Baloney Balderdash

Likely the ones they use for the new Paranormal Rascal, which doesn't sound muddy at all, but actually pretty nicely well defined and articulate.

Crawling King Snake - The Doors

Self portrait : And another self portrait :

It's all analog. And the Behringer BDI21 bass preamp, which is less than half the price of the Eden preamp, is all analog too, and might I say a great one that that too. The answer is it doesn't. Doesn't sound like valve distortion at all, and is actually a pretty horrible distortion pedal, better distortion pedal though still than overdrive, as it is otherwise supposed to be. Not that it is expensive to build a great one, and not that a lot of these cheap, all analog, Behringer pedals aren't actually genuinely great as well. It seems you somehow have gotten hold of the wrong end of the stick with this topic. My guess it that bloated top brand prices might be the cause of this? Even if do remember that development costs money too, actually building stuff not so much, and certainly not today where most of the manufacturing process can be handled by machines and easily mass produced.

I absolutely LOVE the multicolored patterns bass as well! Not just the finish/pattern, which looks awesome, but also the rest of the overall design of that bass.

The current production Squier Jaguar Basses are, but a few years ago the Squier Jaguar Basses indeed were 30" short scales, and I think not all too uncommon a find on the used market.

I suppose you could use a Seymour Duncan Quarter Pounder single coil P for the bridge, which got much bigger pole pieces that ought to produce a wider magnetic field, also as the only type of Quarter Pounder pickup it is not scooped at all, in fact it got a bit of a mid hump.

I personally vastly prefer the Rascal. Wouldn't mind a Rascal in this finish and with gold hardware as well (as shows in the pictures linked to in the OP, unlike the picture posted), but then again the metallic kind of green finished one looks pretty amazing as well. What it means is that Fender run out of ideas for names that makes sense to finishes, so now they are just combining random words. That or Mike Kerr came up with it, cause he is a smug bloated smartass wombler, and he thought it sounded beaching badass cool. Also if you look at the less enhanced/manipulated picture in the link it really is more of a, "tiger" like, I suppose, regular orange, and they just added the "blood" part to the name, cause "Royal Blood".

Looks amazing, though the one on the site linked to appears to be more orange and less red than the picture posted in OP, and also to have gold hardware. Hard pass for me though, way too poor upper frets access, and way too expensive. Also on the one pictured in the OP it appears that the strings are slightly shifted, and that the low E string almost falls outside the fretboard at the last couple of frets, which though I suppose doesn't really matter since you can't reach them anyway, not great at this kind of price!

IKEA certainly upped their prices, must be that inflation, but I applaud them for introducing an instrument line.

And now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall.

No it's not simply a matter of quality, it's a matter of wood being an unpredictable material, regardless of the overall quality of the bass. That said more attention is being paid to the quality of the wood on higher end instruments versus budget instruments, which I suppose does decrease the chance of dead spots some on budget instruments I suppose. Really the main difference between higher end and lower end instruments beside the quality of the hardware and electronics, and in some cases more expensive, but not necessarily better, wood types on higher end instruments, is really the quality of low end instruments being more random, that is the quality of the wood used being pretty random along with overall lacking quality control. Absolutely possible to find genuinely great budget basses, as it is absolutely possible to find horrible supposed higher end mass produced basses, they are just not that common. Also sounds like there could be more in play in your case than just dead spots, from the sound of it possible some fret work needs to be done to fix it. Also a credit card thickness relief is way too much, at most you would want about a business card thickness relief. I got no high end basses, and most are even cheap budget ones, but they all play and sounds great with a less than 2mm (~0.078" / 5/64") action, measured from top of 12th fret to bottom of low E string, and a less than 1.5mm (~0.059" / 4/64") action high G string side, and that with an absolute minimal relief, close to a perfectly flat neck, and with no fret leveling being performed after they left factory, completely stock fret work. You can check for high/low frets by placing the side of a credit card, long side when checking frets closest to the head of the bass, short side of credit card as you get closer to the bridge, across the frets, along the strings, so that the credit card covers 3 frets, then gently try to rock the card from side to side, if it rocks even the tiniest amount it means that you got either a high or low fret, depending, that needs dressing.

You do realize murder is illegal, right?

I love how the multi colored one looks, just astonishing!

I've heard about people who love the tone of old dead roundwound strings rubbing fresh new roundwounds in hand lotion, letting it sit the night over, and then wiping them off before installing them, to obtain the desired effect of old dead roundwounds.

Don't worry, next time they will also have an option to buy a special budget ticket for just $100, where you get to listen through crappy headphones with a noise generator added making sure you don't get to hear the live performance in full quality, and with 2 minutes commercial breaks intercepting the live transmission every 5 minutes.

Also the Retrovibe has the D string pole raised slightly too, less than the A string pole, but definitely slightly raised compared to the low E and High G pole.

Push Th' Little Daisies - Ween

This looks like a design nightmare with little actual practical use. Yes, I do realize that it is a somewhat high end bridge, but a nightmare to adjust for sure. I vote for #2. Personally if I needed a new bridge though I would go for mono rail bridge pieces.

Andmoreagain - Love

!!!Spoiler!!!

Just put on elastic bands, no one cares about bass anyway, and neither should you! On a more serious note, this is a quite clever solution for those who got a preference for specific flat wound strings that doesn't happen to come in a short scale version, which, unlike hex core roundwounds, won't react well to being cut to size.

The Girls of Porn - Mr. Bungle