I asked one of the many AIs on the market to evaluate two basses and give me a recommendation as to which one I should invest in. Would you agree with its conclusions?
Check it out:
"Considering all the factors we discussed before, including the construction, the tone, the economic factors, and considering the prices of those two instruments, 799 euros for the V8 and 1177 euros for the Fender, which one would you recommend as a musical and economic investment?
Taking into account all the factors we’ve discussed - construction quality, tonal versatility, marketability/value retention, availability of aftermarket parts, and the pricing - if I had to recommend one as the better overall musical and economic investment between the Marcus Miller V8 at 799 euros and the Fender Player Plus J Bass at 1177 euros, I would suggest the Fender Player Plus.
Here’s my reasoning:
Construction Quality - Both have excellent build quality, with the Fender having a slight edge with the alder body and proven Fender craftsmanship.
Tonal Versatility - The V8 provides extremely nuanced tone shaping, but the Player Plus preamp with boost/cut controls still allows shaping a wide range of classic and modern tones admirably.
Marketability/Value Retention - Fender has unparalleled brand recognition and instruments like the Player Plus J Bass hold their value exceptionally well over time on the used market.
Aftermarket Parts - The Fender has a huge ecosystem of affordable and readily available aftermarket parts for upgrades and modifications down the road.
Pricing - While 1177 euros is more expensive upfront than 799 euros for the V8, the Fender’s higher price is justifiable considering the brand pedigree and long-term value proposition.
So while the Marcus Miller V8 is an outstanding bass in its own right, the Fender’s classic yet versatile tone, bulletproof construction, stronger resale value and mod-ability give it the edge as the smarter investment piece, even at a higher initial cost.
The stronger global appeal of the Fender brand makes it easier to sell down the road if needed. And the seemingly endless aftermarket parts availability provides an upgrade path as your skills grow over years of ownership.
Of course, personal playing preferences could tilt the decision. But from a pure investment outlook, the Fender Player Plus J Bass provides the best blend of performance, value, flexibility and marketplace appeal in this comparison."
I do agree with the caveat that basses are not investments to me, they’re meant to be played. They are bad investments actually. V8 or Player Plus? V8, it’s a better instrument.
Everything is quite accurate except for fender mim built quality as of late. It’s gotten so bad with QA that fender actually disclaimed that some fret sprouts are expected including the made in USA, because it’s in the nature of wood. Hmmmm! Usually manufactures properly dry their wood components until it’s ready. It’s like selling wine. You can’t just start bottling them until they are ready to be in the bottles, and the buyer can determine when he/ she’s going to drink it.
That’s also why we are seeing a lot more of the roasted maple neck offered because it’s significantly reduced the time to dry the wood, just a small cost of roasting the neck component. Time is money.
The only line I trust from fender are the Squier Classic vibe. They are superbly build.
It got the quality part so, so wrong. Not slandering Fender here but Sire is going to win there for both overall quality and consistency until you step up to MIJ.
At that point I would probably go with the Fender, but that’s because it’s actually a FujiGen and is going to be tough for Sire to beat at any level.
I like to say that they give you an answer that sounds right but isn’t
A few days ago I asked both ChatGPT and Gemini “Which is thicker a us or canadian dime” and they both got the answer wrong. GPT had the correct thicknesses but incorrectly identified which was thicker. Gemini got both the thicknesses wrong and misidentified which of those incorrect numbers was thicker.
They can’t even identify which of 2 numbers is larger or even how many characters are in a string so it’s impossible to trust anything out of them.
Recently I googled “what is a cubic liter” and had the Quora AI bot tell me that it’s a cube with sides one liter in length"
If you like or want the natural drive then the sadowsky would be a good choice. I’m a clean tone guy by default so I love my providence dual bass station.
Lately one of my favorite ways to use LLMs is to run it locally and pointing it at a cache of documents on a particular subject. It ingests and indexes the data and then does retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) using the document cache as a data source.
You can then “chat” with your documents and it will give you answers, citing which pages of which documents it used to formulate the response.
