LeftyJ

My first bass was a Condor Jazz Bass copy from the 1970s with a heavy plywood body and a fairly nice maple neck with block inlays. It played fine and sounded more or less like a Jazz Bass should. I sold it when I bought my first "proper" bass (Yamaha TRB5II) but later bought another one out of seller's remorse and it was AWFUL. Just sounded dull and honky. Quickly sold it again. I'll never know if that first bass actually was a good one, or if it was just my inexperience and the thrill of owning my first bass.

I agree. Definitely a righty, and I agree with Beedster and wouldn't buy from this seller.

It says "right handed" in the title and URL.

I'm using a De Gier / Vanderkley FatBoost in my Jazz. It's likely the only one around, as they usually come with a De Gier Bebop bass attached 😉. It's one from the first run, with a fixed 6 dB boost. Newer ones are variable between 4 and 9 dB. It's activated by a rotary switch, a 4th control knob on the control plate.

I think to me this order is pretty accurate, but I disagree on the bridge and electronics part. Though not as important as your top 5, I think these do matter a lot. Different bridges will alter the tone of an instrument. When I changed the standard bent-plate bridge of my Jazz Bass to a Badass II, it changed the tone dramatically. The bass' tone brightened up a lot, with tighter lows and more harmonics. Many active circuits will colour your tone even when set to flat. Not dramatically, but noticably. Again from personal experience: when I changed the passive electronics in that same Jazz Bass to an Audere JZ3 onboard preamp, I loved it at first. Loads of tonal possibilities, and the impedance switch seemed like fun. But within weeks I found it wasn't for me, up to the point that I wasn't playing that particular bass anymore, even though it had always been a favourite. I changed it back to mostly passive, with just a switchable bass boost, and it's perfect for me now! It's mostly just set-and-forget for me, and if it gets overly finicky or doesn't sound the way I want to, it gets in the way of my playing and I lose interest in the instrument.

Left-handed pots are most definitely a thing, but this only has to do with the taper on logarithmic pots. Linear pots are "symmetric". If your pots work in the opposite direction, you have wired them wrong.

Several manufacturers offer a splitcoil design in a J-bass casing. Adding a series/parallel-switch should get you pretty close! Technically none of the pickups below (with the exception of the Aero) were designed with P-bass tone in mind, and a J-pickup is much less hot than a P-bass splitcoil, but any of these that offers 4-conductor wiring has the option to be switched to series like a P-bass splitcoil is wired. There's the Seymour Duncan Apollo, Lindy Fralin Split Jazz, the Aero PJ, Curtis Novak Splits, the DiMarzio Model J, the Nordstrand NJ5SE and NJ5SV and I may forget some options. Edit: and of course, the other way round is possible too: having a splitcoil P-bass pickup switching to parallel, like Fender did with their S1 switch. It cleans it up a fair bit.

Weird, that didn't show up in my search (on the Dutch site). Edit: because I wrote out "Rockbass" in full, and the ones you linked to just have "RB" in the title!

The Thomann site says "available for pre-order". Maybe that explains why there are no reviews yet 🙂

Ibanez called it the Omni-Adjust bridge 🙂

I see! The 5-string originally had the Gotoh 206 bridge, that I absolutely loved on the 1987 Ibanez SR800 I owned, but Gotoh had already stopped making them when the 4 came out.

Interesting bridge! I know the old ones had a Gotoh bridge that isn't made anymore, but I had never seen this one before. What is it?

Nice collection! I especially like your trio of Statii. How do your S1 and Eclipse differ, the finish aside? They look very similar. Do they share the same electronics?

I don't know much about these, but I know the SGC Nanyo stuff is highly revered and has many enthousiastic fans on this board and others. Try a little search, and I'm sure you'll find loads of positive reviews and experiences. I would also recommend asking this question not just in the lefty part of the forum, but on the general Basses forum where righties are more likely to read this and respond to it too 🙂

I'm keeping an eye on this thread! I'm really curious about the end result. I like the looks of the fretted RetroB you bought, and I really like the woods you've selected for the fretless. Especially the top! Understated and elegant, nothing flashy but rather very classy.

Ah, the elusive NS4003 😉

Nexus did too, back when Jacek was located in Belgium and worked together with Noel Coquet. Jacek stopped working with Noel in 2004 because of financial differences. Here's a little bit about it on the old Nexus website, which Jacek still keeps online for some reason: http://www.nexus-guitars.com/old/news.html#3

Is that one of their models with a polished granite fingerboard? I've always been intrigued by those. Looks beautifully made, and all the veneers between that top and the back really look lush!

It isn't. That's why I said:

All my basses are rare, being left-handed 😜 I used to own a lefty Aria SB-1000 that stands out - you just never see any. The set-neck models come by once in a while, but the neck-through models are very rare. Mine had two extra pickups installed, and was originally fretless but had been fretted by a previous owner. My Ibanez MC924's are also kind of rare as lefties. Rumour has it there are only about 250 in existance. I had been looking for one for a few years, and then found three within a couple of months and bought all three, and kept the best two. Fantastic basses. My 1983 is an absolute keeper (it's just one month younger than I am). And I own an Esh Stinger that is somewhat unusual, especially as a lefty. It's a fun bass, with two EMG DC35's and a piezo bridge. Lots of punch, and a bright and powerful attack. Cool looks too, with the sandblasted ash with blackened grain beneath a white finish. It looks similar to this one, but left-handed, with a deeper neck pocket and longer heel, and with two big EMG soapbars. Controls are volume, passive tone, 3-way rotary pickup selector and 4-way "Esh-tronic" switch: mag only, mag only bypassing all controls, mag + piezo, piezo only.

There's a lefty BT2 for sale in the Netherlands, the guy accidentally ordered the wrong version. It's not cheap, but he's been trying to sell it for quite a while now so he may be willing to negotiate. https://link.marktplaats.nl/m1344096562

JB-62 is a legitimate Fender Japan model number, usually followed by two or three more numbers to indicate where in the range the model sits (there are a few different levels of '62 Jazz Bass reissues, with different pickups, body woods and hardware). Most bodies on these are basswood, but there are some exceptions made of alder. Basswood is a little less dense and a bit softer, and therefore more prone to dinging. Could explain the damage around the body edges.

It's The One Bass for him, he's very unlikely to ever sell it. He's had it for over 10 years.

I've seen (and heard) that yellow Kubicki in the flesh and it is AWESOME. Someone on a Dutch forum owns it (or an identical one). I wish they made some lefties, but unfortunately there is only one in existance and it has a righty Ex-Factor neck for a lefty who plays upside down 🙁