Just to be pedantic I looked up the meaning of boutique: 1:) a small store selling fashionable clothes or accessories. or 2) a business or establishment that is small and sophisticated or fashionable. ie "a boutique film" So extending that to the bass world that sort of means a small business with limited manufacturing quantities. Maybe it can be extended to larger builder that does a limited run. Now if a bass is essentially a copy of an existing bass (A fender P or J clone for example) but is part of a limited run or a custom job it might be a bit murkier to define. It's unique in the sense that its probably rare in some sense due to the details use to refine the original design but it doesn't necessarily stand out as something particularly novel (the fashionable part of the defintion). This seems to match what you were saying. Based on this it might be fair to say that every custom bass is boutique in some sense but every boutique bass is not custom. I would guess that this implies the it will tend to cost more than basses that come from manufacturing line and I think many people think assume that very expensive means boutique. Are boutiques better? Well it's reasonable to guess that generally these basses are produces with more care and attention to detail on each one so they will probably feel great to play and sound consistently good or maybe sound unique in some way. But I've noticed that whenever bass players (and guitar players) say they found their dream instrument (often a more expensive, possibly boutique or custom bass) within some number of years they get another bass. So maybe it still means that often players find that a given bass doesn't work for everything they do or they simply just want something that sounds or feels different after a while. Practically speaking I think it matters far less than most people believe and very few listeners really will discern any major difference, especially in a live setting. Mostly it's the players that feel it makes the difference to them.
Just to be pedantic I looked up the meaning of boutique: 1:) a small store selling fashionable clothes or accessories. or 2) a business or establishment that is small and sophisticated or fashionable. ie "a boutique film" So extending that to the bass world that sort of means a small business with limited manufacturing quantities. Maybe it can be extended to larger builder that does a limited run. Now if a bass is essentially a copy of an existing bass (A fender P or J clone for example) but is part of a limited run or a custom job it might be a bit murkier to define. It's unique in the sense that its probably rare in some sense due to the details use to refine the original design but it doesn't necessarily stand out as something particularly novel (the fashionable part of the defintion). This seems to match what you were saying. Based on this it might be fair to say that every custom bass is boutique in some sense but every boutique bass is not custom. I would guess that this implies the it will tend to cost more than basses that come from manufacturing line and I think many people think assume that very expensive means boutique. Are boutiques better? Well it's reasonable to guess that generally these basses are produces with more care and attention to detail on each one so they will probably feel great to play and sound consistently good or maybe sound unique in some way. But I've noticed that whenever bass players (and guitar players) say they found their dream instrument (often a more expensive, possibly boutique or custom bass) within some number of years they get another bass. So maybe it still means that often players find that a given bass doesn't work for everything they do or they simply just want something that sounds or feels different after a while. Practically speaking I think it matters far less than most people believe and very few listeners really will discern any major difference, especially in a live setting. Mostly it's the players that feel it makes the difference to them.