So you judged a bass on how it sounds when it was being played by a hack. It's a wonder you managed to find your own sound when judging the worth of an object by how it sounded through another person's signal chain.... not to mention their hands.
are you telling me you've never been at a show and thought "damn, that guy sounds good, I wonder what he's playing?" that you just blind your eyes to whatever's on the headstock and make a pure, unbiased assessment? then just... guess?
no. that's not how things work. we all have personal biases and dispositions, conscious or otherwise. that's literally how everything works. my mother made terrible brussel sprouts, so all my life I avoided them. now... ok that was a bad example, brussel sprouts are objectively terrible. but you get my point.
what we perceive influences how we feel about things. it's as simple as that. even if you KNEW the guy rockin' the rick' was a bad bass player, your opinion of their instruments would be slightly diminished because you've seen they're capable of bad things. conversely, if you saw a great player with a fake who sounded terrible, you'll be suspicious any time something doesn't sound quite "right," which also hurts the brand.
but to concede a point, no, I haven't found "my sound." I've found a multitude of sounds, useful in different situations. but I doubt I'll ever be totally satisfied, which I would venture to guess is the norm. otherwise we'd all own just one bass. hell, even Anthony f'ing Jackson is still refining his instrument, some 30 years on. but thanks for trying to diminish my ear.
To further muddy the waters to the standard soupy grey of modern American life, I have seen a Chinabacker, complete with fake Ric TRC, for sale in a Pawnshop for $400. They clearly didn’t give a sh*t if some poor sap bought it thinking it was real (...)
and that's a bingo. unless you have 100% control over who views you instrument, and make sure it dies with you, it's going to end up in the wild. of course anything "too good to be true" should be treated with suspicion, but that's assuming a level of knowledge that, quite frankly, a lot of musicians don't have. or retailers. I once came across an Ibanez Gem in a pawn shop that was like, $400. confused, I called up an old coworker of mine. for some context, he was on the spectrum, and had the entire Ibanez parts catalog memorized, to the point where it was sometimes difficult just to get the name of things, not the part number. anyways, I sent him a bunch of photos, he told me some things to check out, ran the serial number, and it was 100% legit. I tried to tell the staff, but they swore that their "guitar guy" said it was fake, so it must have been. now, I live in a town of about 4,000 people, and there's one music shop within a 30 mile radius. the owner of that shop couldn't find his butt with both hands as he was defecating. now, there's some unfortunate sap out there thinking he's playing a cheap fake and has no idea of the real value. I'm sure the shop lost its shirt on that deal.
need any more proof? look at how many people in this thread didn't even
know they made a lemmy bass. and we're supposed to be the experts.
my point is that by buying counterfeit products you're not just getting a bass on the cheap, you're f'ing up the whole market by enabling criminal behavior that impacts far more people than you. again, I have no problem with "tribute" style instruments. I mean, christ, how many scroll basses have you seen? Carl's getting pretty freakin' old, yet that style seems to keep growing unabated. but these need to be represented as what they are. a unique product based on someone else's design/IP. dressing it up as the real thing is fraud, and it screws every level of the market.
namaste.
