This is where those discussions go.
For some reason, many of my favorite instruments come from a window of time between 1980 and 1987. G&L, Fender, Ibanez, BOSS, Electro Harmonix, Mesa Boogie, Rogers, Zildjian, Paiste, Tama, to name a few.
For Fenders, I love the 83/84 Elites, ever since seeing ads for them on the back covers of Guitar Player during that time, I have been hooked. Got my first Elite around 1991, a Strat. Since then I have owned about 10 different Strat and Tele Elites. Fender really took their designs to the next level with these: active electronics, redesigned pickups, non traditional hardware, flatter radius, bigger frets, etc... much like what G&L did during this same era.
I'm really more of a 5 string, active Jazz bass type player, but have wanted a 2 pickup Elite II bass in either the trans green or candy apple green. The were sort of affordable back in the '90s and early '00s, but I wasn't able to make that happen then. Now, the green ones are all well over $2K and I'm not spending that on a single bass. Well, I have also wanted a black "Standard" P from the same 83/84 era as I love the neck profile and headstock adjustable truss rod on them. A black 83 Elite I popped up on GC's website for a bargain. Said is was very clean and had a hard case. I just ordered it knowing that if I found any reason to not like it, I could return it. It has the same neck profile and such as the Standards, just has the A2 pickup and a buffer circuit with TBX tone.
It arrived and turned out to be a really great bass. I don't like gold hardware, but it's in perfect conditon with virtually no wear and still has the fine tuners in the bridge and original knobs! The bass is super clean, no fret wear, a dark rosewood board, birdseye maple neck, all original parts and already had some old (pre 2011) Fender flats on it, which saved me, as it was gonna be a flats bass, anyway. It's also not heavy, like many Elites are. It sounds and plays like a champ, I stacked some extra caps on the TBX tone to darken it up when rolled off and a couple high frets needed hammered back down. THat's it. Despite not being exactly what I was looking for, it's so good that It's a keeper!
Now I gotta sell off a couple other basses that have been made redundant.
