PJ-5 HTR Deluxe Series : Great bass for the price

This bass has amazing build quality and value for the most part except for one major design flaw. The bass feels and plays great, build quality is solid, but the pickups don't match the string spacing of the bridge.

I bought this bass so I can make demos of my songs at home without having to ask other people play bass tracks for me. I'm not really a bass player even though I enjoy playing bass. This is the first bass I've owned (although over the years I've played quite a few) so I can' t really comment if this sounds better or worse than other affordable bass guitars.

Good thing about this bass is how it feels. The neck is nice and smooth and plays well. There are no pointy fret ends and the electronics and hardware feel solid. Nothing instantly feels cheap about the bass. The setup was almost bang on out of the box. I only had to adjust the intonation of the higher strings and it was ready to go.

Then the bad thing. The pickups that were put on this bass do not line up with the string spacing. The string spacing is too narrow so the outer strings don't line up with the pole pieces. And the G string is completely outside the P pickup pole pieces for the string. I was able to make it a little bit better by putting coins between the saddle pieces thus spreading out the strings at the bridge. Still the G string is not even close to being where it should be. But I don't really use the G string that much so it's not a big problem for me.

Another minor issue is that the pickup output on the two lowest strings is noticeably lower than on the others. Might be just a matter of adjusting the pickup height. I'll have to look into it later.

Overall I'm happy with the purchase and I may look into replacing the pick guard along with the pickups to make things sound better. Everything else about the bass is so solid that even if the upgrade ends up costing 3x the price of the host instrument I think it still will be worth it.