Fender wide-necked Jazz bass?

[spongebob]

That's the one. I bought one a few years back for that same reason. I do remember it being a bit chunkier than yer average J.

Wish I'd have kept it. Block and binding....mmmmmmm!

[solo4652]

Thanks. I would have preferred a white one, but it was Hobson's choice.

[solo4652]

The Vintage AV4 arrived today and I've been fussing with it all afternoon. Here are my initial thoughts:

Body finish is good. The body is as large as my Fender P and, with the chunky neck, the impression is of a physically large bass that has an older 50's vibe about it. Rosewood fingerboard was very dry and needed some oil. Maple neck is at least as wide and deep as my MIJ Fender P. Neck fit at pocket is very tight, with no gaps to speak of. The neck extends under the pickguard and two of the neck bolts were too long and pushing up the pickguard from underneath. Some washers under the bolt heads fixed that. Loose bridge screw needed the superglue + cocktail stick fix. The action was way too high, as supplied. Adjusting the relief was a real head-scratcher since the truss-rod nut is quite a way down the neck and needed an extra-long allen key which I had to buy from the car parts shop. Still, it worked and I was able to do a decent set up fairly easily with some Status halfwounds.

Plug in to GK MB500 + Barefaced Compact. Bearing in mind I've never played a J bass, the difference to my Fender P was immediate. I was able to get a nice full, plummy tone by mixing the pickups - probably a bit more neck than bridge sounded good to me. I really liked how I could get the action good for me - normally I have to set the saddles pretty high to avoid fret-bounce at the dusty end, but with this bass I was able to straighten the neck and set the saddles so that the action wasn't crazy-high. That's a bit of a first, actually. Little bit of noise from the pickups but nothing intrusive. Might do something to shield the cavity at some point. Before I knew it, I'd played through 15 songs without constantly fussing with the setup. Noticeably more mids and overall clarity than than my P bass, as expected.

So far, so good then. This particular bass needed a few screws tightening and a bit of oil here and there, but that's OK. After a good setup, it's playing nicely and I'm enjoying the tone options from the pickups. I really like the 44mm neck (same width as my G&L) and that's the main reason I bought it as my first Jazz bass. For the money, I'm very pleased indeed. I'll take it to band practice on Monday.

Steve

Edited June 4, 2014 by solo4652

[iiipopes]

One item overlooked: I used to own a '75 (yes, actual 1975, not a '75 model') J-bass. Sounded great. I wore it out: frets went buzzy and a pickup died. Back then I lived where there were no good luthiers, so I sold it. (Don't worry - I know where it is; it has now been repaired and I can borrow it any time I would like to play it) But I digress:

Look at how the strings pass over the pole pieces of the pickups of any standard J-bass. The strings are over the inside poles of the E & G strings, not between the pairs of polepieces as they should be. The prototype and development mules used the P-bass 1 3/4 inch neck with wider string spacing. When the nut width was narrowed to 1 1/2 inch as the standard, the neck pickup polepiece spacing was not adjusted accordingly.

Edited June 4, 2014 by iiipopes