Hive mind, should I send this back?
I bought this on Friday, pumped because they rarely come available. For two decades I've wanted the seafoam green version for mostly nostalgic reasons. Anyway, I paid $1300 all-in, but my gut tells me to send this one back and keep waiting (maybe another 20 years!). What would you do?
Problems:
1. Needs a fret level. There are multiple high frets, buzzing all over the place. Currently unplayable.
2. Needs a general setup
3. P-pickup needs new foam; currently it's flat against the body, maybe 2mm off the pickguard all the way across, 5mm from the strings. From the factory the strings are *really* close to the pickup so obv something was changed there.
4. Frets are rusty
5. Water damage under the lacquer on the fretboard (or at least, looks that way)
6. Woofer cover is yellowed, looks bad compared to the pickguard
I'm perfectly comfortable doing fret levels and setups and whatever else, but ultimately I'm concerned the instrument won't play like it was meant to play. He offered me a $200 refund which would put me at $1100 all-in (with OHSC). Would you keep it, knowing you can fix most (but not all) of the issues, or just wait and spend more on one in better condition?
I think what happened is there was water somewhere at some point, and that water got under those frets and mildew (or whatever) spread from under the fret into the wood (under the lacquer). This is logical to me because you can kind of see a "comb" pattern in the discoloration, which matches the fret barbs that go into the wood. Based on the rust on the frets and on the case and such, it just points to some incident with water. But obviously that's just conjecture.
Buzzing is pretty bad on frets 1-7, especially the E/G and double especially the G. Most of the frets from 8-13 are bad, 14 is awful, and 15 and up is all fine. My fret rocker confirms that 7, 10, 15 and 16 are high, which is consistent with the water theory from earlier -- could be that they weren't seated all the way all along and water/moisture got under there a bit easier.
From what I can tell this bass was never really played... the fret crowns are in great shape other than the rust, and they're probably original considering from the factory they use jumbo frets from 1-16 and medium frets from 17-21 , which is what's there. It really just seems like somebody bought this and put it somewhere damp for 20 years and didn't realize anything was going wrong with it. Also the nut doesn't seem correct to me... I suspect maybe it was replaced at some stage because it's not radiused correctly and the nut slots are in slightly the wrong spot, but maybe it came like that, I have no idea.
Additionally but not terrible is that I have a suspicion that the foam under the p-pickup is either missing, damaged, or ruined. Normally a p-pickup from the factory is setup in a "^" shape, meaning the poles under the A and D are higher than the E and G. The pickup on this instrument is completely flat, which makes no sense. I suspect an issue with the foam because there's no give in the pickup -- normally there's a bit of springy action.
