shoulderpet

If you feel that you could sell the Mexicans and have no regrets about it then I would go ahead and sell them and put the money towards another instrument, the Fender Vintera P bass is a fantastic instrument, I know it is also an MIM Fender but I truly feel it is a much better instrument than most MIM Fenders and I suspect it could rival a lot of US Fenders

If you order from Andertons or Gear4music there returns policies are really good, that being said I hate ordering online as you never know if you will get a good bass or a lemon

No way, not even if it was for a jam night/open mic and I was hosting it

I haven't played an American P bass but I can only imagine it would be noticeably better not in terms of sound but feel. I have a Classic 50s p bass, I don't think Fender still makes them but I believe that when they did they were around £200 more expensive than the player series. Anyway I had the chance recently to play several player series P basses and they weren't bad basses but my classic 50s p bass was miles better than ever single player series bass that I tried.

Flatwounds are always really expensive unless you buy the cheap ones on eBay but then it's a bit of a gamble what you get

That doesn't sound right to me, when I tried Labellas they were like iron rods, I took them off because they were causing me pain

Ooo some fantastic ones there, This charming man is deceptively tricky, Breathing has some fantastic fretless bass on it

Honestly I would put them in some hot wat and a very small amount of washing up liquid (just place them in a container with the hot water, do not boil them on the stove or anything) but be prepared to have to replace them if it makes the coating go bad but to be fair 3 years out of any set of strings is very good going

Another good one that I somehow forgot [YouTube]

I totally agree, in fact most times when I get a new bass I don't even touch the intonation unless it is obviously off, no audience members or band members have ever said that my bass playing sounds out of tune. The other thing is I learnt quickly that if you are too obsessive about intonation you will never be happy with any bass you play and the audience are unlikely to notice anyway

One of my favourites too and the reason for my recent purchase of a jazz bass

Whilst I am not a fan of bass solos I love songs that have bass being used as a melodic instrument. The below are some of my favourites for this, anyone else have any good examples of this kind of thing? [Youtube] Great intro bassline on this and gets pretty funky around 1.32 [Youtube] Bass starts around 40-ish seconds in to the song [Youtube] [Youtube]

Glad I could help, good to see it going to good use

This is useful, have been thinking of giving these a try, looking at the dimensions I might end up just swapping out the bridge pickup for these, don't think the neck pickup route will be deep enough

Yep 12.5ibs

A bit of a belated NBD as I received this bass on Wednesday, I received the bass in a right grotty state, the seller described it in as new condition, the bass still had the pickguard film etc on but the bass itself was filthy, as new condition meaning if as new meant it had been buried underground. First stop before anything else could be done was to remove the strings, as you can see from the below pic the strings were absolutely minging, I would have been ashamed to sell someone a bass with these strings on it but people are odd, I tried to avoid touching the strings as much as possible. Next job was to remove the thick layer of crud from the fretboard, the camera on my phone doesnt show this very well but the fretboard was pretty gross and i gave it a good scrub and then gave the rest of the bass a good clean and then wiped it over with some alchohol to kill any nasties. After about half hour cleaning it, I restrung the bass with some super light Nyxl I had spare, fair bit of fret buzz so I adjusted the truss rod and then had a nasty shock when the truss rod seemingly had no tension, I thought the truss rod was done for and much later that night then it occured to me that it was acting a bit differently to how a broken truss rod would usually act, after a bit of forum consulting and googling I found it was actually a 2 way truss rod and I turned the truss rod key a bit more and it started gripping and all was well thank god. Anyway I loosend the truss rod to take out some buzz on the first few frets and it mostly did the trick but I seem to have a high fret on the 1st or 2nd fret that was causing some fret buzz on the 1st fret, have raised the action and it is a little higher than I would like but it is manageable until I get the cash to have the frets looked at. And finally I pushed the pickups poles up on the A and D string sides to get the pickup pole heights consistent Overall I am pretty happy with the bass and after a fret levelling this will be a fantastic bass, it looks great and it sounds fantastic, I havent owned a jazz bass in about 20 years and now im wondering why I delayed it for so long, both pickups on full is a fantastic tone and those low notes on the E string sound awesome, I get the feeling a jazz bass in D standard would sound amazing. If I had to complain about something it would be the dreadful cheap pickguard, I will replacing it in the near future, I am thinking maybe brown tort (if anyone knows what aftermarket pickguards will fit this bass I would be very grateful) Before cleanup After cleanup

Yep, as you probably know from having my old Ibanez and my Harley Benton my soldering skills are limited so I try and solder as little as possible but cloth covered wire is definitely easier to work with

Ok, so is all good now apart from I seem to have a high fret either the 1st fret or the 2nd as there is some nasty fret buzz on the 1st fret on the G string, I have raised the action to compensate for the time being but I will get someone to take a look at the end of the month once I can afford to

And solved, after some googling and looking on forums I found out it uses a double action truss rod and there is a place in the adjustment where there is virtually no counter tension and it will feel like the truss rod is not doing anything, turn it past this point and it starts to grip again and adjust

Thanks for the replies, I have just out of interest tried adjusting it the other way (tightening) and it seems to tighten and then I can loosen it back to where it was but no further and when I reach the limit of where it can be loosened the truss rod key just seems to turn freely without any resistance, is this normal ? I am confused about whether this is normal or whether I got a bass with a duff truss rod

So I brought a Harley Benton JB-75 on the dubious Facebook marketplace, the bass all looked ok till I got it home tonight. After replacing the crusty looking strings that the bass came with I went to loosen the truss rod and found that the truss rod key was spinning freely so it seems I have a rounded out truss rod I have messaged the seller tonight but to be honest my gut tells me this is not going to end favourably, so... Anyone know what my options are for a cheap replacement neck? thank you

Yes it bugs the life out of me as well, hate it

I have been curious about the one for a while but never brought one as the string spacing is way too tight for me, I know they are aimed at pick players but my picking technique is pitiful at best