Belated NBD

[shoulderpet]

Oddly enough I was looking at getting away from the usual P/J setup as per one of my fairly recent threads however my want for a decent quality short or medium scale bass significantly narrowed my options, there were short scales with humbuckers but I really wanted something that would feel like an upgrade from the 200-300 quid basses that I have many of without costing me too much.

 

So I brought a MIM Fender PJ Mustang bass, brought it with the intention of swapping out the J pickup for a split coil like a Model J but I was surprised to find that this is actually the best sounding P/J I have played and I think I will leave the pickups stock. 

 

The P pickup soloed is very nice sounding, fat but decently bright sounding and capable of sounding either fat and warm or bright and aggressive, I have heard this is the same P pickup Fender uses in their classic series 50's P bass. 

Both pickups on scoops the tone but also seems to up the treble also, a lot of P/J's become very quacky sounding with both pickups on but this sounds great lots of low end and plenty of treble with a nice dip in the mids, I suspect that with some tapewounds on this bass would sound absolutely thunderous. Pickups are definitely better than the MIM pickups I have encountered in the past

 

Setup was decent and action is nice and low and if my technique was better I could easily drop it to be stupidly low, the hardware all feels solid , I may upgrade the tuners to Hipshot eventually but this is only because I feel the E strings on short scales benefit from a higher ratio machine head

 

All in all pretty pleased with this

 

Oh and this is Sonic blue btw, in person it is more an off white with a slight green tinge which does not show in pictured

 

 

[mr4stringz]

I have one in the same colour, which also looks great with a tort guard (think I posted a pic in the short scale thread somewhere). Lots of fun to play. Agree on the quality of pickups in these vs previous MIMs I’ve experienced also. I bought mine expecting to want to swap out the P pickup at least (I generally play with the P pickup soloed) but have been really pleased with it.

Edited October 14, 2021 by mr4stringz

[gjones]

That's the weird thing with sonic blue. I bought a Fender Stratocaster a few years ago, which looked white in the shop, when I got it home I realised it was Sonic Blue.