2005 Fender Mexico Jazz Bass Electric Bass Guitar

This vintage-appointed Mexican Jazz Bass has a good feel and a classic, passive, J-bass sound. The neck is shaped like a '60s model (and the tuners are even the reverse-turning, vintage-style units) but the gloss finish feels more like '70s to the touch. This one's relatively clean but has a few nicks, dings, and scuffs here and there.

I did a quick level/dress of the frets and a setup, but the higher-tension strings on it (they feel like 105w-55w or similar, maybe) mean that the truss-rod maxes out its effectiveness and there's 1/32" relief overall when tuned-to-pitch. I backed the strings off to a lower tuning (starting on C#) to simulate something like 95w-40w and the neck straightened-out to about 1/64" deflection overall. It's playing with 3/32" action at the 12th fret across the board right now. Frets 15 and up will get a little zippy/fret-slappy if you're a heavy-hander, but otherwise it plays pretty well.

If I had my druthers I'd yank the frets out and fill the slots with white plastic and turn it into a fretless rocking something lighter in gauge. I use a real light 95w-39w set of flats on my own bass that sounds great. That conversion would probably make this bass what it truly wants to be. Said work could be done with a little extra money thrown at it.

Specs are: 34" scale, 1 1/2" nut width, 1 3/16" string spacing at the nut, 2 3/8" spacing at the bridge, medium-C neck shape with 12" radius to the board, 13 1/2" lower bout, 11 1/4" upper bout, and 1 3/4" depth to the body.

Materials are: solid alder(?) sunburst body, maple neck with rosewood fretboard, traditional heel-end truss rod access, and vintage-style hardware throughout.

I always liked how the threaded saddles allow for adjustments to string spacing.