Fender Roscoe Beck Bass
| Roscoe Beck Bass | |
|---|---|
| Manufacturer | Fender |
| Period | 1995–2005 / 2004–2009 |
| Construction | |
| Body type | Solid |
| Neck joint | Bolt-on |
| Woods | |
| Body | "Modern-Vintage" Select Alder |
| Neck | Maple |
| Fretboard | Maple, Rosewood or Pao Ferro |
| Hardware | |
| Bridge | Gotoh Dual-Access (5-string), Fender 4-Saddle Locking Convertible (4-string) |
| Pickup(s) | Side By Side Bass Humbuckers designed by Bill Lawrence |
| Colors available | |
| 3-Color Sunburst, Candy Apple Red, Shoreline Gold, Teal Green Metallic, Lake Placid Blue, Crimson Red Transparent, Honey Burst | |
The Roscoe Beck Bass is an "Artist Signature" Series electric bass guitar made by Fender for Texas bassist Roscoe Beck.
The guitar was modeled after a custom-made Six-string bass guitar built for Beck by luthier Michael Stevens of Stevens Guitars, and came in 4 and 5-string versions with an alder body, three-ply mint green, 3-ply parchment or 4-ply brown tortoise pickguard, an asymmetrical oval shaped 6-bolt graphite-reinforced maple neck featuring rosewood, maple or pao ferro fingerboard with 22 Dunlop 6105 jumbo frets, two side-by-side bass humbuckers designed by Bill Lawrence,[1] Hipshot UltraLite tuning machines (with a Drop D-tuner for the E string on the 4-string model), Gotoh Dual-Access (5-string) and Fender 4-Saddle Locking Convertible (4-string) strings-through-body/top-load bridges. Controls include a master volume, a master tone with push/pull midrange shaping feature and a 3-way pickup selector with two 3-way mini toggle switches for series/parallel/humbucking/single-coil wiring.
The five-string version was introduced in 1995 and discontinued ten years later. The four-string was introduced in 2004, and was last produced in 2009. Its master volume and tone/mid shaping controls feature knurled chrome-plated dome Tele knobs. Early prototypes had an abalone dot-inlaid neck, Schaller StrapLock-Ready buttons, lacked of Drop D-tuner on the E string and utilised a standard Fender round string tree. The production model has black or white dot position markers on the fingerboard, strap buttons and a custom Hipshot string tree.
References
- ↑ "In 1995 we began working closely with the legendary pickup designer Bill Lawrence. We were trying to develop a pickup that would accurately reproduce the B string on a five string bass while still retaining the unique tonality of the Fender Jazz Bass. The result was the highly acclaimed pickup in the Roscoe Beck Artist Series Five-String bass." in The Story of the Samarium Cobalt Noiseless Pickup By Dan Smith
- Peter Bertges: The Fender Reference; Bomots, Saarbrücken 2007, ISBN 978-3-939316-38-1
- Dan Smith: The Story of the Samarium Cobalt Noiseless Pickup
- George Manno : Bill Lawrence: pickups then, now and beyond in Vintage Guitar Magazine, January 1998