Monday 6 June 2011

Shaftesbury shortscale bass, rough copy of a Fender

guitarz.blogspot.com:
Ahhhh... now this one brings back some memories. It's a shortscale Shaftesbury bass, roughly modelled on the original slab-bodied Fender Precision/Fender Telecaster bass, and I guess it's from the mid 1970s.

I remember back in the early 1980s when I was first getting into starting bands with my mates and doing a spot of home recording on the then-new Fostex X15 multitrack cassette recorder; one day a couple of my friends came round wanting to record a demo. They brought a couple of cheap guitars with them. I don't remember what the six string was, but the bass was one of these. It was bad. I remember thinking it how dreadful it was. It was boomy, as you'd expect from a short-scale bass but I've played many that were streets ahead of this. I don't think the flat wound strings helped (I've never liked them and never will). I can't explain exactly what was wrong with it, just that it felt bad and it played bad. It was a cheap and nasty bass and performed accordingly.

This one on eBay UK has a starting price of £199. That is what I'd call seriously optimistic. Don't be fooled by the fact that this was "Made in Italy". It's not one of their finer moments.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

2 comments:

  1. I recently found one of these in an old storeroom of a church and took out home and cleaned it up and it is very light but has a beautiful full sound and a slim neck. Looking at the construction i was surprised that this bass has a laminated three piece neck that is pretty stable and the old fashioned truss rod was very responsive and I got the strings low without buzzing, don't know what wood the body is made of but the bass has a well rounded sound.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I recently found one of these in an old storeroom of a church and took out home and cleaned it up and it is very light but has a beautiful full sound and a slim neck. Looking at the construction i was surprised that this bass has a laminated three piece neck that is pretty stable and the old fashioned truss rod was very responsive and I got the strings low without buzzing, don't know what wood the body is made of but the bass has a well rounded sound.

    ReplyDelete

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails

ShareThis