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) Special Design Side By Side Bass Humbuckers
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, Hipshot UltraLite tuning machines (with a Drop D-tuner for the E string on the 4-string model), Gotoh (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

    • Peter Bertges: The Fender Reference; Bomots, Saarbrücken 2007, ISBN 978-3-939316-38-1