baboom

'allo Me too! Me too! Can I please add myself to the list?!

Thanks for the replies guys - sounds like it might not be as bad as I had thought. I've found something else, but I'll try and give the guy a call/email and pass those points along anyway.

I tried an alleged Highway-1 P-bass (second hand) this morning and on a paranoid whim, when it took the guy a while to "remember" what shop he bought it from a year ago, I took out my tuner (Korg pitchblack) and checked the intonation at each of the frets. On the bottom string (E), the open and 12th fret were in good agreement, but the 1st and 2nd frets were sharp (making some assumptions about the linearity of the lights on the tuner display, it seemed like they were up to 1/8th of a tone out - which seems too much). On the top string (G), the open and 12th fret were again in good agreement, but the highest few frets (17/18) were similarly sharp. This doesn't seem right to me - surely the fretboard on a half decent bass should be constructed so that all the frets play at the correct pitch when it is properly setup. But when some notes are sharp whilst others are flat (didn't note which ones those were, but there were some), on the same string as appeared to be the case on this bass, it seemed to me there is no straightforward way to recover the situation so I walked away. But then I got to wondering just how good the intonation is generally expected to be. I also appreciate a stage tuner is not the most precise beast on the planet for intonation work .... but I tried the same game on a MIM Precision in a shop and got pretty good intonation on all frets, and a cheapy bass and that was fine too (at least up to the 15th fret). I'm now starting to doubt I could have found a genuine fender bass with a problem like that or that I made some mistake in my approach but it was repeatable at the time. To be honest, I couldn't put my finger on any obvious sign of it not being what it said it was, either. Has anyone come across this problem before? p.s. the bass has not been advertised on bass chat - was on a local website.

Hey guys Thanks for the warm welcome! It is still early days for my GAS but those sound line fine instruments :-) Cheers Tikm

G'day folks I'm a Kiwi living up in Glasgow who has just got back into playing for fun after a bit of a break (and leaving me gear on the wrong side of the equator!) Since I'm reliably informed that we play everything upside down in that part of the world, don't be surprised to see me standing on my head to get the right notes out in the right order.... I'm steadily building up GAS for a black P-Bass to go with my Ashdown Mag 300 Evo II 1x15in combo (+ 2x10in extension cab just to keep the neighbours in line - one likes to sing songs from the musical Cats so I've decided to tell them the underground has been rerouted under our block.) Anyway, I'll probably be firing out stupidly low offers for things that are black and fenderish that are coming up for sale here, so be warned! Have a good 'un Baboom