The Last Bass Outpost

Is it unethical to want to track down a vintage toaster and make it a 4001S?

Way too much scratch for a copy. A 1976 Fender Jazz should cost about that!

It is an audacious colour. I like it but my wife hates it. It goes beyond the realm of bad taste and back into being cool, for me. 

I've seen photos of, I think, one original guitar in zero hour condition and the finish looked like a sort of grey burst over Olympic white? The cheese-yellow-green tones all come from the clear coat yellowing, potentially. This would make the Squier finish an aged Antigua rather than exactly what rolled off the production line? My Antigua timeline is a bit approximate; I know they made the finish to hide glue seepage issues on the Coronado guitars in the '60s (quite a profound 'smokeburst' finish), but also rolled it out on many models in the late '70s?. I've seen photos of Antigua Mustang basses.

It wouldn't be too hard to find a maple neck with dots and a big slutty '70s Fender headstock logo to make the bass truer to the originals. I don't like blocks on a P Bass.

If you care to figure out the balancing act the two way bridges work just fine.

The two saddle job looks too small to my judgemental eyes! Huge pickup, gulf of nothing, tiny ridge. 

They were Americans, Alan.

Oh right! Is this song in the Great American Songbook?

Slightly odd song, with one-line verses and no real chorus!

I finally caved and bought one of these beasts. I spotted one in cream and had to try it.

I sold my Rivoli and 4003 last month, but regretted selling the Rivoli almost instantly. I bought the Rivoli as a conciliatory prize of sorts after a personal setback, but over time began to begrudge it slightly as it wasn't letting me move on mentally.. Psychobabble aside, the pickup mounting situation (teetering on the outer limits of repurposed neck bolts) always annoyed me as well. The Rivoli also had a nasty fall. I was able to cosmetically repair it, but it almost seemed like a sign: sell this bass!


The Tele bass sounds good. Almost too good for the premise of it. Burying a hot pickup at the end of the neck tends to limit tonal options. The Fender scale length and maple neck seem to provide some sort of sonic guardrails from it being too much of a hot, foggy-sounding bass. There is an inherent freight train grind to it and the tone control perfectly pivots the tone from freight train to subsonic rumble. I've got back what I lost with the Rivoli, but with a more confident fundamental note below the 5th fret of the E string. Yes, it weighs a bit and has no contours, but I can get passed that! I will finish off the fretwork that Fender started and call it a day. Good bass, and arguably better than the originals? If you study photos of mid-'70s Tele basses you see that the neck pockets could be a bit approximately routed, for example.

Interesting that Fender made a more Gibson-style bass at the same time that Gibson started experimenting with longer scale lengths, maple necks and moving pickups away from the extremes. A bit of cross-pollination.

Just delete the question mark and everything to the right of it.

Unless you're copying something that's part of someone's playlist, it should be the URL that's in the Address Bar.

No brackets necessary.

I think the 'Tragic Band' is overlooked. Beefheart was revered in the UK as the weirdo's weirdo. A wilfully bonkers guy. The Tragic Band is interesting as it seems like his attempt to make a stab at creating commercially successful music. Hire some session musicians with no previous working history and make lightweight country music. It almost worked, but it still seems off kilter.

Beefheart came back to the UK in 1975 with a guy playing a tuba through an octave divider in lieu of a bassist. This pleased the journalists and fans who had him pegged as a weirdo.