Cheers everyone,
super stoked about opening this thread here as this is my first bass guitar!
Well, not my first one per se since I inherited a 60s Höfner Violin bass from my grandfather, but that one is far from being playable right now and will get asap to my luthier to get restored to former glory...
Anyway, the reason I got a bass in the first place is for recording purposes and to get away from the guitar for a bit just to have a different instrument that requires a different approach and helps me to ease the "stuck in a rut" syndrome everyone suffers from now and then. I've been browsing my local auction site for a while now and was on the look out for a proper bass until a few days ago this baby popped up. I'm a sucker for japanese instruments and the fact that the owner mentioned he'd accept trades instead of money as well came in handy. I had a LTD EC-401 Eclipse lying around I aquired in another recent trade and whilst the guitar wasn't really bad I just didn't connect with it like I did with my other axes, plus I already have everything covered guitarwise (Les Paul Studio, Custom Strat and Jackson Rhoads). So I traded the LTD for it.
Now I'm a total newbie when it comes to basses but having dealt with dozens of guitars bad and good I knew the most important things to look out for such as a straight neck, adjustability and feeling.
I gave her a quick setup to totally straighten the neck and lower the action, didn't bother so far with intonation and oiling the fretboard as I wanna get a new set of strings in the near future for her and will do that then, but for now I'm very satisfied with the way she plays. I'm still a bit clumsy with my fingers, gonna check out tutorials to learn the proper technique and maybe hit up a few bass instructors to make sure I get some good results. Now I'm not gonna convert to being a bassist, but it's always handy to be able to play both instruments, so far it's been fun toying around with this big ass 4 stringer and let me tell you if anything good came from it's that I'll never mock any (good) bass player again. It's not that easy as it seems haha. But then again that's exactly what I wanted: a little change when I get fed up with guitar
Anyway, if me move on to the specs we have an Alder body, Maple neck and Ebony fretboard. All the bridge saddles are individually adjustable and we have 3 tone controls and a 3 way mini toggle. As far as I understand it you have a master volume, a pickup blend (locks in in the middle position) and a tone control that gets activated with the toggle switch. All the way down the bass is passive, the middle position adds the active EQ and the up position is the EQ with a midboost engaged. Lots of tone shaping options.
According to the serial number this is either a 87 or a 97 build, Fuji-gen Factory.
The only downside so far is that this is one heavy fokker. Way heavier than my LP Studio (ok she's rather light anyway) and I think that's because of the fat slab of Alder used for the body. Considering the fact that I'm not playing bass live and just use it at home sitting down to record it's something I can live with.
Excuse the cr@ppy phone pics, my camera is broken.
Cheers!
