Reissued Vintage JV74 - thoughts?

[Baker69]

Just dropped on a brand new Reissued Vintage JV74 in Natural finish, I wasn’t looking to buy another bass but it was on sale at a stupid low price so I thought I’d give it a try. I think I’ve been through all of the internet searching for information and reviews on these basses, surprisingly found very little details about them, usually just repetitive advertising blurge, can any owners give me their honest opinion on them please?

 

Anyway, my thoughts so far on the bass (after 2 days) are as follows;
 

The bass looked very smart fitted with its chrome pickup cover plates, however as most will agree they make any jazz basses very difficult to play as there’s only a limited access to the strings and unfortunately they cover everywhere that I like to play. They had to come off! I couldn’t even leave the neck pickup cover on like Marcus as I play over the pickup a lot. Next were the strap buttons, I use Dunlop Strap Locks on all of my basses and I decided to fit a spare set I had on this bass. I was very surprised to find that the stock strap button screws were very thin and quite short and were very easy to remove which could have been an issue. In contrast the Dunlop screws are noticeably thicker and about half as long again, now fitted they are very secure. 
 

While the body of the bass looks very nice, the neck seems very bare, almost unfinished. I had seen a few photos of these having black edge binding but not this one for some reason? I can’t establish whether the neck is bare wood or satin finish?? Anyway the neck itself is quite good,  no dead spots and the factory set up was really good, the G string had a very slight fret buzz but I raised the saddle a turn and cured this. Fret ends not sharp and it’s comfortable to play, however it is quite a chunky neck and very unlike the Fender Jazz bass necks I’m used to. I believe this is supposed to be based on a 74 jazz which possibly had a beefier neck, I think the Squier VM bass also has a substantial neck if I remember correctly? I’m used to having basses with rolled fretboard edges these days so the fairly sharp neck edge on the Vintage is not to my liking, if I keep the bass I might use a screwdriver shaft and burnish the fretboard edges a bit, I’ve done this before on a MIM Jazz and it was quite successful. 

 

 I played the bass at our gig last night, first set was 1 hour and after only about 45 minutes my back/shoulder was starting to ache - this is a heavy bass! I don’t think I’ve ever owned a bass that has given me this level of discomfort (4 and 5 string). I swapped over to my Sire Z7-5 bass for the second set, this is also a natural finish bass (swamp ash with a roasted maple neck), still a reasonably heavy bass but a fiver no less and still lighter than the JV74. It was definitely better for my back but the JV74 had already done its damage so the rest of the night didn’t go entirely without pain. I assume they fit cheap bass strings as my finger tips on both hands were black by the end of the set. Overall though and partly because it came with a fairly good factory set up the bass was quite nice to play, it was just a bit strange playing a Jazz bass with a larger neck than I’m accustomed to. Oh, and I love the large black block inlays on the neck, I’ve always loved the look of these. 

 

I am pleased with the Wilkinson hardware (tuners, bridge and pickups), and I think it’s these that do sort of making it a reasonable bass. The overall quality of the bass though I would put it in line with a Squier, certainly not as good as the Sire basses I’ve owned. The Wilkinson pickups however are quite good, they are fairly hot with a nice warm tone. The tuners too seem reasonable quality and stayed in tune fairly well over the time I played it, funnily though I find that the D string tuner to be a bit harder to turn and I’ve found this to be the same with other Asian-made basses, I don’t know the reason behind this? 
 

Well, those are my initial thoughts on the Reissued Vintage JV74 bass, if anyone has one of these basses I would love to hear your thoughts and experiences with them, any tips on how to treat the hard maple neck and fretboard would be appreciated! 

 

 

 

[Mickeyboro]

Do post a photo, it bring it all to life🙏