Sunday, May 15, 2011

Spector- not a current fusion

Oh dear, what's this about the Spector design being a monstrosity of current design fusion? Spector basses had been around since 1974 so any resemblance issues you acknowledge currently is the draw from this design, not the Spector being a cross between some recent make. Tsk tsk tsk...

Before moving on to EBMM, Dave La Rue was with Spector. The image above was etched in my mind when I first saw it because he was one of the very few bass specialists who incorporated a whammy bridge in his bass.( I had a chance to try a Spector bass at Davis when they used to have them there, I clearly remembered it was a blue 4-string model but I ended up buying the EBMM Sub 1 bass instead). This feature wasn't brought over to the EBMM basses he plays today. I was thinking if Stuart Spector transferred his bass design to the guitar, it would be splendid. So it came true for me.

6 comments:

Ijau D. Koceng said...

looks like *corvette shape with *infinity finish

*warwick basses

subversion.sg said...

does it pre-date the Spector? :-)

Ijau D. Koceng said...

i guess warwick was newer...

subversion.sg said...

it wouldn't be a surprise if other manufacturers tried to steal the Spector design because the company was under Kramer along the way & they filed for bankruptcy. this was the vulnerable period but stuart spector kept on going with his desin till he regained the name back in the late '90s.

All Things Spector said...

The SPECTOR NS-Body design was the first bass guitar designed by Ned Steinberger in 1976 (for Stuart Spector). Stuart and Ned were members of a woodworker's cooperative in Brooklyn, NY. The SPECTOR NS-Body Bass was developed from the first commercial bass offered by SPECTOR (in 1975) called the SPECTOR SB. That bass, although flat bodied with a fatter bottom, has the same wing shape as the NS-Bass. The NS-Bass went into production in 1977 as the NS-1 (single P pickup), the P/J NS-2 was introduced in 1979... three years before Hans P. Wilfer would form Warwick.
Many of Warwick's basses are copies of other people's designs. The very first Warwick, BTW, was a headless bass... a cross between Steinberger's original headless graphite bass and Kramer's "The Duke" bass. I guess Wilfer liked Ned Steinberger's work because the Streamer was for many years an identical knock-off of the SPECTOR NS. It was after Steinberger and Spector threatened to sue Wilfer for a license agreement he signed in 1985 at the NAMM show but never honored that the Steamer got changed into what it is today.
Both are really great basses, but with totally different feel/sound. I love the necks on SPECTORs. To me, no one does necks better than Stuart Spector... they are butter!

subversion.sg said...

they are simply great necks for the basses but i wouldn't say the same for the guitars.