finish, only to "relic" it to look old. No, we use a thin layer of automotive paint, sand it back to reveal the wood- let those pores breathe!
We use solid BILLET BRASS bridge, knob and strap buttons and bronze geared, brass keyed tuning machines.
Even the pickups are bespoke "Slick" designs, hand aged and magnetically degaussed to create the "sag" so desired in vintage pickups.
How much of that applies to the Slick SLPB basses, haven't a clue.
Perfect for bassplayers such as myself, who don't even know what they are. That could be quite a market.
wintremute
mediocrity at its finest
- Oct 16, 2014
- 6,942
- 29,551
- Disclosures
- Endorsing Artist: Langstrom Carrot Farms
That's some interesting market-speak. The pickups are magnetically demagnetized? Huh?
That said, I've been GASing for a P for a while, and these are pretty cool looking.
I hadn't heard of it before, either, but apparently it's a real thing:
Degaussing Guitar Pickups
The second point about guitar pickup magnets involves AlNiCo based magnet materials. It is important to note that AlNiCo magnets can be easily degaussed, and the way many pickup designs are made allows the AlNiCo to degauss from 20 to 30%. AlNiCo magnets can also be degaussed by rubbing them with a piece of steel, or by placing another magnet in close proximity. As a side note, from time to time we’ll get a customer whose pickup “suddenly had very little output and frequency response.” In a couple of cases it happened “just after a break.” Guess where these customers set their guitars? Right against a large speaker cabinet, right against the back side of the speaker cone. In other words, right against a large magnet! Immediate de-gaussing!
Maybe someone who's more knowledgeable about how this might apply to bass pickups will chime in. I suspect it's one of those "vintage" things -- i.e., old and funky -- so it's automatically considered good, no matter how it sounds.
Keep in mind that these are ostensibly designed by Earl Slick, who is himself medium-relic'd and aged with random shiny bits stuck on.
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He's probably also pretty well degaussed by now, from leaning against speaker cabinets.
There are some more pretty pictures of the Slick SLPB basses at the SlickGuitars.com website:
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Most of the pics are the same as shown on the GuitarFetish.com website, but there are a few that show a little more detail of the finish on the basses, like this one:
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Most of the pics are the same as shown on the GuitarFetish.com website, but there are a few that show a little more detail of the finish on the basses, like this one:
