The Victor Bailey Jazz Bass is an Artist Signature bass guitar made by Fender for former Weather Report bassist Victor Bailey. It was introduced in 2001, followed by fretless and 5-string versions in 2006. Discontinued in 2010.
This bass features a sleek, exotic-looking solid body made from rosewood, koa and mahogany, a maple neck featuring a 22-fret rosewood fingerboard (pao ferro on the 5-string version), Posiflex graphite neck support rods, abalone dot position inlays, rolled fingerboard edges, highly detailed nut and fret work.
For electronics, the Victor Bailey Signature model boasts two Samarium Cobalt Noiseless Jazz Bass pickups which add warmth and low end (complementing the hardwood body’s natural clarity and brightness and producing an extremely dynamic tonal range) and a 3-band active preamp tweaked at the input stage (pre-shape, boost and EQ settings) for enhancing the unique sonic nature of the woods. Bass EQ is centered at 40 Hz ± 12dB with a 4dB per-octave slope; treble is centered at 8 kHz ± 10dB with a 2dB per-octave slope (treble cut serves more as a passive control for warm organic tones); mid-control is centered at 500 Hz and +10dB and -15dB with a wide-band slope creating a distinctive voice.
For maximum headroom, the circuit is governed by an 18V power supply.
Other features include gold-plated hardware, Fender/Schaller Lite-Bass tuning machines and Bailey's caricature graphic on the headstock.
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“The basic difference between classical music and jazz is that in the former the music is always greater than its performance—Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, for instance, is always greater than its performance—whereas the way jazz is performed is always more important than what is being performed.”
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