Fender Standard Jazz Bass Mexican 4-string Reviews 
4 / 5 based on 1 reviewsPearson/McFadyen Music, bought new on sale for $320. I believe the list price is around $450.
This bass has a nice feel to both the neck and the body, the neck is nice and slim to allow fast playing and the body is curved comfortably for sitting or standing. The sound quality remains quite good even at the highest frets, and the body cutaways are designed to make it comfortable to play up there as well. The general layout is very comfortable, expecially for fingerstyle playing, and the simple 3 knob controls(volume, volume, tone) allow for more tonal versatility than is available on many passive instruments.
The pickups are by far the worst feature of this bass, and though it's an easily remedied problem, most players shopping in this price range may not want to deal with the hassle or replacing the electronic components. The bridge could also stand to be replaced, it doesn't feel very solid to me. The tuning is accurate, but the ridiculously large size of the tuning pegs make it very easy to bump this bass out of tune accidentally.
Overall the setup was good, better than I'd expected from a Mexican Fender. The hardware and electronics could stand some upgrades, but this would raise the price to a level that would be inaccessable to many beginning players.
A good bass, but the price is overly inflated simply because of the Fender name. If you're not thinking of upgrading any of the parts, an Ibanez would give you a better value, but if you have the money and skill, an upgrade in the pickups and bridge make this a fine instrument. At any rate, play one before you buy it, the Jazz bass feels very nice, which can overshadow the poor pickups.
Jesse Skene rated this unit
on
2004-02-02.
