It was delivered to the office shortly after lunch. I only had a minute to remove it from the case and put it on a stand to warm up. (I figure it had been in warehouses or the backs of trucks for a week.) The string tension had been backed way off for shipment, but I could tell that the action was likely very low. There’s hardly a scratch on it even after all those years.
At quittin’ time I took it home to plug it in. First, I take a little inventory. The fore strap button needs tightening, as does the input jack. The tuners are like butter. Then I plug it in.
I run it through the YYZ pedal straight into the Carvin with the EQ flat. Holy crap does this thing snarl. It’s those pickups. It barks like crazy the second I dig in. I’m going to have to start playing with a softer right hand! The electronics all work. There’s no hum. The knobs all do what they say and they do it silently.
Then I notice that my compressor’s meter isn’t lighting up. At all. Must be a lower signal than my Warwick with its huge double humbuckers. So I just turn the input knob up until the compressor starts compressing again. Man this thing sounds great. I haven’t had a bass this good in… maybe ever.
So I tighten the input jack. I remove the strap pegs entirely and replace them with black chrome Shcaller locking ones. I look at the black pickguard I bought to replace the oxblood one the bass came with, but it had a big scratch right in the middle of it. Oh well. I don’t hate the red one as much as I thought, anyway. Maybe I’ll just keep it.
Just for grins I measure the neck relief. My 14 thou feeler gauge is juuust kissing the string when I slide it under. That’s not bad for a five string bass. I check the string height. It needs adjustment. I’ll get to that later. I don’t even bother checking the nut action. I can feel that it’s good. The intonation is…hit or miss. Three out of five strings are pretty good. One is not so good. One is bad. I’ll fix these tomorrow. Maybe I’ll just go ahead and put a new set of Lo-Riders on it.
This thing was made to slap. It’s gonna kill at the next gig.