What’s your instrument?

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Soooooo… Numpty question incoming.

Had a trip to Hemswell Antique Centre today. Various buildings, various rooms rented out to individual sellers.

There is a room full of guitars and a few amps and bits and pieces. So there were various Strats including two almost identical ones. Layout of controls and pickups in the same places, dimensions the same.

One was a ‘Fender Stratocaster’, the other a ‘Squire Strat - by Fender’.

Now I’m assuming that the ‘by Fender’ means either that it’s a budget line produced by Fender or that Squire are a different company and produce them under license.

Now I’m sure that all you musicians will say the genuine Fender will be better but as both looked in nice condition I was amazed to see the price difference. £2,100 against £150.

So here’s the question. How much better can it be to justify the huge price difference?

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122

That is the million dollar question and a bit of a minefield!!

The early Squier Strats were made in Japan and are now very much sought after for the quality of workmanship, it was Fenders way of introducing a budget line of the American Strat.

Over the years the Squier’s have made in various locations to keep the cost down. They are still a very good instrument but quality can vary a little.
Here’s the hard bit…a guitar is basically a piece of wood with pickups attached and each of the same model can feel a little different so a lot of choosing a guitar is how it feels as well as how it sounds. You can buy a cheap Squier that feels and plays great and upgrade the hardware and still only be a quarter of the price of an American Strat. Lot’s of people go that route but some just want the genuine American made article and that’s ok too!
FWIW I have a 1982 Japanese Tokai Strat that I paid £190 for including hardcase on July 13th 1985…it’s a copy of the Strat but I have owned at least a dozen genuine Strats but they have all gone as I prefer my “copy”.
Guitar players are fickle! We like what we like regardless of where it was manufactured and yet any Squier manufactured today will play and sound well enough to play, gig and record with.


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123

Good question, Squire is just a subsidiary of Fender, Squire is made in the far east which just means labour and parts are cheaper, Squire manufacture some great products and are well recognised by quite a few great artist. Fender manufacture in the USA and you pay a lot more, some of the Fender products are also manufactured in Mexico and also Japan which you pay less for. I am guessing the expensive Strat you looked at was an American made
All great products

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124

And of course there’s Squires and Squires. My first bass was a starter pack that had a Precision Bass, Fender amp and a strap, all that cost just under £300 which is a really good deal and you can get a Strat kit for similar money. The guitar was Squires Affinity series which is their cheap range and it uses cheaper woods and electronics, also the finish is okay. If you look on Anderton’s website the cheapest Squire Strat is about £150 but the dearest is nearly £500, so it is a minefield. I now have a 1984 Japanese Fender Jazz Bass and it a much better finished guitar than the Squire and much heavier and solid feeling.

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125

I am envious of all the admirable talent on show in this thread.

I’ve tried and know I lack that magic something that makes all the difference. It’s the same with art, I can produce a decent engineering drawing or sketch an idea or plan, but it will lack soul and impact. I gave an artist friend some possible ideas I wanted to try for a book illustration, and each of his versions came alive in seconds while I watched - he has the magic I lack.

On the subject of clone guitars, in 1970 I shared a flat with a brilliant bassist, and as I had an old Farnham Estate Zodiac I ferried his pair of cabs, amp, etc around for a few weeks until he bought his little van, and I even recorded some of their gigs.

We went into the Marshall’s shop in Ealing Broadway, (later became Dixons) and he walked along the row of basses and back again, took down a white one called Columbus, plugged it into an amp, tried it on both pickups, and thought for a moment. Then he tried a Fender Precision bass at several times the price, and thought some more.

He bought a set of Fender strings for a Precision bass, put them on the Columbus and tried it again.
The difference in the sound was amazing, from quite good to absolute heaven, now it sounded just like the Fender.
He then handed over the rest of the cash for the Columbus and dropped its brand-new original strings in the bin on our way out.

He was a classically trained violinist, but as he grew his hands ended up with fingers like bunches of bananas. He could still play violin and sometimes flashed a bit of Segovia on his six string acoustic, but often muttered they were too fiddly while his big hands were perfect for the bass.

The moral I leant from this was always use the best strings for the job.
SWMBO is very good on her acoustics, a natural musician, and by now I can tell just by the sound when the strings are tired, or only need a clean, or if new ones are fakes (beware of fake Elixirs).

I picked up a nice 2007 Fender USA Jazz Bass (with the push-pull pickup switch) a few years ago cheap in a sale in the local guitar shop in the vain hope I could keep up with SWMBO. I fixed its problems and restored the action, but I still lack the musical talent, and now I tend to forget where we have got to in a piece, even with the sheet music. It’s a bit sad really, but I plug away at it when I have time.

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126

Envious you got to visit the famous Marshall, Ealing showroom where the like of Townsend, Clapton and Page all visited in the day

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Hi Richard. The reason I picked up the bass about a year ago was because SWMBO wanted me to lay down some mean bass fills for her :face_with_raised_eyebrow:. I got the guitar kit but didn’t really do anything until I had retired, then had the obvious things to do, like holidays, but once Christmas was over I bought a book off Amazon and started to practice every day, starting with 30 minutes which now often becomes an hour or more. The progress has been quite amazing, from the struggles of the first song in the book to what I can do now is really noticeable and my wife can help me her musical theory knowledge. The book shown below has a link to a website where he talks you through everything very clearly. So get playing :blush:

image
image3024×4032 2.47 MB

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128

Ah, happy lunchtimes browsing in Marshall’s!
We visited maybe once a week, mainly because we worked only a couple of minutes walk away. Alas, most things were too expensive for us.
I asked them to find a replacement for my beautiful 1950’s Larry Adler 16hole Chromatic Hohner mouth organ (the only instrument I could play well, and any tune I heard), but I don’t think they put any effort into the search. It never appeared.
Eventually I gave up, and sadly Ealing Marshall’s closed soon after.

After that we used to look at brass, woodwind and keyboards and music books in Ealing Squires, a few hundred yards further West.
I bought assorted recorders and a B&H clarinet there for SWMBO for teaching the kids at school; but I could not have done it without on-the-spot expert advice from another friend at work who was a true genius craftsman on any instrument you could blow through, as well as watches and cameras.
Sadly both the Squires branches I knew closed a few years later.
I missed out by only a couple of hours in buying a very nice Japanese baby-grand in the closing down sale at the Ruislip Squires.
Our big old polyphonic Casio keyboard is a lot more portable as a substitute for our profitable succession of modern upright pianos, and while it was never really a match for any of them it has outlasted them.

The Larry Adler mouth organ was a birthday present given to this young asthmatic to help cure the breathing problem. It worked! I learned how to breathe! Better still, I enjoyed playing it, and no self-consciousness because I was doing it well.
But, alas, only a few years later it was nicked during a burglary while I was away.
Despite browsing in various musical shops and even buying a few alternatives, I’ve never found another mouth organ I could play instinctively since then - simply not enough talent to adapt to different tunings.

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129

Richard that’s a great story! Maybe you should take up writing?

Talent always trumps the instrument…a good player will make anything sound good!

There is a true story of Chet Atkins whilst he was doing a solo gig and doing a soundcheck before the show. He was playing away and a tech guy who was on stage doing some wiring and getting the stage ready said to him.

“Gee Mr. Atkins, that guitar sounds wonderful!”

Chet turned around and stopped playing and placed it back on the guitar stand and replied,

“How does it sound now son?”

Yep…talent trumps everything. Mine is mediocre but it has given me a true lifetime of pleasure and I will play until I can no longer finger a chord.
Take Wrinkly’s advice and get playing!!

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Thanks. That looks interesting.

In 2015 I bought these Hal Leonard books with discs, as advised by some friends and the excellent tutor who made such a big improvement in SWMBO’s guitar playing.
Complete Edition Bass method
Bass Fretboard roadmaps
Building Rock Bass lines

In the end I’ve adapted his modern right hand fingering to suit what I learned in the 1960s, and closer to what my flat-mate used. Reviving muscle memory is easier than re-inventing the wheel from scratch.
Much more to the point is gaining familiarity in the musical theory, of which I had absolutely zero.
But I seem to forget too much. It’s a bit like the old example of the snail trying to climb up out of the ten feet deep well; up six inches every night, slip back five inches during the day, how many days before he escapes to freedom?

I mix output from the PC (music to play along with or the tutorial examples) with my Bass in this neat little Roland Duo and listen to it either on earbuds (best smooth undistorted bass of anything) or the ancient X-230 PC speakers which are surprisingly hi-fi, and with much better smooth low bass than most of the more modern sets. Although less loud, it has cleaner lower fundamental bass than the (was cheap but now triple the price) noisy bass amp I found.

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Great story and it helped your health which is good, although it’s such a shame it got stolen. You need to start playing something, you are obviously interested in music.

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Fantastic memories, always wanted to get to grips with a harmonica, on the next bday list,

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So the band The MX Fivers is coming along really well, we have twin lead guitarists playing Gibson Les Paul’s, Saxophonist, harp player and a mean bass player (me :wink:), so we can do Thin Lizzy stuff, the let down on that is I can’t sing and there is the other obvious thing regarding the late great Phil Lynott which I won’t mention, we just need a drummer. Please apply here.

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134

Plenty on eBay including this one. Quite a few going between £10-25.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/175617081375?hash=item28e398001f:g:a6wAAOSwvCpj7lnU&amdata=enc%3AAQAHAAAAoOwwh9JEacAdNfbu3ujU4DUYqQsBYgochCMZ9rcOjMoAiAGTypZvMQ8ifop97XcrvS%2Fnmvmd8S5xpYrsLpSYiNsfWe2%2BlPQF134ffUG1jKKeZanpeWb1do7yOGKVHYNeuF9UAwz%2FbtWLGoca9anpzt8zM1k1kTkH%2FoziSZ7uB0a9LALUawzme2lqp7XK%2FtGlq6gQst%2BvLCRCWFUVWJXt73E%3D|tkp%3ABk9SR9iGq87OYQ

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Thanks. That one even has a box that looks the same!

But its body is different in having a slide, mine was the more basic version without.

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Lovely story - Marshall’s two old shops in Ealing are now part of rock history. As a side note, I looked up what a Columbus was and think your friend probably bought a Japanese copy of a Fender Jazz. This in turn reminded me of the (mostly awful) copy guitars of my youth - I still have nightmares about the Marlin Sidewinder a friend owned.

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If anyone reading is thinking of starting or getting back in to it I can’t recommend Larry enough…everything you need to know about guitar playing.

Well worth the time to watch… :wink:

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Good shout, lots of good YT for beginners, or if you just want strum along, have not come across this guy before thanks for posting

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He’s a spoof…hilarious instruction! :joy:

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Just watched very good :rofl: :joy: