Here are mine, all Japanese aside from the Telecaster guitar (ignore that one lol, focus on the basses)
Your Pride & Joy
I know the four-string '62 reissues are everywhere, so I'll focus on the fiver here. This is going to be a
very long post
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This is a heavily-modified 2004 CIJ Fender Jazz Bass V. The original Fender Japan line (prior to 2015) was a lot more friendly to left-handers, with this bass being a great example - practically none of the other Fender lines (USA, Mexico, or others) offered their 5-strings to lefties. The new Fender Japan line doesn't make this model anymore so it's really rare now (which sometimes makes me
slightly regret having had it modified, but anyway, it's a keeper so I love it the way it is).
To begin with, this bass was made as a "standard 5-string model"; in its stock form, it had a mint pickguard, basic VVT controls, basic bent-plate bridge and simple 5-string pickups that strangely did not use the pickup size that Fender USA or Mexico were using - they were 91mm (neck) and 93mm (bridge) and I'd never seen any pickup company offer 5-string pickups in this size. Basically, aside from the odd pickup size, this bass is simply a 5-string version of their standard 4-string models.
Anyway, I attained this bass "third-hand" (I know I'm at least the third owner, the bass might've possibly been in the hands of more than that) in November 2019 after having searched around in vain for half a decade and finally finding it on a website dedicated to left-handed bassists. It was stock at the time (or at least no modifications that I could tell), and being that I was into vintage basses and already had two '62 reissues, I decided to have this bass made '61-style since I loved the stacked-knob models.
Never quite liked the look of white or mint pickguards on sunburst so I had my tech make a new tort one using the original as a template. I then found a Leo Quan BadAss V bridge for a really good price on eBay and snagged it up fast. Had a stacked-knob circuit retrofitted one of my '62 reissues at the time, so I had that transferred over to this 5-string and restored the '62 to its original VVT circuit. Retrofitted the tug bar and chrome pickup cover as well once the new pickguard was complated, and for the fun of it, I even had my tech insert a non-functional (basically fake) grounding strip between the bridge and bridge pickup as part of the early '60s design where the grounding strip was exposed (it's hard to make out in the pic, but it's basically right underneath the A string).
Anyway, the above was the easy part. Then I decided to take it a step further and have the pickups and tuners changed as well. And here is where the complicated-yet-fun part begins.
DiMarzio states that their 5-string pickups don't fit Fender 5-string basses. Thing is, they were referring to
American-made Fender fivers, which have really long pickups and would leave a bit of a gap if one were to attempt retrofitting DiMarzio pickups in them. DiMarzio's 5-string pickups measure 94mm in length (coincidentally the same size as 4-string bridge pickups); meaning that on
my 5-string Fender, I could have the pickup cavities expanded ever so slightly to fit them in (the neck cavity wouldn't be an issue since it was covered by the pickguard anyway). A little bit of careful work by my tech, and hey presto - I now have a Fender 5-string bass with DiMarzio pickups. The ones I'm using are Area J pickups, and they really capture the tone and feel of vintage Jazzes. Love them.
Next were the tuners. I had been fascinated by the reverse tuners on vintage basses, and knew I had to have them if I wanted to complete the look of the early '60s, so I got a left-handed set online. The original tuners were smaller than the reverse tuners, so I had my tech expand the pegholes and drill new holes to fit the new ones.
Now, the reverse tuners come as a set of four... and this was a 5-string. And even if I were to get a single one for the other side of the headstock, it wouldn't fit as there simply wasn't enough space left on the headstock as the reverse tuners have quite a wide baseplate. Managed to work around it by attaching a Gotoh tuner in a different style (and colour). It looks wonky, but cool at the same time, and I like it for two reasons.
Firstly, the aesthetic I was going for, as stated earlier, is the 1961 look. With the odd tuner on the other side of the vintage tuners, coupled with the fact that this Japanese bass' neck is already thinner than standard Fender 5-string necks (42mm nut width), I managed to make it look like a vintage 4-string bass that got converted to be a 5-string. The Gotoh tuner with its different design, size and colour helped with the "afterthought" vibe, making it look like an actual modification (of course, I would never modify an actual 1961 Jazz Bass like that, or any pre-CBS Fender, for that matter).
Secondly, one of my bass teachers has this old Aslin Dane 5-string bass with two tuners replaced. In his case, his original tuners were broken and he wasn't able to find exact replacements, so he simply told the tech he visited to put whatever could fit in ("If it'll tune, it'll tune," I remember him saying). Ended up with two random gold tuners that were different in both design and colour to the original ones, but he's happy with it. While his was done out of necessity, I made mine a tribute to him, reasoning that since it was going to be a diffrent design, I might as well go for a different colour as well and went gold like his.
So there you have it, my oddball JBV affectionately named "Astrid." At this point, she's been so heavily-modified that the only remaining original parts aside from the neck and body (obviously) are the nut and the neck plate. No longer a standard model, and not exactly a " '61 reissue" but more of a " '61 tribute." And even then, this
might not be her final form; I've considered every now and then having the body refinished in black since I like the black-and-tort colour combo - in fact, Fender Japan offered the lefty version of this bass in three colours (black, white and sunburst) and I actually wanted the black but couldn't find it, so I settled for this sunburst model since it was the only lefty I could find.
Got three Japanese Fenders now, all from the old line, and still intend to add a couple more to the collection because I really like these older models, but for now, this one is my favourite, my No. 1.
