Well, I keep doing this. My latest alteration is a fender, gold foil, jazz in two color sunburst. I’ve been interested in this bass since they came out and have played a few of them, but they all just sound pretty bad in my opinion. Also every single one I picked up in the various guitar centers here in Denver, have had action that’s about 3/8 of an inch off the neck with the truss rods completely disengaged lots of bowing forward - tons of relief. I know it’s guitar Center, and they don’t do anything to the instrument unless you ask them to after you buy it. Another thing that kind of puzzled me about these instruments, is the Ebony fingerboard. Every single gold foil jazz I’ve picked up has the same weirdly sort of dried out rough feeling Ebony board. Almost like they didn’t quite put the last level of finish on it - no super fine grit sandpaper or 0000 steel wool finishing... Anyhow, I was on eBay about three weeks ago and saw a new gold foil jazz for $475. I pretty much bought it on the spot. When it arrived - like all other gold foils I had played, it had that front bow in the neck. I engaged the truss rod and it fixed it a little, but you simplycould not get the neck flat on this bass…This is why it was so cheap! they were selling it at a discount. I should’ve read the fine print! No matter, I got online and learned a bit about the heat method for resetting a bowed neck. I figured I had nothing to lose, and I really liked the ebony neck. I bought a couple of heating pads, a C clamp and a 2 foot long aluminum level, got the neck up to about 150° clamped it to the aluminum level,so it had a little extra back bow. Let it heat for about eight hours, took the heat off and let it cool without removing the clamp so the glue under the fingerboard would reset. It actually worked, but not completely, there was still a tiny bit of relief when the trust rod was fully engaged, so I went through the process two more times, and now the neck is flat as a pancake with the truss rod about 3/4 engaged. One special note, the fender strings that came on It were pretty high tension, so I replaced them with Dunlop super brights 45-100 which are a very low tension round round set of strings. I think that helped in getting the neck super flat. Able to get the action super super low. Also, I took some steel wool to the Ebony and gave it a good polishing… Now, very smooth and lovely as an Ebony fingerboard should be. Lastly, I just did not dig the gold foil pick up, plus it had the volume level issues i’ve read about with the E string essentially not being as loud as the rest of the strings. Took it out and installed a Lollar split P. I wanted to try to find a sweet spot for the pick up location.. I didn’t particularly want this to just sound like a precision bass…tried a whole bunch of different locations so I had to do some routing. I tried probably 15 locations and angles..What you see here is the best sounding location, and angle - to my ears anyway 
It’s a little closer to the bridge than a normal precision and it’s in reverse position so the coil under the E and A strings is closest to the bridge. Also, I moved each portion of the pickup in a tad so the strings travel directly over the poles, giving it just a little more top end bite. And of course, I had to make a custom pick guard. That was a pain in the ass I must say. However, I’m happy enough with it. This is now a super aggressive, bright, beautiful, sounding bass. Really excited about it and can’t wait to do some gigging/recording.
It’s a little closer to the bridge than a normal precision and it’s in reverse position so the coil under the E and A strings is closest to the bridge. Also, I moved each portion of the pickup in a tad so the strings travel directly over the poles, giving it just a little more top end bite. And of course, I had to make a custom pick guard. That was a pain in the ass I must say. However, I’m happy enough with it. This is now a super aggressive, bright, beautiful, sounding bass. Really excited about it and can’t wait to do some gigging/recording.
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