NBD 1 January 2020

70's Kent jazz bass. Saw it on reverb and the seller lives about an hour from me. Girlfriend and I were talking about just taking a drive so we headed that way.

Walked away with it for $175 (and gas/mileage).

Seller has it strung with rotos which were clipped too short (hence his sticking those nails in the strings over the nut, I used to use a capo if I clipped too short so hey, no judgement).

After putting Chrome's on my Guild and TI's on my Kent shorty P, these strings are absolutely eating me alive haha! They're also extremely high tension. Because of that, I am not able to get the neck relief and action where I'd really like it.

But I tore it down, cleaned it up, had a few high frets to take down and a lot of DNA on the neck to be taken off. Ended up doing a full level/crown/polish into the wee hours of the morning.

Pickguard is warped and has a big ol bubble right in prime slap and pop territory. On most J's that wouldn't bother me because the top-of-fret to top-of-body distance is much greater than on the F-style Kent's I've touched.

Of course I'd JUST scored the new tort blank I got for the P bass......

The pickups in this thing are like a cannonball to the gut. Articulate when you want, not overly brittle, certainly not HiFi, but also immensely punchy with what I feel is a more extended low end vs the plethora of other jazz basses I've played.

It's not light. But not a killer. Acoustically it has a lot of projection, feels solid, stays in tune (unless those nails move haha).

Found myself another cheapie to keepie!

 

Not sure why the image posted three times but I'm on a phone so I'm just gonna not touch the edit button...

 

Family Snapshot