Fender Gold Foil Bass….***

Pretty bass. But yeah, that’s a major flaw.

 

I don’t know about the ones Fender’s using but the vintage gold foils I have are some of the few pickups I’ve used that don’t sense strings well once they’re off the edge of the pickup. That said, it looks like the neck just needs to be shifted to the treble side a bit. Pretty common with bolt neck instruments. It probably just moved a little in shipping.

Loosen (don’t remove) the neck screws. Shift the neck and tighten the screws back down. It’s sometimes necessary to hold the neck and body in position while you tighten the screws which can seem like a three handed operation but it’s doable. Don’t crank down on the neck screws. They just need to be a bit past snug.

 

That pickguard routing looks a bit approximate? Or the pickup is loose on the bass side?

Fender seem to be slipping on basic QC at the moment.

 

It's a brand new bass, he shouldn't have to do anything.
He's paying Fender, Fender isn't paying him to do their job.
The simple truth is they need to get on the ball with QC.
Maybe start by hiring someone who can actually see past their own nose.

 

Can you position the E string one thread toward center on the saddle?

 

brutal!

 

Pickups are electromagnetic sensors. A string vibrating within the sphere of the pickup creates flux. That’s what the pickup detects. It’s not line of sight.

 

That must be deeply frustrating. You get all excited about a new bass and end up having to return it.

 

What Squish said:Maybe the string needs to be pushed in some.

 

My #1 came to me with a shifted neck like this. It happens. It's not Fender's fault if the thing was banged around in shipping.

I always take my new basses to a qualified tech for an initial lookover and setup, and this was corrected as a part of that process. Plays like a dream. So glad I didn't get bent out of shape and send it back.

The OP can do all that himself, of course, but I like starting out knowing that someone who does hundreds of setups a year got an eyeball on it, because that person will instantly know if something is out of whack and what to do about it.

 

Granted, but I've encountered pickups that reproduce a lot more information from the string when the string comfortably vibrates within the limits of the magnets.

One example was a Burns Marquee bass. The E and G strings were a lot less present than the A and D strings. I gutted one of the repro Trisonic pickups. The E and G strings were 52 mm apart but the bar magnet in the pickup was 48 mm long. I think the pickup was angled as well. The pickup sensed the outer strings, but it wasn't balanced output across the strings.

 

Honest question - has anyone NOT had problems with these? It seems like every post about them is reporting problems.

 

Possibly, but several things suggest it's a factory problem.

 

Any info on who makes the pickups for these? It looks similar to some pickups Roswell manufacture, using a pickup frame copied from Rickenbacker Higain pickups.

 

Were you setting up a hundred or more times per year? It sounds like you're suggesting that your experience is comparable to someone who does multiple setups per day. If you owned all of those basses at the same time and set each one up once per year, my hat's off to you. You also can clearly afford a professional opinion if that's the case It's a choice you make.

I get that it's an easy thing to do. I just like to start out with an actual pro handling this so that I know from a reliable and experienced source if I'm missing something. We don't all want to spend our time on the workbench.

I'm also the first to admit that I'm not much of a gearhead. Lots of people are. You can learn to do a good setup pretty easily by watching videos these days. If that's a fun thing for you, it's fine.

 

Thinking the same thing.