I found a shop in China that will make custom guitars. Needed a bass for bed tracks, so I had them make this. It's quartersawn African zebron. Plays really nice and sounds great.
Posted Feb 1, 2017, 1:30 AM UTC
can you share which shop and the cost?
this looks great
Wow wtf. How are the guitar parts and quality?
I haven't had it apart yet so I can only speak to what I see. They're the same parts. I plugged the bass into my pod xt and worked on setting up a patch for it for a half hour. I was about to order some Quarter-Pound Seymour Duncans but then I went to the website and listened:
http://www.seymourduncan.com/pickup/quarter-pound-jazz-bass-set-3
And at the moment, I have a better Jazz Bass tone than the one Seymour Duncan has in their sample. Now I'm not suggesting I have better pickups, whatever 'better pickups' means, but I'm comparing what I'm able to record with my bass, to what Seymour Duncan has put forth and I much prefer my sound. But I'm a signal chain sort of guy - I would rather tweak a tone than replace pickups most of the time. I know a lot of bass players literally want to plug straight in and hear perfection.
Awesome. Do you have to visit in person or can this be made to order onlinr
It's a generic China bass. The Fender logo on the headstock is definitely fake, but I take it you already knew that.
You can get them off of AliExpress for about the same price, or cheaper, if you find one: https://m.aliexpress.com/s/item/32608976390.html
A guy in my town sold one off of Craigslist, I met with him at his place to try it before I bought it. Ended up buying a new Squier Vintage Modified instead. The model he had (which looked exactly like this one, with the fake Fender logo included) was way too light, making the bass incredibly headstock-heavy. It was also buzzing a lot, though one could probably get around that with a proper setup.
Congratulations on your new bass!
If the fret job is good a setup will fix it. If the fret job is bad you need a fret job…
My frets are perfectly level - I've been up and down a few times with the fret rocker. I expected to find at least one high spot somewhere but nadda. The fret ends are nice, but not MIA nice. They're Vintage Modified nice. Absolutely no sharpness on my hand while I'm playing, but if you hunt with your index finger you can find a bit of sharpness in there.
Nice. It's always a crap shoot with buying directly from china. You can get good stuff and you can get dollar store stuff. I bet quality will stabilize over time though. We are probably already seeing it. I wonder if we will end up with Chinese brands the way we got ESP and Ibanez in Japan.
You cannot underestimate the power of a brand. People don't assess the value of a guitar on the basis of it's sound or play-ability. I don't assess value that way in most cases either. It took a long time for Japan to earn a decent reputation. But they've been building great guitars for more than 35 years. Once they do, however, those guitars aren't cheap anymore. But conversely Indonesia has already earned a better reputation among Squier aficionados, so maybe the digital age is changing things.
Yep, like I said - had it made in China. The link you have there is more than I paid. And no, I wouldn't pass this off as a Fender, I asked for no logo, and there's no Fender logo on it at the moment, took it off with a bit of 1000 grit wet-dry sandpaper. I think they screen the logo on out of habit. Logo was sitting on top of the lacquer so a little wet-dry and there's no trace of it. As far as I know Fender doesn't even have this option. I've seen a Fender Custom Shop Strat in zebron, but never a jazz bass.
I played both the affinity and the Squier Vintage modified jazz basses, and the MIA. This bass is miles ahead of the Squier and the setup is close to, but a bit better than the Vintage modified. And I got them to add a bone nut.
The weight is perfect. The body thickness is on spec for an MIA. And the body is a single piece of zebron, as is the neck. The frets are perfectly level - I've been over it up and down, outside, inside and middle of the fret board with the fret rocker.
This bass weighs 9.2lbs. That makes it MIA specification which is 8.5-9.5lbs. The Squier Vintage modified is not MIA spec generally, it's usually about 3mm thinner front to back. The Affinities are noticeably thinner. I don't honestly think that matters, and I have no issue with a bass weighing a bit less. But I was curious how much this one would weigh when I finally got it as the neck is also zebron. But precisely within spec is the unusual answer.
One of the problems with ordering online, and ordering from China is that it's like rolling the dice. You never know what you're going to get.
That wood isn't zebrono. I couldn't tell what it was until I found a similar guitar here. It can't be a natural wood and the fact that every guitar made with it has the "rings" oriented the same way backs it up.
It's some sort of dyed laminate.
Yep, it's zebrano. And no, it's not laminated. You can tell on the neck side.
Depending on whether the wood is flatsawn or quartersawn, the stripes can be either chaotic and wavy (flatsawn), or somewhat uniform (quartersawn). What's throwing you off is that it's quartersawn. Even maple takes on a similar pronounced grain patter when it's quartersawn (see second sample):
http://www.northridgehardwoods.com/Necks.htm
Here's zebrano when it's just sealed: http://www.macbeath.com/product/zebrano-zebrawood-prefinished
But the sample link you posted is zebrano that's been stained to darken and raise the grain like mine has. That's why it has a more significant orange tint.
Zebrano is exotic, it isn't prohibitively expensive. Quartersawn wood is less efficient, so that makes it a bit more expensive as a cut, but that's really not a factor in guitars... ever. It's the labour.
EDIT: And you're linking to a zebrano guitar by the way. I'm not sure what that link was supposed to illustrate other than it's identical to my bass.
I linked it because it has more detailed pictures but it's still made of the same "Zebrano". It being quartersawn isn't what is throwing me off, I've seen hundreds of board feet of exotics when I was working for a hardwood dealer. The rings are too geometric to be real wood. Look at the tummy cut on my first link and see how the grain has sharp, regular angles. Compare to: pic 1 pic 2 which are both straight grained and quartersawn.
Aside from that the grain is nothing like zebrawood, even if it was dyed. http://www.hobbithouseinc.com/personal/woodpics/zebrawood.htm
It's not that laminated wood is bad, it just looks similar to Webbwood or Rutland plywood that we have here. Take sheets of birch or maple, impregnate them with dye and stack them together with epoxy in between. It makes for a stable, hard product that looks nice.
Where is this shop?
Love that pickguard
Neato
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I hope it doesn't crack.
Nice find. I bought a prs "tribute" from Aliexpress and swapped out all the hardware and electronics. It's a great guitar. Compared to my real prs, it's definitely favorable in many aspects
ahh a Chender, good job buying counterfeit guitars, Im sure youll never try to pass it off as a real fender right.
Fender doesn't make Jazz Basses composed entirely of zebron. That's one of the reasons I ordered it. This is not a product that Fender offers.
you know as well as I you could've had the logo no applied, but you did so you did it for a reason, man. and some novice kid who doesn't know fenders well and doesn't research them, would not know and could easily be scammed. There is literally no other reason to put fender on there.
Try it, ask for no logo - I did, came with a logo screened on their anyway. I think it's force of habit for them.
Nice. How much did it cost?
It was $370.00.
Did they have other models too? Could you share the site?
Thing is, they jack the prices up massively for export on AliExpress. On Taobao (local Chinese eBay) this exact bass is listed as 1150 yuan or about 170 USD.
Still, I think even for $370 it's not a bad deal, I have a couple of guitars from this factory and have been for the most part satisfied with them.
edit: fixed link
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Dude.
Yeah, but that's a little less than retail for a Squier Vintage Modified where I'm at. I just really dig the zebron. I always have trouble deciding between black or wood-grain, and this is like the best of both worlds. Not everyone's cup of tea I imagine. I've had one (non-bass-playing) friend tell me it's ugly, stripey and looks like it was made in the seventies.
But yeah, quartersawn African zebron is very distinctive. And I can't believe it's a single piece body and single piece neck. No joins visible at all.
Is it a neck-through?
Wow. Got a link to their site? I might check them out.
That looks absolutely amazing. Also need the cost.
Op delivered, 370$
Thanks!