Why I Stopped Playing a $15,000 Signature Bass 

Do the best you can, we will survive. We can demand all we want, which some of us will, you will do what I have a hard time doing, ACCEPT THAT WE ARE NOT PERFECT!!! LOL!!!

Here's my take on this. I'll try to make it a short answer but I personally believe Fodera should've never let two artists get into this type of behaviour. Its unprofessional on their part.Obviously Matt was upset but he's attacking the wrong party and I understand you needed to defend yourself but the only people that need to apologize is Fodera (the owners) for allowing this to get out of control against both artists. They could've simply suggested what they could design for you etc before the instrument was delivered and keep it behind closed doors and not letting another artist blast the other online. The company owners need to stop hiding and make a public video about how they fucked up

Love this approach. Keep up the great content, man!

Hi Janek, while Foderas are extremely well built instruments with great playability, IMHO soundwise they lack personality. Listening to a recording you can recognise a Fender, a MusicMan and definitely…… a Wal; you can’t with a Fodera! Go for a Wal; a personal musical language as your deserves a bass with personality 😊

I like the video. Now of all people you're the last one I'd have expected to ditch his Fodera. Well maybe Anthony Jackson would surprise me more but other than that.

Are we supposed to know who you are?

@@HiImSeanIPlayBass woah that is a hurtful thing to ask an artist. Find his portfolio and like it or not. We're all just music enthusiasts talking gear and passion. You need to chill man.

@@jakubgiernatowski2885 will gamache doesn’t have a “portfolio”. He has two videos of his kid at a Christmas pageant or something

@@HiImSeanIPlayBass RU-vid is for everyone. You are not supposed to know me either, but it really doesn't matter

@@HiImSeanIPlayBass no, not unless youre awesome dude. Keep scrolling champ.

I don't think there's any harm in honesty. I'm happy to go that route always. Maybe redact some names here and there, but always tell it like it is.

@@janekgwizdala Don't worry, hun. Garrison was always well and truly up his own bottom :-)))))))

Matt Garrison couldn't carry your case JG.

Appreciate you being around since the days of VLOG!

@@janekgwizdala Yeah! Those were the days! You really hit something then. At least with me, it resonated. You talked about stuff and it was a hang more than anything else. For some strange reason, I've stumbled on it right when stuff went bad personally and carrier-wise. But with these long-form stories its very hard to tell what happened. Probably one of the seeds did grew. I finished my previous band that brought 20 people to the show and started much more adventurous journey with new band that can gather 200 or more. It doesn't seem like much, be we're already into planning euro tour along with LP coming out and I see people getting buzz from the music (which I haven't seen in a long while, actually). I think its the part, where you just drop what's fragile and go fearlessly deeper that I got from your vlog days. So you might be the part I'm still grinding my music carrier hehe You really should come up with OC2 memes

Appreciate you being on the journey with me. 👍

Totally agree. With the kiddo "today" is a very different concept from what it used to be, but this week I'm reaching out for sure.

I think, for me, I reached a point where I could get an acceptable tone out of any of the 30 or more basses I've owned and tried out. I've settled on a stock 75 Fender J bass. I have an EB sterling I like and a bass I built myself. So many great basses in the World now to choose from. I repair, build and restore basses as a side hobby. I Love bass guitars. The F bass is a very fine and flexible instrument. Once I got decent at playing, most any properly set up bass will give me an acceptable sound.

It is indeed a great bass, both with respect to looks, playability, sound and history. Don't ever sell it. And If you havent't tried Rotosound flatwounds on it, I recommend you give it a whirl next time you change strings.

I appreciate that. And yes, the F Bass is super nice to play. I'm very lucky it worked out the way it did.

🛫 ➡️ 1,000,000 🤷‍♂️ 🤞🏻

Hi I am also a small time builder; not a player; and wonder what makes a good Bass? I guess it depends on what each player wants; but besides frets that feel good; and string height; what else it there? Thanks Janek for the video.

Hopp Schwiiz!!

Hey! Good to hear from you. That was a fun masterclass in Amsterdam. Lots of respect of volunteering to get up and play onstage. 👍

Appreciate the support! 2018 at the Sugar Club was a super fun gig!

Dziękuję Ci. Nie mogę się doczekać gry w Polsce w tym roku!

@@janekgwizdala ja akurat od lat w uk mieszkam wiec jak bedziesz gral na wyspie to jakos sie wybierzemy na koncercik... pozdrowki!

Ja się chętnie bym wybrał w Polsce :D

May you enjoy the overdrive! Always on 💯

MMF in the house! Was having lunch with an old MMF friend from 30 years ago yesterday!

btb 33 right? Got the exact same one years ago just a month after ibanez started selling them. would never have thought of it without Janek's great influence over what I wanted to achieve with my instrument

No, mine is the BTB845V. But the 33 looks very similar, maybe it's the predecessor?

@@AvormW Reading about it now it is in fact part of the same "volo" series as the btb33. the 845 looks much better I think

@@Sagizor Did you guys end up replacing the nut?

@@seanstiller7202 Not yet, I didn't have any issues with the nut. I'd rather replace the pickups at some point, the Bartolinis lack some clarity imho.

7 Channels!!! incredible.

Great to hear from a bunch of people in the comments on this video that are coming out to the Steve Smith shows in a couple of months. I'm really looking forward to that tour. And yes! Lots of changes here, but all good and positive ones since the daily vlog days of 2017.

There are so many people who casually played a Wal and people don't really realize. Mick Karn from the band Japan, Paul McCartney had one, Percy Jones, and yes... the mighty Flea!

Great that Jojo was an inspiration to pick up the drums! He's one of my closest friends and a constant inspiration also. I totally hear you on the Strat thing. It was one of the things I regretted not digging slightly deeper into in the video. It's always a tough balance to strike when the audience is getting so wide, and time is short in what I can say. I totally agree that there were more differences besides the color, but I hope that didn't cloud the overall picture of what I was trying to highlight in how similar the fundamentals of those guitars are.

Big time. I always thought I wanted to be a drummer right up until the moment the bass came into view....

That is my absolute dream gig!

Appreciate the kind words Greg, always happy to hear the information I put out there is being used in a positive way. 👍

Appreciate you taking the time to give feedback. Always nice to hear the material is out there working for people! 👍

It's all subjective. Everyone isn't going to love the same thing. Glad you were able to move on and have no regrets, that's a positive outcome.

@@janekgwizdala I wanted to love it. But even the engineers and musicians I worked with preferred most anything else I used. Jazz, P , Ibanez, Musicman, even a Squier). That settled it for me.

My issue is I’m not a fuss. Pot or complainer. I purchased a mini mg . Upon unboxing and tried to put a strap on I couldn’t the strap studs were so far driven into the body I couldn’t get a strap on, called the sales person and he sends me some control diagram that was totally unrelated to the build failure, said sorry you feel that way. Then cracks started appearing. It actually looked like they painted it with a brush . Not happy , not happy.

Nice!!! Chords and bass really do go well together. Welcome back to the world of bass, and good luck!

It's a commitment to be a musician, and I agree with you that there are lots of hurdles along the way. But people are generally good to one another, and most of my career, although very hard work at times, has rewarded me 100's of times over. I'm very lucky to do what I do, and to be so in love with the work that goes into the process.

Thanks for your comment, and yes! Chicago was fun. I think that's the job of any musician, to support everyone else onstage around them. I'm glad you felt good in the short time we were able to play together. 👍

It's a very valid question and a really hard one to answer. I think it's probably important to understand the heritage behind the, instrument (the electric bass is a relatively young instrument), the brand, and the builder first. Take Vinny Fodera for instance: he's in a very exclusive club of innovators of which there are maybe less than ten members. That alone can be a massive part of the value you might find in the instrument. Then there are so many other factors that go into the process of deciding what you value in a bass. It's very subjective on a lot of levels, and you're going to take into account how difficult it was to source the woods and materials for the instrument, how many hours went into making it, where it was made, the overhead costs of running the company, the amount of instruments they're able to produce per year at that level. All of those things create scarcity, and in turn, value. Take watches for instance (I happen to be a huge fan and a bit of a nerd when it comes to time pieces). A maker like Roger Smith has only made around 100 pieces in 20 years, so there's a reason one sold for almost $3M at Bonhams last month I think it was. That is an extreme example, but I make it that way to really make the point. There are so few people like Vinny Fodera in the world who operate at that level, and are original (very important here because Fodera as a brand has been ripped off by so many small builders for over 30 years now), so I totally understand why there is so much value placed in the craftsmanship and the innovation they bring to a player in their instruments. I think it's also interesting to look at Upright/Acoustic basses, and the kinds of prices they go for. The really high-end instruments (admittedly mostly vintage rather than new) can fetch prices you could buy a house with. This Lorenzo Carcassi for instance is on sale for $175,000 kolstein.com/products/lorenzo-carcassi-bass. I'm not 100% sure off the top of my head, but I believe that instrument will be around 250 years old. And even a decent new build can easily go for $15k-$30k without anyone batting an eyelid in that world. I guess what I'm trying to say is that context is also important.

A huge amount of any asking price is the overhead. If you put the makers in a workshop in Manhattan their rent, taxes, power bills, insurance etc are hundreds of times more than if those same makers were making the same product in the middle of the Welsh valleys. Then there is order control by price. All business increase their prices to what customers will pay, but if the amount of orders are too much to handle then the options are to just turn them down, or increase production (potentially watering down the desire of the product), or putting prices up until there is a balance between order numbers and capacity. This applies to the item itself but also the time value of the maker. It's why people from every area of work charge different amounts for basically the same service. But people will pay more for a burger made by a 3 star Michelin chef than by a guy who has a food truck - even if the food truck burger tastes better. There are many many factors - and the wood / pickups etc really are the smallest elements of how a sale price is calculated.

I think is not worth it. Maybe you can have a bass made of gold, but the only thing that you can do with it is play notes to make music, nothing more. I’ve learned that after playing a non adjusted Matt Garrison fodera at samash in NYC (btw)

@@MadMagicPaul Great answer ! @TheAamott12 A better question is if anyone needs a 15K bass, and the answer to that question is: No - You don't.

If Alembic makes it, it's a work of art and the greatest sounding instrument made. Fender invented the electric bass, alembic perfected it. Everyone else that sells basses for that kinda price point is just separating people from their money

Joe Dart slings Music Man stuff at full price with none of the Music Man features you want. 😂

Less emotional weight is always good. I feel it, and have felt it, way more for Vinnie and Joey. I know I screwed that one up.

The format of my videos, in fact just posting content to RU-vid, has nothing to do with money. I was not only incredibly succinct with the title and the thumbnail for the video, but I delivered on both of those elements within 9 seconds of the start of the video. This is a story, and it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. What part of the video you think I should have started with other than the beginning, I have no idea. 🤷‍♂ You're also well within your rights to simply click away from it if it doesn't appeal to you.

@Janek Gwizdala My apologies for getting your knickers in a twist. I don't give video editing advice for free. Though, if you keep your videos longer than 8 minutes... You are (or are hoping for) achieving some level of revenue. Ergo: You could possibly afford my services on your current trajectory. Honesty, you'd be thick to not realize RU-vid's monetary algorithms. As for the story? It seemed more of a rant than anything else. I sincerely hope you consume this as constructive criticism. I don't know you (personally) but I wish you all the best with your future endeavours. Kindest regards, Likely on your Spotify list😁👍

I reached out to Vinnie and Joey today, told them about the video, and explained my side of the story. I hope they can accept the apology, it would be nice to be in touch with them again.

¡Gracias mi amigo!

I definitely got a great feel for the instruments and the company through my wife's involvement with playing them. That was a luxury that isn't lost on me.

Australia is definitely in the planning. I have to dig into it asap and trying work on something around a year from now in the beginning of 2024. It's been way too long!

Appreciate you sharing. That's really great to hear. And now we go onwards to the next phase...

I've been trying to forget the daily vlogs since they ended! They were actually very fun, and super educational for me, but they really took their toll on the rest of life after a while. I'm digging this new approach to doing something maybe once a week on RU-vid. Let's see how it goes.

@@janekgwizdala I’m thoroughly digging the new content setup these days. Here’s to getting the goal and beyond!

Have you ever played on 432hz and what do you feel en think about it?

!Muchas gracias jefe! Seguiré trabajando hasta los 100k

Great to hear you found the bass again. It's always deflating to lose the passion for it, but when it comes back, it's normally way more fun.

I reached out to them today. I'm hoping we can talk again, it would be nice to see them after all this time.