Vintage and Nature

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."

    Now I have done some new songs  and found many enjoying moments with it. It is a semi acoustic instrument so it has an empty body. This means it has a slow attack more like a cello. If you treat it right it gives you a new world.