LeftyBassist.com

Correct!

Here's the reply...



And here's my reply to him...



*sigh*

I can't believe I actually got my fucking hopes up over this... ugh.

I knew it wouldn't be happening. I've seen similar photographic mistakes online like the ones you're describing. It's just shitty lazy marketing.

it's such a shame

if you think of all the prototypes and all the development money that was invested in instruments that never made it longer than 1 year because nobody bought one.... and on the other side Fender is not able to offer at least two body wood options, two fretboard options and maybe three colours for leftys ????

and it's Fender , not a small company that does not have the money...

It's the same BS you hear about LH instruments in general - "Oh, there's no demand", "It cost too much to retool the factory", blah blah blah.

I have a simple take on it - you're a company that makes guitars. I have money. Make the damn guitars. Don't give me any whine about cost, demand, etc. If you can't make guitars, make toasters. It's just laziness, nothing else.

Honestly, can you think of any other industry that would allow such blatant discrimination? Imagine the outcry if Gibson said, "We don't make guitars for women", or Hofner announced they won't make guitars for black people. But no (or few) left-handed instruments? So what. Who cares?

I could see a mile away that this was a booboo from the marketing department. somebody got the order to photoshop a black and a sunburst righty bass to add to the left-handed product page, and they just happened to grabbed a photo of a black Jazz with a maple neck - same with the fretless. But shame of the director of marketing for not checking on what's being posted to their website and/or retailers before they are make it live.

The lack of lefty offerings it's sad, but I have to agree with the companies. Lefties sell in too little numbers or way too slow to make it profitable. Most big companies are in business to make money, not to be nice to people and try to fill their needs. Everybody was very happy when Fender re-introduced the MIA Jazz, yet, I'd bet sales have been low and slow. Numbers don't lie. Although I can't think of a good reason why Fender doesn't at least gives us more color options. . . do a batch of whites, a batch of blues, and a batch of red. . . I think that simple step would translate into good sales. But I guess they have a minimum of bodies they need to spray at the same time? Too complicated for the system to handle such change in production? Who knows. . .

Well, I have to disagree with you about that. Numbers do lie when you massage them enough. Many small companies offer ALL their models in left- and right-hand versions. Big companies don't because they can't be bothered. The idea of costing too much is a fiction they use. As I said above, if you're a company that makes guitars, then you should make guitars; don't cut out 7-10% of your potential market and make excuses about it. This thread alone shows that a change as simple as a fretboard would make money for Fender.

As for 'no demand', saying that because they're overstocked on black/rosewood basses, there's no demand for other options is just crazy talk. Many companies base their 'no demand' response on the fact that one model they offer does not sell, so obviously making other models available would give the same result.

Shrugging your shoulders and saying, "oh well" just perpetuates their ignorance. Write 'em and ask. Complain about it. They're not mind readers. If we don't engage them en masse, then they feel justified in not bothering. I've written to several companies and done just that. The more voices the better.

We can argue as much as we want...we are still screwed.

Now, I do understand the manufacturer's position in some ways but I think Fender would be well inspired to do what Addison is suggesting: Release small batches of different lefty instruments every year. There are only so many Sunburst and Black Jazz/Precisions lefties we will want to buy. For us it would also give those instruments some kind of collector status later on and encourage us to buy more of them knowing the re-sell will be good. Like in 2012: White Jazz with Maple, in 2013 CAR Jazz Rosewood and so on.

I too would be ready to squeeze my wallet if I had an opportunity to get something like a Maple Jazz especially if it is a different color like natural, silver, CAR, white...

Be smart Fender!

Since Fender isn't monitoring this forum, I would urge you to write and tell them that directly. My point is that instead of simply accepting it, make your voice heard. It's the squeaky wheel that gets the grease.

I decided to take your suggestion to heart. I sent to Fender the following email.

Hi:

I am a member of a left handed bass player internet forum called leftybassist.com. There was a lot of excitment because photoshopped jazz basses were shown left handed with maple fingerboards, instead of rosewood. One member of that forum, Chris Addison, corresponded with your department and learned that the left handed jazz basses with maple fingerboards were not being produced, but rather, the marketing department may have made a photoshop mistake.

I understand that left handed bass players are not a large profit center for the company. However, there was a lot of excitment over this possibility, and was quelched when we found out the truth... namely that Fender would continue making only sunburst/tort or black/white basses with rosewood fingerboards.

Let me make it very clear. I purchased a 2005 Fender American Deluxe Jazz bass, and love it. I would like to purchase a Fender Precision bass. However, I refuse to purchase any other basses from Fender in the colors you are currently offering because I am simply sick of seeing basses available in only those two other finish options. I know other left handed basses who refuse to buy Fender products because they are saturated with the same two colors/finish options. I rather go to a competitor who offers similar products such as G&L, or small luthiers, or Shecter, because there is finish variety.

I would recommend that Fender offer one of the two colors on a yearly basses, and rotate the second finish offering to one of the more popular colors made right handed such as Candy Apple Red, Lake Placid Blue, or Olympic White. That way, you would be able to offer new options to excite customer, but at the same time maintain one that sells historically well with minimum new production costs. If you adopted such a policy, I am sure those in the left handed world would wait with baited breath as you announce what the next color option will be.

For example, I would probably purchase an American Standard Olympic White Precision bass with tort guard if your company made one, but since it does not I will most likely have luthier build one for me at a much cheaper rate than what your Custom Shop would charge.

I look forward to receiving your reply.

All the best,

Well said. I hope they reply

An excellent letter! The more voices that speak up, the better chance they will listen. Thank you sir, for adding your voice.

Thank you for that letter !!!

But I guess Fender is/will be too arrogant to do sth. new towards us leftys

But let's hope for the best

At what address did you send it to? I'll do the same.

consumerrelations@fender.com

Thanks for doing that. Hope others will do the same. I imagine you'll have different color preferences than I would, but the more voices that speak, especially in a concerted and organized manner, the more hopefully Fender will get it.

Good stuff here fellas...

I sent a message to the guy who runs leftyfretz.com yesterday as well. Here's our conversation:



His response...


So it appears as though lefty bass players aren't the only ones getting shafted.

Unbelievable.

as one who is in the business of making basses and guitars, maybe I can offer a small suggestion ....

find those companies that DO offer (and even specialize in) lefty instruments, and patronize them with your business. you will accomplish two things by doing so:

1) you will show that you have real market value as a customer cross section because you back your demand for lefty instruments with your spending. believe me, if the market is profitable the bigger companies will catch wind of this and shift their market strategy to match demand

2) you will support those companies who do make a significant investment to ensure their offerings are lefty friendly. I would suggest that a failure of the lefty community to support lefty friendly businesses will result in those businesses eventually going the route of other companies that have adopted the mindset that there is no real business to be had in the lefty market (and thus their diminishing willingness to invest in lefty instruments)


despite what you may or may not believe, thier is a significant investment that goes into offering lefty instruments. here's a list of a couple of those investments

- CAD/CAM design time; while it's true that many aspects of a design can be as simple as mirroring the geometry, this is not always 100% true 100% of the time. there is definitely an added cost for CAM work, since it is not a simple mirror job but instead a total new work based on the mirrored/tweaked CAD definition. even if this is just two hours for a design, that's two hours that could have been spent on work that would see a significantly larger ROI

- inventory; there is a significantly larger market for righty instruments, and instruments built for stock turn quicker due to the larger market potential. an instrument in inventory is cash tied up into an investment that cannot be freed until that inventory item is sold. unless a company has unlimited cash available, the ability to offer new instruments is limited to matching the potential to sell those same instruments ... and instruments sitting in stock prohibit the ability to build new offerings. if the lefty market is supporting companies that support leftys, there should be no issues with inventory

- set-up training; there is significant investment in training someone to set-up a lefty intrument with the same finesse that they impart to a righty instrument. this has nothing to do with anything more than numbers and time investment, and getting the feel of how a great set-up feels in the orientation you may not play. in my case I learned to play a flipped instrument to the point where I'm 95% ready to take only a lefty bass to one of my upcoming gigs and play it flipped for the night. I'm only 30% there for playing a true lefty strung lefty, but I'm there enough that I know what a great set-up feels like when it's right on the money ... and playing it flipped then serves to confirm the feel with actual playing. there was significant time investment to get to this place, and those who have played one of my lefty basses have felt a set-up that far exceeds what is commonly experienced on other high-end basses


there is always pressure on a business to offer and sell what makes for the quickest, most profitable return on investment. you know Fender and others have closely studied their markets, and they offer what they believe will sell the quickets for the highest return. if their research shows they lefty market to be of a certain value range, and that offering additional colors/woods will have no significant impact to their overall business .. and in contrary, only add to the potential of increasing their unsold inventory ... well, you would get exactly the offerings that you see today. it's great to write letters, and if enough people write you might even get CEO attention - but I clearly remember the entire MusicMan debacle over a wider bridge spacing where TONS of people spoke of their desire on an internet forum ... but when it came time to spend some $$$$$, only a few of those who "would buy it now" actually ponied up the $. More companies than just MusicMan took notice of this, and used it to justify what their market research was already tellin them

to wrap this up, I suggest you find those lefty friendly companies and suppport them with your business. by doing this you'll grow their lefty market share, and this will result in them expanding their offerings to match the projected market reach. if the market grows enough, you'll soon find other companies wanting in on a piece of the lefty pie because they will be seeing a market segment that backs their letters to the CEO with their spending. be clear with the lefty friendly companies what it is that you want and at what price range ... and then support them when they come thru with their offerings


Please also note that this is NOT a pitch for only my instrument business, as there are a significant number of lefty friendly instrument builders at many price ranges in today's market place. believe me when I say that we do watch the lefty market closely, and offer products that target what the lefty community is asking for AND that also align our corporate building vision/philosophy.

all the best,

R

Some good points, but my question is this: What is the mechanism by which larger companies can see an expanded market share in left-hand sales to smaller companies? To take your own company as an example, if your current percentage of LH sales is 13% (and I'm making these numbers up), then it rises within two years to 21%, how will Fender, et al know this?

I don't deny that support for LH-friendly companies is crucial, but the dilution of market share across multiple smaller vendors would still probably not erode similar shares in larger vendors. Or to put it another way, an 8% increase in your left-handed sales will not equate to an 8% drop in Fender's.

Writing to the big companies and explaining that while you'd like to remain loyal, you're jumping ship would at least alert them to the fact that something's up. Otherwise, any drop in their LH sales could be explained with the "Lefty instruments don't sell" response. But letters that say "I'm buying a Regenerate instead of another black Jazz" will be a more effective means of prodding them to offer a wider selection.

As for ROI, I still think it can be done by combining costs for left- and right-handed instruments at every stage of the budgeting process. Then models are priced with L&R costs figured in together. In a nutshell, it's bumping up the price of righty guitars by a tiny amount to cover the cost of LH instruments. It's a bit of poetic justice to let rightys help cover the costs of instruments for us.

BTW, I wrote Fender the other day and more or less told them that we're tired of being discriminated against.

Rod, great post, and I agree wholeheartedly to everything you're saying... BUT...

I have a couple of points to make. These points are NOT disagreeing with what you wrote as an entire idea, I'm only disgreeing with some of your points in regard to the specific subject of maple fingerboards on lefty Fender basses.

1.) Offering maple fingerboards for a year or two to pacify customers who have been waiting for 30 years for one will not add any cost, training time, design time, or anything else that I can think of. Maybe inventory... but if you've reduced your rosewood production by a third to make room for some maple, I can't see that it would. In fact, it might even HELP Fender a little bit, especially since they stated recently that they're dealing with rosewood shortages.

2.) I refuse to believe that Fender is not already aware of what kinds of "Fender Style" lefty instruments are selling with maple fingerboards from companies who currently own the "lefty Fender style market" like ESP, Schecter, Nash, and, more importantly, companies like Warmoth who not only sell complete unassebled basses, but who also sell replacement necks. I wonder how many people in the last 20 years have purchased a maple replacement neck to go on their American Standard bass? Each one of those sales is a potential sale lost by Fender... and they MUST know this.

3.) It can be argued that the 19mm SR5 debacle failed because it was set up to fail to begin with. All orders had to be prepaid 100%, there were no returns allowed, black was the only color offered, there was a VERY limited ordering window, and, if I recall correctly, the original price was MSRP which turned a lot of people off... it was later lowered, but, if I recall correctly, it was not competitive with a standard SR5 price point. Personally, I believe Sterling set it up to fail because he wanted it to fail to prove he was right... I have no proof of this, but it certainly seemed like it.

Anyway... as I said before... as a general rule, I love your philosophy and I personally adhere to it. I have not ordered a "new" bass from Fender and I will NOT until they offer maple boards. I have only purchased used Fender instruments and will continue to do so until they get with it.

good question as to how the industry would recognize a shift in the market

I see two easy means to this

- builders of all sized companies talk. it's not like we're building nuclear arsenal or high tech weapons. sure there are certain occasional things we don't readily share, but you'd be surprised at how flowing the communication can be when away from the customer spotlights. trends get noticed, and a huge jump in lefty bass offerings will get noticed if those same basses are consistently being added and shortly thereafter removed from available inventory ... and it's even more obvious if a builder keeps all of their past inventory available for viewing in their gallery

- word of mouth amongst the consumer websites (like here on LB, or TalkBass, BadAss Bass Players, MovingAir, HarmonyCentral, etc ...) from people who are purchasing elsewhere. if I'm a Fender bean counter and I do a search on lefty bass where 90% of my hits are for Fender basses ... well, let's just say that I'd be pretty confident that I have targeted my customer base right on target. if in six months I'm noticing my lefty sales dropped by 30% and a similar search now yields that 25% of the search hits are for new lefty friendly companies ... believe me, I'm going to take notice -IF- I truly care about keeping/growing my lefty client base. if I instead feel that the 10% lefty market share isn't a customer base I really wanted in the first place, then I'm happy to see that I can reduce my production/inventory expenses by further reducing my lefty offerings


as a consumer, I want to support those businesses who actually -want- my business, and who display that by taking the initiative to actively court my business. in the same way, I choose not to support those businesses who reluctantly offer things I want to buy simply because they're tired of receiving my petitions to offer me something. I choose to reward those companies who my have made it obvious that my business is worth their investment and who openly make it known thru their product offerings that they value my preferences as a consumer

why would anybody want to reward a company with their business if that company has made it a very public point to repeatedly snub requests for something as simple as a different body color or fretboard wood?


on the topic of merging R&D costs, that really depends on how a company chooses to track their numbers. for a company where R&D is a generic overhead charge number, it's probably fairly easy to spread the costs around like peanut butter ... but for a company that is looking hard at their job costs, it's very likely that every model (and maybe even every model broken down by string count, orientation, and certain options) has a unique charge number so that's it's super simple to generate any number of views into the ROI on R&D, and then focus $$$ where there's the biggest realized return.

for myself, if I spend considerable in-house R&D on a model I'm able to absorb it into the larger business overhead -unless- that development requires I contract out some portion of the job. a ficticious example might be where I develop a new trussrod design and have a significant quantity made for right-handed necks ... and then I start getting requests for a lefty version, but the temporary license I had for the design work has expired. in this case I'd need to purchase a new license in addition to devoting time to the R&D work, or I'd need to contract the work out a $XX for labor and $ZZ for prototype materials ... and once a final design was arrived at, I'd then need to purchase a quantity of these lefty trussrods that are a higher $/unit cost due to the smaller quantity ordered. I'd need to do a load of market analysis prior to taking on the project to see if there was potential to recoup my R&D investment. it could very well be that I didn't arrive to the conclusion that this project would break even in the next couple of years ... so then it comes down to a personal philosophy of whether I'm OK taking the loss and balancing it with some of the margin from my righty sales (if I'm lefty friendly) or deciding that those same financial interests are better served spending the R&D $$ on something else that will turn a significant profit in the coming couple of months (the typical and successful business approach)

thankfully trussrods never are such an issue, but I see a very real case for this kind of a scenario at MusicMan with their preamp PCB's designed to the shape of their top routed control cavities


in the end, if I'm a lefty friendly company I'm going to be more generous with my lefty R&D and ROI analysis than if I am handed agnostic and only looking at the bottom line. if there is, however, no business support (i.e sales) from the lefty community in recognition of this financial generosity, then eventually this lefty friendly generosity will be redirected into other R&D with higher ROI potential ... since a business must turn a profit to keep the doors open (unlike a subsidized charity that defines their budget based on donations)


so I again encourage to find those companies that actively support the lefty instrument market and seek you out for your business, and support them with your business. in this tight economy, your purchase of an instrument might be the difference between them continuing to actively support the lefty market or instead reducing overhead by limiting their lefty offerings to only what is a guaranteed sale. there are many great companies who actively support the lefty market, and a TON of companies that would be just as happy if they only ever made righty instruments.


it's been nice to have a small break to post on this topic ... but the shop is again calling me back to work on the ever growing backlog. apologies in advance if I don't get back to thread in the immediate future

all the best,

R

I got an idea.......... Buy a used Fender American Standard and send the neck to Mike Lull to install a maple fingerboard and Plek it... Done! It would be better than a stock Fender neck after Mike's TLC..... Or, buy a Maple board Warmoth neck. Fender doesn't give a S**T about lefty's so this subject has been exhausted. I know a lot of other bass builders that feel the same way. 3% lefty to 97% righty <exaggerating a little here...>. Why make a lefty bass and the upcharge for some (excluding Warwick, etc) is ridiculous and a kind way of saying "we don't want to build a left handed bass".

My 2 cents!