NBD (Well new to me) - Greco Atomic Medium Scale

[Obrienp]

It’s quite hard to find a reasonably priced, decent P, or P/J medium scale these days. The Ibanez Mezzo has been discontinued and the Squier Jaguar H is a bit marmite (I think it might have been discontinued as well). I recently had a near miss with an 80s Aria P/J and that gave me huge GAS for one of those 80s Japanese medium scale basses. There seemed to be so many of them back then.
 

A lot of the Matsumoku produced Ibanez and Aria basses are commanding a premium these days, so I was delighted to see this Greco Atomic medium scale P/J for sale on Reverb for around the £235 mark. I took the plunge last week and it arrived yesterday. It’s actually in amazingly good condition for a bass from the 80s (I think it genuinely is from the 80s). The worst knock it has is where it obviously got put down with a bump or dropped on the end strap button, which caused some of the poly to chip off around the button. Apart from that there are some minor dings and scratches on the body that haven’t gone through the poly, which has aged from white to cream. There is a very slight hairline crack off one side of the neck pocket that looks pretty innocuous. The Jazz style neck is in great condition for its age with no significant dings and no cracks, or repairs. It’s carved from a single piece of maple which might make it vulnerable to headstock cracks/breaks but it is fine. The rosewood board is in really good condition with no gouges, or wear and the frets are fine, with no sharp ends . It looks as though it has Gotoh machine heads (marked Made in Japan). In common with the rest of the hardware, there is some pitting in the chrome but it’s all serviceable. It appears to have the original electrics: full sized pots (Vol, Vol, Tone), which turn smoothly without crackling.

 

On the not so good side, the bridge was in a mess. The A string saddle was on the wrong way round so that the string was not sitting in the slot but crossing the adjuster screw and spring over the edge of the saddle. The D string saddle was upside down, with the Allen sockets on the bottom of the screws. It had the top 3 strings from a tired medium scale light gauge set on it and an E string which was .110” long scale bodged on and sitting proud of the nut (too big for the slot). The pickups were crazily high on the bass side and on inspection all the screw heads were cheesed, so clearly not functional. There is a slight twist in the neck/fretboard, according to my local luthier, which he doesn’t think is too tragic. After adjusting the truss rod (that fortunately seems to work fine) it is pretty straight. Adjusting the rod is a pain because the hex socket is at the heel end and there is no cut out in the body, so you have to release the strings and undo the neck screws to get at it. 
 

I gave it a quick once over yesterday afternoon: sorted the bridge saddles, lemon oiled the neck, adjusted one of the machine heads and put a set of barely used D’Addario nickel medium scale lights (45-100) on it. I also replaced all the pickup retaining screws, which enabled me to set them to a sensible height. All of that done it plays and sounds pretty good. I took it to a band rehearsal in the evening and I was very pleased with it. I still need to sort out the nut, which is a bit high and get the intonation set. It is incredibly light and really tiny, so a great bass for long gigs. It will certainly do fine as a back up to my Maruszczyk medium scale ElwoodI. In fact my bandmates asked why I had brought a toy bass.
 

 In short I’m well pleased so far. I will add some photos when I have reduced them in size.

Edited yesterday at 08:51 by Obrienp

[Obrienp]

Eventually managed to shrink this to less than 175 KB.

[Obrienp]

And for size comparison: next to a Sire U5 short scale fretless. This is one dinky medium scale bass!

[neepheid]

LOL@"toy bass" - it certainly is diminutive.  Compact and bijou!

 

Congrats on finding something to your liking.