1990 Fender HM Bass V 5-String Electric Bass Guitar

While it seems an awful lot of the Fender HM basses (for "Heavy Metal") were made in Japan, this one is USA-made and has an '80-style flecked red finish with 5-in-line tuners. It's a 5-string and was originally fretted but was modified to fretless in some distant past. Ancel went through this and cleaned-up the fingerboard and set it up on-the-dot and I corrected some misguided soldering work and replaced the wiring harness for the most part.

This has yielded a bass that's less "heavy metal" and more jazz-fusion. It's got the growl, it's got the grrr, it's got the mwah, and it's got ridiculously-fast handling and a lot of tonal options. The neck is a "low oval" shape and very quick under the fingers.

Repairs included: a fingerboard plane/buff-up, wiring repairs (new tone and volume pots, new jack), cleaning, new nut with better spacing, and setup.

Weight: 9 lbs 2 oz

Scale length: 34"

Nut width: 1 7/8"

Neck shape: slim oval

Board radius: 12"

Body width: 12 3/4"

Body depth: 1 3/4"

Body wood: alder

Bridge: black 5-saddle

Fretboard: rosewood

Neck wood: maple

Pickups: 3x single coil Jazz Bass-style

Action height at 12th fret: 3/32" bass to 1/16" treble (fast, spot-on)
String gauges: unsure, flatwound

Truss rod: adjustable

Neck relief: straight

Fret style: none

Condition notes: it's been modified to a fretless fingerboard and the job was well-done. Ancel did nice work dressing it up, too, to make it play even that little bit better. The wiring harness aside from the selector switch is replacement stuff that I put in as the original pots and jack were mucked-about too much to salvage. It currently has a simple selector > master volume/tone arrangement. Aside from these mods, it appears original and is in decent shape but does show light scuffing/scratching through the finish here and there. The inserts that would have been on the top of the knobs are missing.

It comes with: an original hard case.