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Fender Jazz Bass Special - Circa 1984-87

#21
Same bass as the OP and few other posts black on black with natural back of neck..

That bass was my FIRST ebay purchase WAY WAY WAY back when Ebay was still brand new and you could actually find good deals, I think I paid like $295 for it and it was a GREAT bass,

Very very resonate bass with a great tone, needless to say It started my long road of buying,selling and trading basses just to try others on the internet, I ended up selling it back on ebay to make just a few bucks to get something a little more "traditional" looking.

perhaps one of basses posted above could of been mine in a previous life?. lol sold out of florida on ebay like 13 years ago on ebay..
 
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#22
Bullitt5135 said:
Here are a couple more pics, including a close up of the original bridge. I believe the nut is black plastic @1.55" as stated by a previous post. Strings are Rotosound Swing Bass 66.

I'm really psyched to hear all the positive comments. It makes me happy that I've held onto it all these years. There's way too much sentimental value attached to ever part with it. I've always thought it had a really nice, versatile tone. Of course, it's the only one I've owned, so I've never been able to compare it side by side with anything.

Great to see everyone else's in the other colors as well as fretless!

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That looks just like my black JBS I bought new in 85. I later swapped the pickups for Seymour Duncan SPB-1 and STK-J2. Also a Gotoh 201 bridge. I'm glad I kept it.
 
#24
Awesome pics. Looks to be in great shape.

I bought mine new in '87 and played it exclusively for over ten years. It is beat down pretty bad, but I still have it. I've started to get some work done on it a couple of times (needs a frets job really bad) but didn't do it. Body is beat up too. At the time, it seemed okay to play it with pliers and a drum stick. Got some cool noises out of it, but dern.

Finish is crazed from being in the van all the time when touring as well.
 
#31
Bought my first JBS new in 1986 gigged for several years
added chrome badass II & a Chrome Hipshot D- tuner.
Sold to a buddy for $350. :rollno:
Over the years I've acquired these babies & they're wonderful basses. The Power JBS is really something special, wide variety
of useable tone.
 

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#32
I have an 87 black fretless on rosewood. Have to say its a great bass, BUT, the body is not a hardwood. I suspect that it is a composite of some sort so it dings very easily.
The advantage of a lighter bass is that you can play this thing for a five hour gig and not come away with a shoulder ache.

There is also that ole chestnut about the body's wood/neck giving a bass its sound and this lighter wood may in fact be responsible for the 'thinner' sound IMHO, than other straight P's or J's.

The P pup totally overpowers the J so the blend mode is pretty stilted in the J's favor and perhaps that accounts for the mix. I run it generally with the P or J exclusively on stage.

Have considered swapping out the rosewood for a maple neck (Fretted) with large blocks because I like the look.

To the OP: 20 years later?; What brought you back?
 
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#34
A. The body is basswood, which is a large part of the nasal honk they have
B. The Jazz Bass Special (see the pictures) was a P bass styled body with a P/J pickup arrangement, a three-way toggle switch for the PUPs, and a V/V/T control system. The tone controls was the Fender TBX, which was a dual-ganged pot that worked like a regular treble bleed control from 0 to about 5, then had a cap arranged that was to give more high end detail from 5-10. The neck was maple with a rosewood board (unlined fretless was an option right from the start) and a black finish on the headstock along with black hardware. The earliest ones also had a black finish on the back of the headstock and neck, and those had thicker and somewhat wider Precision style necks. The later ones had a clear finish on the back of the neck, and those had narrower, more Jazz Bass styled necks.

As for comparing sounds to a Geddy Lee, there's very little similarity. The Geddy Lee has more authentic vintage sounding PUPs, and the body (and the BA-II bridge to some small extent) gives it a more balanced sound. Every JBS I've had contact with (I was a Fender dealer from 1977-1988 and we had at least five of them come through the store, plus others over the year; and my fretless started life as a JBS in 1988) is very nasal with a lot of midrange honk. I'm a big fan of mids, and those basses all sound too nasal to me.

On my own fretless I put new PUPs in it within a month of getting it, along with a new bridge. The Duncan 1/4 Pounders and the Schaller bridge didn't make it much less annoying but helped a bit. Then I gutted the electronics and tried several things before settling on the Duncan Steve Bailey active EQ. In the meantime I also tried a lot of different strings. I replaced the rosewood board with a thick chunk of ebony and that started finally making improvements in the sound. But the final solution was to replace the body with a custom made one from Koa. Heavy but it sounds really good now. My last experience trying to mod an instrument that didn't sound great to me unplugged. If the essential characteristics of the unamplified instrument aren't what I want in an instrument, I don't bother trying to change it now. There're too many good sounding instruments to waste time and money on trying to make fundamental changes.

I don't even know what a Precision Special is anymore- The first one was the P bass with the the two-band active EQ (CBS's "answer" to Leo's StingRay), then there was one I think that had Lace Sensors in a P/J arrangement, the fine-tuning bridge, and a proper P-bass styled neck. I almost bought one of those, and kinda regret that I didn't- I quite liked that bass. After 1995, I don't know what FMIC's done so I can't comment on the differences between anything current and the old Jazz Bass Special.

John
 
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#39
JTE said:
My last experience trying to mod an instrument that didn't sound great to me unplugged. If the essential characteristics of the unamplified instrument aren't what I want in an instrument, I don't bother trying to change it now.

John
Click to expand...

Boy, that's the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
 
#40
Link Removed

Here's my JBS, which was originally a metallic silver/grey color, but has darkened over the years to a sort of bronze.

About 15 years ago, I was playing with a friend who had one of the pinkish ones that someone had left in his basement, and I used to grab it to jam with. When I first saw it, I thought it was about the dorkiest looking instrument ever, but after playing it for a while, I came to really like it. So last year, I saw this one in a store, and picked it up to play a little bit out of nostalgia. The next day I went back and bought it.

I found the stock pickups a bit weak, but it now has Bartolini Classic Bass pickups in it, and it kicks all sorts of ass.
 

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