Last week I purchased a new Modern Player Jazz V bass. From what I can gather there aren't many of these out there yet as Fender just introduced them in late July of this year. It's a unique bass for Fender because it incorporates 4 large single coil Jazz pickups (each with 6 poles) placed in pairs of two to create 2 large humbucking pickups. There's a separate volume control for each pickup and a single tone control like most Jazz basses out there but it also has a 4-position rotary pickup selector switch that allows the player to pick between 4 preselected passive pickup combinations.
It comes with a Hi-mass bridge (almost a copy of a Badass-II) which is much more substantial than many of the bridges found on lower cost 5 string basses, I really like the vintage tinted high gloss neck and headstock. As for the neck itself, it's a big one compared to my Music Man Big Al 5-H's neck. But it's still fast and pretty easy to get around for a player with average size hands. The flat 2-tone Brownburst finish on the body is also unique. I'm a glossy kind of guy but this satin finish is really starting to grow on me.
Here's a couple of photos of the beast.
Because I'll be using this bass tuned down a semi-tone, I replaced the stock Fender strings with a set of D'Addario EXL160-5 50-135 gauge strings. A little deepening of the string slots in the nut was required to get a great setup but this way the low B remains under good tension and sounds really solid.
TD
