So, I've had the desire to try one for a while. Just received it yesterday, and I have some thoughts about the state it left the factory. I am not expecting perfection, and I know full well that wood is, well, wood, and there will be some inherent variation in grain, density, etc. But still - picky buyer alert.
For a start, I checked how it played, found some buzz, then set neck relief to .013" and let it sit for a few hours. Tuned to pitch and checked string height, some weird buzzing here and there. The strings weren't in the right notches on the bridge for 19mm string spacing, but looking at pictures this seems pretty common, and easy to fix. So, that was addressed.
The things that are harder to fix: A high fret around the 10th fret on the A string. Going up from .010 to .013" neck relief seems to have addressed that, but the rattle was clear and only clear at that fret (fretting 9th, 10th rattled) on that string. a very faint rock from a fret rocker there. Ok fine, .010 is technically below spec anyway, and .013 vs .012 doesn't mean that much to me - tolerable if a bit annoying at this price point.
A divot in the fretboard, parallel to the frets (so, not the grain), under the D and G strings between the 13th and 14th fret. Tool mark, maybe:
View attachment 7534760
Yes, there looks like some scoring on the fret below (towards the bridge) of the divot around the D string; easier to see in the image, not so much in they playing position. The divot it pretty easy to see. Again, this is a new bass and I don't slap or bend. These are frets I would use, however. There are a handful of shorter, shallower marks along the treble side of the fretboard that aren't as visible in the playing position as this mark is.
I could live with all that (though I bought brand new so it is annoying), but what really irks me is the A string has a nut slot cut so low there is
zero clearance between the string and first fret (when fretting the third). Less than 0.005" between that and the first fret (string open) so of course it rattles like hell on the open A. Playing the open A even moderately hard rattles badly (plainly audible acoustically and through an amp). This is easy to measure and it should have been clear they cut it too deep before it left the factory. I would much rather have nut sluts too shallow than too deep.
This is a brand new instrument that requires a new nut or material added to the nut and a bit of fret work to play decently well at factory action (and it isn't like a quarter mm or so raised action will help the slot being too deep; for the record I tried setting the string height over 3mm for the A string). I haven't even looked at the body finish (at a glance it looks fine to me), but this does not seem acceptable for a premium instrument running just south of $2k, setting country aside. Yes, I can level and dress the frets, add material to the nut slot and ignore the divot; but this isn't a $500 bass. There should be no "Friday" basses at this price point. Also, why even bother to try to cut the slots for an ultra low action if the fret leveling isn't good enough to use it that way?
I'm not worried about returning it or working something out from the place I bought it from, but I am annoyed that Fender sold this to a dealer in this state. This isn't a ~$680 standard or $850 player ii, and yes I expect more at ~$1900 or so. I've seen worse, but this is still disappointing.
