Fender Performer Bass

The Fender Performer was a guitar released and discontinued in 1985, assembled in Japan. [ [http://reviews.harmony-central.com/reviews/Electric+Bass/product/Fender/Performer+Bass/10/1 History] from "www.harmony-central.com"]

The Guitar

The Fender Performer bass was a uniquely styled bass guitar designed by John Page, renowned for its extremely slender neck. It has an alder body, with a bolt-on 34" maple neck and a 24 fret rosewood board. Controls are: Tone, Volume, Pickup Selector Switch, TBX Circuit Control (Treble Bass eXpander).

It was available in Burgundy Mist, Gunmetal Blue, Candy Green, White and Tobacco Sunburst.

It was manufactured in Japan in 1985 at a time when Fender were not making guitars in the USA. Soon after CBS sold Fender to its employees and production of the Performer ceased. It is rumoured that only a few hundred were made and that some were ordered to be destroyed because of a copyright despute concerning the neck. However there is no credible evidence for this.

Once largely ignored by Fender enthusiasts recent years have seen an increase in popularity and second hand values.

The following is a post that the designer John Page made on a guitar forum:

"Yes the Performer was one of my designs. Believe it or not, the Performer bass (designed before the guitar) was designed to be the Elite version of the Jazz Bass... yes that's right... it was going to be the top version of the Jazz Bass... scary huh? The shape of the instrument is derivative of the back of the Strat. Look at the waist cut on the back of the Strat and you'll see where the basic horn/body shape started. At the time (1982-3ish?) I was designing this, Fender was considered a pretty conservative instrument. Kramer, BC Rich and Jackson were building these radically styled instruments, so we wanted to get into that market. In my original design, it used a Strat-style peghead and the pickups were a double Strat humbucking setup. I also designed the Fender logo on the Performer... I can't say that that a good thing, but it was kinda cool to design a new Fender logo. We got some comments that it looked like the peavy logo, which really pissed me off.

The guitar that was produced was different than the original that I designed. I initially designed it to be made in the US, but it ended up being made in Japan. When that transition happened, things were changed. The peghead went from the Strat to the Swinger, for example, so I don't remember what pickup they actually went with. I angled the pickups to thicken up the top end a bit... and it looked cool. Well, at least to me, I like "off-line aesthetics". Why weren't they successful? Look, I was a designer in Fender R&D for years before I started the CS. I was always trying to design something new and different. When we started the CS, I tried to do the same. Reality is, the public wants Strats, Teles, P & J basses from Fender. So it's really tough to get them to accept any "new & different" designs in any great quantities. I'm afraid I have no idea how many were actually produced.

I designed the five string version when I first came back to start the CS in '87. To the best of my knowledge there was only one protoype made by Fuji Gen Gakki. It was kind of a pinkish color and had the same basic features of the 4 string Japanese model. When I initially designed both bases, the were modified mustang coils, wound beefier and wired to be humbucking. When the four string version was released it used a single coil p/u under each cover. The original also was designed with a angular/massive/fine-tuning bridge, and a "lightning bolt" styled string tree. Both were prototyped but never released. I never heard of any instruments being destroyed for any legal issues... maybe another one of those "legends"? The idea behind the neck was simple, at the time a lot of bass players were guitar player converts. Bass playing style started to have more of a "lead guitar" approach, so the idea of a narrower neck was to help along those lines. The original proto went on the summer before it was released with the them "hottest" bands, Billy Idol (I don't remember his bass player's name) and The CARS bass player, Ben Orr. "

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