Fender Player Series J-Bass V PF PWT

Everyone makes a better Fender 5-string than Fender

The bass is heavy, I mean, it's as heavy as my Ibanez SR 6-string. The neck is not the most comfy one. This one came with neck issues, it needed a shim to be playable and it still has buzzing on the upper frets. Those are the bad parts. The good part is that it sounds good. Not like I would expect a Jazz bass to sound, but it sounds good. If you want that Jazz-y sound, I suggest you try some steel strings.

Surprisingly positive impression

The playability and sound is very good. Even my wife says this bass sounds very good. I am playing it through a Genzler Magellan 350 head connected to a Fender Rumble 410 cabinet. I am very pleased and happy. I do not regret buying this bass. It will be my main bass for sure. No doubt about that.

The bridge was not intonated properly from the factory in Mexico. Luckily I know how to intonate a bass. I experienced my clip on tuner was not giving the right tuning information espesially when intonating the B-string. A pedal tuner showed me to be good enough for the job.

The gear ratio on the machine heads (20:1) could have been better. Especially the B-string machine head is very sensible when tuning and intonating the bridge. Sometimes in the future I will probably exchange the machine heads to the compatible Hipshot HB7 which have better tuning ratio (27:1). Higher gear ratio allows the machine head to rotate in smaller increments. This gives better tuning control when tuning and intonating, especially the B-string.

Do I personally recommend this bass? Definitely.

With a bit of setup there is nothing that can beat this bass in this price range.

This bass is the right ticket for the 5-string bass world!