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Best Factory Setup??

My 08 Fender Jazz is the only one I have had that was spot on.

Another thing I hate about stores and bad setups is the use of poor quality strings. I can tell when something has junk strings but i think other people may have a harder time at this. That makes a big difference in my opinion.
 
My Schecter C4 came setup perfect right out of the case. I was amazed how good it felt and how well it played. I even called there to tell them how happy I was with the purchase.

+1

I own a couple of Schecters, and the set-up right out of the box is amazing. I think they import their guitars from overseas and then go over them with a fine-tooth comb before they are sold here in the States.

It seems the only guitars and basses I own that were ready to roll right out of the box were custom builds and Asian-made. The USA guitars and basses I purchase sight-unseen almost always need tweaked.
 
A little OT, but I wonder if places like Guitar Center would sell more guitars if they made an effort to set them all up properly before they hung them on the shelves. I've often wondered whether they'd done a cost vs. benefit analysis on this and discovered it wasn't worth it.

I don't understand.

The Murrietta GC (California) has an on-floor luthier who sets them all up before they hang.

Old, new or just been there a while, he works on them all day long.

Every time I buy a bass there, he takes a good look at it to see if it's wandered out of his adjustment and then hands it back saying it's right where he left it.

Out of the box, my Ibanez SR500 was spot on - but I didn't like any of the other SRs since they didn't feel right to me.

So I guess it's OK to say that one man's treasure is another man's junk -- or is that backwards?

And frankly, I'm really impressed by what Fender's doing currently. The basses they build now are lightyears ahead of what they built long ago. The consistency in build and finish amaze me.

In the 'olden days' if you got a great Fender, it was rare. They had very little QC it appeared, especially after the CBS bean counters got involved and whored the company to death.

It may now be the computerized machine work, but they are really getting it together. I suppose that it could be a sour economy that's forcing their hands, but I'm all for it.

The current Squiers are as good or better than anything they built in the revered 1970s and earlier, pre RW days - especially the six-stringers.

Don't get me wrong here - there's nothing like a really good 1964-7 Pre CBS P-bass or whatever, but I still say that on an assembly line day-to-day comparison, these are the best days of Fender's life yet.
 
The last new Bass I bought, an Ibanez ATK300 a couple of years ago was perfect for me right out of the box. Literally out of the box; I had them get one from the storeroom for me in the colour I wanted so I could try it.

My big obsession with setups is nut height 'coz i play a lot in F and Bb and the ATK was spot on.
 
Gotta put in a plug for G&L. I've bought a handful of basses from them new and all have arrived at my door well set up. At worst, some had lower action than I normally prefer, but no buzz. Of course, setup is subject to environmental factors like temp and humidity, so who's to say if these came to me with a factory setup or if the dealer made a tweak in between.

In addition to being well setup, at least two of these basses came out of the box perfectly in tune.