NBD-New & FREE!!! Yamaha RBX170

A friend of mine who is learning to play guitar has come to see my band several times.
At our last gig he mentioned that he had bought a bass a while back but never used it other than to try it out a couple of times at home. He decided that he wanted to give it to me, figuring it will get used, as opposed to sitting in a corner.

He brought it over today. It's a black, Yamaha RBX170. Entry level, passive bass with P/J configuration p'ups. 34" bolt on maple neck with rosewood fingerboard. Other than the fingerprints all over it, it looks (and basically is) brand new. It even came with the original cord, 2 allen keys, warranty info and Owner's Manual still in their original packaging.

Sure, it's an entry level instrument but that doesn't matter to me at all (anyone that knows me knows that I LOVE well made and good playing inexpensive equipment). It's VERY light, the neck is quite thin at the nut and has a nice "C" shaped, VERY smooth, unfinished neck.

The frets are well finished, with no sharp edges. It has a string tree that runs across all 4 strings and held in with 2 screws with lots of thread showing. We'll see how long that lasts.
Yamaha closed tuners. They look good and seem to work well, although their placement on the back of the headstock makes it look cluttered.

There is some nice small attention to detail in that the truss rod opening (located at the bottom of the fretboard) has a plastic insert. Yet, on the back of the bass, the control cover does not fit flush into the body. Rather it sits on top of the body. Strange.

I have only played it for about 5 minutes. It sounds well enough. There's a front p'up volume pot, rear p'up volume pot and a tone (blend?) pot. I need to play around with it a bit to see what sounds I can get out of it. I did hear some hum when turning up the volume. I have yet to remove the control cover to see if there is any shielding or if there is a grounding issue.

The strings are stock, but new, and bright sounding. I'll keep them on for now, but need to do a setup.

I don't own a passive bass, so this is a nice addition to my collection. I'm quite happy right now.

 

For the few minutes I've played it so far, it feels great in my hands and it's so light! The finish on the neck is fantastic, too. So smooth, like silk.

It's funny because I just order a P bass kit to put together because I've been wanting to build something with a P configured p'up, although it was a toss-up between the P and J for me.
Now, with this, I get the P and J. Yippe!

 

So, just did a setup on the bass.

The truss rod needed a slight bit of adjustment (loosening).
The P p'ups needed to be lowered 1/32nd of an inch. The J p'up was at a good height.

I down-tune a whole step on each string when playing with my band. The D string did not like that,
as in I had to raise the action on it quite a bit higher than I like (I like it between 3/32nds and 4/32nds). I had to set it above 4/32nds to get it to stop buzzing. So, I decided, for the time being anyway, to tune the bass to standard tuning.

I then set the string height at the bridge. I still couldn't get the D string down exactly where I like (as mentioned above), but it stopped buzzing at a 4/32nds height,
so there it shall sit for now. I then adjusted the rest of the string heights at the bridge with no issues, other than having to adjust them to match with the
4/32nd height of the D string so that they work together well/at my tastes.

Then checked the nut height. The G string sits a bit high in the nut (um, no pun intended, ahaha) but as I don't have nut files, and I have to leave the house right now
I will work on lowering it later on.

There's a chance the D string was buzzing because I checked p'up height AFTER setting the string height, so when I have more time I'll check that again.

The bass sounds good! Punchy! Although I notice that the pots for P volume and J volume to little for the first 3/4 of a turn and then, BAM, they're hot
at 3/4 turn with a little more room of adjustment for that last 1/4 turn.

The tone(blend) knob seems to act the same way.

 

Euxaristo poly gia thn euxi! Ευχαριστώ πολύ για την ευχή! (Thank you, very much, for the well wishes!) How very nice of you to translate that!

See above for some more info. More to come as soon as I have a little more time. So far, though, so good.