Fender 51 Re-Issue Precision Bass

[Justaguyin_nc]

My gawd...is this not the best looking bass you ever seen..

Ohhh noooooo GAS!!
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/produ...***?sku=511249
anyone played one? Seems to get good reviews... Would this give the Jazzy feeling or rock... or both? Would look nice next to my Squier_51

[Robert****]

Wow, that is cool. It was introduced 2003 - I never knew that. Indeed, it would be the perfect companion to my Squier '51, but I already have my SX Jazz and my bass needs are fulfilled with it.

[SuperSwede]

That one is really nice Justa.. upgrade time already?

[Justaguyin_nc]

Oh I am also very content at the moment with the SX sound.. was just asking if anyone had used one of these...... that's what we do here...ask..

[r_a_smith3530]

Back when I first came around and everyone was all up in the air about the Squier '51, I commented about how much it was styled after the original P Bass. This is the bass I had seen. Several month's back, Bass Player did a comparison, and this was one of the basses used. Although they did rate the quality as very high overall, I do remember them saying something about the bridge. They also mentioned something about the pickup. As I recall, I believe they said it was a guitar pickup (like the original).

I find it interesting that not one person in all of the over 35 reviews posted on MF had anything bad to say about this bass. You take 35 members of the Bassplace or Bassplayers Yahoo groups and someone will have something to say about any given bass out there.

Don't get me wrong here, I'm not dissing this bass at all. I don't have enough experience with it to do that. I'm merely doing a reality check. The most prolific bass in the world is the Fender P Bass. Just about everyone and there brother makes a P Bass styled bass, with the possible exception of the very high end boutique builders. Like it or not, the P Bass sound is the predominant sound of rock-n-roll, and electric blues. That said, the most remembered tone out there is not that of the original '51, but rather the sound of James Jamerson and others who picked up the instrument in the latter half of the 1950's and beyond, after Leo had revamped the design, incorporating the now quite familiar split coil design, which BTW came about as a "poor man's" humbucker. Jamerson himself didn't switch from an upright to a Precision until 1962. A couple of the other famous bassists of the time, from a rock prespective, Brian Wilson (Beach Boys) and Nokie Edwards (Ventures), also played the modernized version of the Precision.

In conclusion, I think this bass would make a nice addition to any bassist's arsenal. Note that I said addition. Personally, I feel if you could only afford one bass, you certainly can't go wrong with one of the many bass guitars out there using the P-J pickup combination, which gives you the best of the two most well known bass guitars ever, the Precision and the Jazz.

BTW, note that the Precision Bass is the only Leo-designed bass that ever saw a major redesign by the master. Leo never made any made any major changes to the Jazz Bass, the Musicman Stingray, or the G&L L-2000. The pickup change of the early Precision stands out. Hmmm.

EDIT: I forgot to add Carol Kaye as one of the famous users to adopt Leo's re-designed Precision Bass. Her sound is one of the most famous, unsung sounds from early rock and beyond.

[Tone2TheBone]

It looks like the Mike Dirnt bass.......cept without the P pickup.

[r_a_smith3530]

It looks like the Mike Dirnt bass.......cept without the P pickup.

That's because Mike Dirnt's bass was patterned after the original '51, but with the more modern split coil p/u of his original P Bass, a '59.

[r_a_smith3530]

In thinking about the first P Bass, I remembered something that I had read some time back in George Fullerton's (Leo Fender's friend and business partner for years) book, "Guitar Legends." In that book is a picture of the very first production Precision Bass, and one of the notable things on that bass are the cover over the pickup area. That cover was there for a reason, and that reason was due to the strings. At the time Leo designed the P, nobody was making bass guitar parts. He had to get tuning machines custom produced by a tuning machine maker. For strings, he had to use the cat-gut type then being used for uprights, but they would not work with the magnetic pickups, so Fender modified the strings by winding them with fine wire in the area where they passed over the pickup, and then cemented the ends. To protect this fragile mod, covers were placed over the pickup area.

[Katastrophe]

Great history lesson, Rob... I'll bet Leo probably had no idea how far reaching his little inventions would become when he designed 'em. In fact, the more I read about Fender, the more impressed I am at the amount of thought that went into the design of the Broadcaster, Stratocaster, P-Bass, and all the other models he designed. Good stuff, man!

[r_a_smith3530]

Yeah, Leo was truly one amazing cat alright. Walk into a guitar store today and just marvel at how much he touched the music world. His guitars, basses and amps are still the standard upon which most of the market is judged by. You constantly hear, "Is it as good as a Strat/Tele/P Bass/Jazz/Twin Reverb/Super Reverb/Bassman/etc." You could walk to the four points of the Earth and be hard pressed to find a place where no one has heard the name Fender (or Strat). I believe that the musician's union to this day still calls the position "Fender Bass" player.

You think about it, he accomplished quite a lot. He produced the first, mass produced solid-bodied electric guitar. He all but invented the electric bass guitar. His double cut-away, bolt-on neck, fully-contoured body, three-pickup, tremolo-equipped guitar was the most innovative musical instrument of its day, and it is still the most copied electric guitar right up to the present. Even mighty Gibson has used a Fender designed neck joint when it tried to produce a Les Paul at a price point! One could write a book on Leo's patents alone.

Leo's are mighty big shoes to fill!