{"id":5327,"date":"2014-02-19T11:45:00","date_gmt":"2014-02-19T16:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/?p=5327"},"modified":"2014-02-19T14:41:48","modified_gmt":"2014-02-19T19:41:48","slug":"if-you-had-the-money-would-you-purchase-a-true-vintage-fender-bass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/article\/if-you-had-the-money-would-you-purchase-a-true-vintage-fender-bass.html","title":{"rendered":"If you had the money, would you purchase a true vintage Fender bass?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Above is a real-deal 1957 Fender Precision Bass. Here is a video of it:<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><iframe height=\"315\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/D2l7jyiiQvs\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"560\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>There is good and bad to owning a real vintage electric guitar. <\/p>\n<p>Good: It has &#8220;that sound&#8221; and &#8220;that feel&#8221;, which for some is worth every penny you pay for one.<\/p>\n<p>Bad: It&#8217;s old. Really old. And when you get into really-old territory, you encounter problems.<\/p>\n<h3>What counts as &#8220;vintage&#8221;?<\/h3>\n<p>The general rule of thumb is anything over 25 years old. For example, in many US states, to get a &#8220;historic&#8221; license tag, the automobile has to be at least that old to qualify. And yes, this does mean anything built in 1989 or earlier does qualify as vintage.<\/p>\n<h3>What are the common problems with vintage electric instruments?<\/h3>\n<p>Here are <em>some<\/em> problems you will get with vintage instruments, even if they are in perfect or near-perfect condition.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Severely stiff or severely loose tuners<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Tuners on vintage guitars will either be so stiff they can barely be moved, or so loose that that they can barely hold strings to pitch without wildly going out-of-tune just with light playing.<\/p>\n<p>The rule of thumb is that if the tuners are stiff, they can be still used normally. If they&#8217;re loose however, there&#8217;s not much that can be done without destroying the authenticity of the instrument. You can however easily replace the tuners with new period-correct <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/hipshot-tuners.htm\">vintage-style<\/a>, and set aside the originals should you want to sell the instrument later while keeping its authenticity in tact.<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;Bakelite&#8221; plastic<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Modern plastics are a wonder of modern engineering. But some of the plastics of the 1950s were just plain crap. Bakelite is one of them. It was one of the first plastics used and was seen on many electric instruments of the 1950s. The major issue with Bakelite is that it&#8217;s simply not that strong of a material, disintegrates early, and when used as a pick guard, sunlight can warp it all too easily.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Disintegration\/Erosion issues<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>There comes a point in any machine&#8217;s life (a guitar is a machine) where things just naturally start disintegrating. <\/p>\n<p>As any luthier knows, most woods can be saved and repaired.<\/p>\n<p>When it comes to everything else however, that&#8217;s a different story. <\/p>\n<p>A simple example of this is a pick guard screw. In extreme situations, screws that are over 50 years old can have their heads crack right off. The screw either wasn&#8217;t tightened down properly, or &#8220;crept&#8221; up naturally over time, the elements worked their way under the screw head and the thing just disintegrated. On first turn of that screw, *plik*, cracked head, ruined screw.<\/p>\n<h3>Thinking of buying vintage? Know what you&#8217;re buying<\/h3>\n<p>What does &#8220;know what you&#8217;re buying&#8221; mean? It means <strong>you are buying something really old<\/strong>. It means it&#8217;s <strong>used<\/strong>. It means you will have to put <strong>extra care<\/strong> into keeping the instrument functional, such as taking into account the humidity level of wherever you store the guitar, understanding that old metals and plastics are fragile, and so on.<\/p>\n<h3>Do you think real vintage is worth it?<\/h3>\n<p>Some do while others do not, but feel free to express your opinion on it by posting a comment or two below.<\/p>\n<p>Remember this however: Anyone can buy a vintage instrument, because all that takes is money. But it takes a lot more effort to actually build a bass. And some would argue that the joy of completing your own instrument is much more satisfying compared to spending several thousand dollars for a vintage instrument you can&#8217;t even play like you want to.<\/p>\n<p>What do you think?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Above is a real-deal 1957 Fender Precision Bass. Here is a video of it: There is good and bad to owning a real vintage electric guitar. Good: It has &#8220;that sound&#8221; and &#8220;that feel&#8221;, which for some is worth every penny you pay for one. Bad: It&#8217;s old. Really old. And when you get into &#8230; <a title=\"If you had the money, would you purchase a true vintage Fender bass?\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/article\/if-you-had-the-money-would-you-purchase-a-true-vintage-fender-bass.html\" aria-label=\"More on If you had the money, would you purchase a true vintage Fender bass?\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":5326,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5327"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5327\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}