RB-414CS Classic Series : Great bass, be ready to do a bit of work on it though

It’s a beautiful bass, with really great tone right out of the box. Pretty decent setup for the most part. I however got a bit unlucky and got one with not the greatest fret leveling. I like my action pretty low, and I can’t get there due to 5 high frets especially on the E string. No problem for me as I will just do a fret leveling and re-crown. On a bass this price I expected something like this. Just be aware if you don’t have the skills to do this, you might have to pay someone to do it for you. It’s worth it to me since it’s a real looker. The finish and edge binding is wonderful, and no sharp fret edges. The sound is very good, especially the neck pickup, huge and ballsy. One last thing of note is that the electronics are a bit of a mystery. There are some strange oddities with how the pickups work together with volume and tone controls. I have to open her up and check out what is going on. However I get a great Geddy tone with both tones up full and the bridge pickup rolled off slightly and the neck full.

Update: I determined why the Rick tone is not quite there. The pickup placement is off a few cm from the Rick as they are both moved towards the bridge. The bridge pickup is approx 1.1cm closer to the bridge, and the neck pickup is 2 cm closer to the bridge. Not only that the more important thing is that the stock Rick pickup spacing of 11.2cm, but on this bass it’s narrower, at 10.2cm. I fixed this by converting the humbucker pickup to single coil using the coil closest to the neck, now the spacing is correct at 11.2cm, much improving the tone and thump by getting the phase of the pickups right on.