Non-USA-made J-basses to recommend?

Why non-US? Anyway, MIMs are good, Squire/Indonesian VMs are good, Geddy Lee MIJs are good. I'm myself not a big fan of active electronics, nice but in gigs not fun if something gets bad (seen enough active electronics basses collapse due to bad batteries and so on..)

 

Usually with new ones you get info from the Fender web site, or if lucky the online store web site mentions it. Or then you need to look at the headstock, if the serial number starts with an M, it's a MIM.

 

Most MIAs have the "American" moniker, like "Standard" means MIM whereas "American Standard" means MIA.

MIMs and MIJs can be great, but the one really good thing about MIAs is that you can sell them easily, and for a good price (as long as you buy used, which you should IMO). If you could cough up the dough for a used AmStd, you can just sell it later for (at least) the same amount if you need to.

The other route, if it were me, would be a Squier CV or VM. Great value for money.

 

I did a lot of playing, listening, weighing, etc. when I bought my jazz bass. For me, the best feeling neck, the best sounding bass, and the lightest weight bass (8.2 pounds) was a Geddy Lee jazz bass. It was also used so that made it even better. I tried Squier, MIM, American Special and American Standard. The Geddy was/is by far the nicest playing jazz for me.