SQUIER 40th Anniversary Vintage Precision and Jazz
FENDER
www.fender.com
$599
At the dawn of rock and roll, if you wanted a bass guitar, you had to buy a Fender. There wasn’t really any other choice. Leo Fender had been first out of the blocks back in 1951, and the brilliance of his design meant that no-one else seriously competed for years. By the start of the Eighties, however, dark clouds were gathering over Fender after a perceived decline in quality following the sale of the brand to CBS. Even more seriously, a couple of Japanese companies—most notably Tokai—started producing inexpensive but accurate copies of Fender’s guitars and basses from the pre-CBS glory days.
Something needed to be done, so Fender brought in a new management team, who
