LeftyJ

I'm not a fan of Marcus Miller - I will always associate the Miller signature with Martin Mendez of Opeth . When I first started listening to them in 1999-2000 I didn't even know who Marcus Miller was - but when I first saw Opeth live I was struck by that beautiful Jazz Bass and its interesting control plate. Martin has since moved to Sandberg and has a signature bass with them based on the California VT shape but with two Jazz pickups moved closer to the bridge - but to me the Miller is still the Opeth bass and I still think they look (and sound) incredible!

I always feel that you can't amplify what isn't there in the first place. Resonance and decay time of a note can't really be added with a different set of pickups or a different preamp. The irony in this is we're all looking for basses with endless sustain, only to put much (if not most) of our playing effort into muting I love my 2023 Sandberg Lionel. It's surprisingly heavy for its diminutive size (I have one with an ash body) but it feels great to play and sounds fantastic.

Oh, maybe the basses do. It's not mentioned in the specs of my guitar

I can see where you're coming from. I've never tried an Ultra or Elite so I really can't comment on those. I really haven't been keeping up with Fender's USA basses range, because as a lefty, I've simply never encountered one out in the wild to try! However, I do have some experience with their USA guitars, having owned a '00 American Standard Tele (from just before the introduction of the American Series) and currently own a '20 Mod Shop Jaguar and a '23 American Professional II Jazzmaster and I must admit: while they're silly expensive new compared to the prices of 25 years ago, they're a huge step up in terms of fit, finish and QC. My Jazzmaster does have a very obvious flaw that should'nt have slipped through (it has a flipped righty nut, so the top is angled in the wrong direction!) but the necks on the newer guitars feel amazingly smooth and everything else is just impeccable. I won't compare the Jaguar as it is a bit of an oddball, and I suspect the neck for the lefty Jaguars involves more manual labour, because the Mod Shop and the Custom Shop are the only routes to get a lefty 24" scale neck from Fender USA (there hasn't been a factory lefty USA Jaguar since 1975). Based on my experience with the Am Pro II Jazzmaster I don't really see the added value of the Ultra II over the Am Pro II aside from maybe the graphite rods in the neck and maybe the different electronics.

This I played a Teambuilt Streamer CV last weekend that had the same controls, and they were interesting. The treble control has a very noticable effect, but I thought the bass control was very subtle (at least through the amp I tried it with, which wasn't the best). Is that a Seymour Duncan Quarter Pound in there? I bet it's punchy as hell, and fairly bright!

No problem! I've owned a few MIJ and CIJ Fenders and Squiers myself (still have 3) and love geeking over such things. I've never been a huge fan of the Aerodyne looks (I don't really like the bound edges of the top, and prefer the curves of the original model) but I think it looks great in red!

Ha! I can understand the confusion now. There have been TWO runs of serial numbers starting with a Q - the diffence being in the "Made in Japan" vs "Crafted in Japan" addition: these signify two different periods in the Fender Japan joint venture, with different manufacturers. In 1995 "Crafted in Japan" started appearing for the first time when Dyna Gakki started producing for Fender Japan besides Fujigen. An instrument with the Crafted in Japan tag and a serial beginning with Qxxxxxx will be made between 2002-2004 at the Dyna Gakki of Fujigen Gakki factory. Probably Dyna. That's still earlier than what you mention as the first year in which the Aerodyne officially came to the UK, however it's not unusual for Japanese domestic market only-products to end up outside of Japan through various traders, or straight from Japanese resellers (which Fender now prohibits). The Aerodyne certainly is different enough to attract the attention of enthousiasts, and it looked especially good in that Candy Apple Red finish of yours! The version without the pickguard was the export model, there's also a version with a pickguard that was strictly JDM only - but of course some of these too will have ended up outside of Japan through guys like Bass Japan Direct.

I was referring to this thread 'twas indeed sarcasm.

I think in Fender's case the MIJ adventure started out of necessity after the buyout from CBS. As I understand it, Dan Smith (who worked at Yamaha before he came to Fender) was tasked with getting the quality to a higher standard, and he decided the US factory had become so sloppy that they had to fully go over their processes and retrain their factory workers. During this period no US Fenders were built. The first JV Series came about because Fender management needed a facility to craft Fenders so they could keep their sales going. The original Fender Japan was a joint venture between FMIC and a consortium of Japanese manufacturers. Starting from 2015, Fender disbanded the joint venture and took production into their own hands. Better be careful spewing such reckless misinformation, a certain blasphemous @NancyJohnson of this parish got banned from a Facebook group for that

Very true on the lack of innovation! As for the Van Halen link: I recently read this article on why Eddie van Halen presumably left Peavey. It states that apparently his deal with Peavey was that he could keep the 5150 trademark (but that he wouldn't release a new amp design with Fender) and that Fender could build his Wolfgang guitars. When Eddie "broke his part of the deal" by having Fender release new 5150 amps, that's when Peavey brought the amps back under the 6505 name, and they also re-released the Wolfgang guitars as the HP2. Up until then they only had a HP (Hartley Peavey) Signature with the HP shape but Wolfgang specs:

Can you share the serial number? First letter and the number of digits should do. If you want to be sure you could always remove the neck and check for stamps or writing. The production date (or at least year/month) should be right there

Well at least move that shim to the side so we can see the full markings

...oops, I did it again 2020 Fender Mod Shop Jaguar! Struck by offset fever I guess. And I love it! It's very different from the Jazzmaster, with more Stratlike tones - and of course a shorter 24" scale which makes it a breeze to play. The Allparts Buzzstop on the trem will be coming off, and there are some other things about it that don't appear to be as it left the factory (the pickups appear to be 60s reissues instead of V-Mods, and it appears the neck pickup is hotter than the bridge pickup which should be the other way round) so I need to open it up and have a closer look. But for now I'm just going to enjoy the hell out of it!

I have always thought of the Peavey T-40 as very nerdy / geeky but undeniably cool. It's also big, burly and heavy though so I guess it does take a big manly man to handle one. And of course any bass with MIDI or any other form of synth access.

Wow, it never occurred to me before that with monorail bridges each needs their own ground wire. This is the first time I've seen this. Very cool!

That's brilliant! I love it Most headless basses have two bottom strap buttons, but having rubber feet sounds really useful and clever.

You just need a little Shaggy.

Happy belated NBD I guess! Ebonol is great. Very solid and durable, and it requires very little maintenance. The phenolic resin fingerboards on my Status basses are basically the same material, and they're around €4000 for a new one - so I definitely wouldn't discount it as an "inferior" material to wood. I think it's great for use on a fretless.

I think I may still have a physical copy of that catalog. The cover and the first few pages feature some absolutely WILD custom guitars - like the one top left on this page, which is a 7-string copy of an Ibanez 540PII.

Sorry, not sorry:

On my 5 it was on the neck plate as well. That was a 2003 though, so not exactly recent.

To be fair, they've been offering the Czech-made Bantam model for several years now as a shortscale 4-string and mediumscale 5-string. It's a simpler bolt-on design and by no means a cheap instrument at about €2000-2500, but not nearly US custom shop territory.

Added

Mine have been my shortscales for the last two years, which was a huge surprise for me. I traded one of my Ibanez MC924's for an Atelier Z Baby Z-4J because I had wanted to try one for a long time, but I really didn’t expect I would like it as much as I do. Then one year ago I added a Sandberg Lionel that I put LaBella flats on (which was even more surprising, because I had never liked using flats before, but the Lionel just begged for them) and it's just a ton of fun to play. I really enjoy them a lot! I have no place for them in my band (I play doom metal tuned down to low A) which really just adds to the surprise