Second this!
I do enjoy going to Guitar Center to try out the new and fancy of course, but vintage and second hand stores can have some really unexpected gems in them.
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I have a G&L tribute and itās a wonderful bass, if you can find one in decent condition I would recommend it especially if you like a vintage P or Jazz sound, it does both very well @davidrisch75
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Yup. My two primary basses are weird ones that were just, āOMG! Look at that thing! I want it!ā and then ticked some practical boxes.
A Reverend Raymond - itās a passive stingray style made for only one year by a small company Iād never heard of before. It showed up while I was online browsing the inventory of my local Music-Go-Round:
My other is a Yamaha SBV-550. Something Iād seen picks of and lusted after. And one of the members here was selling one in Japan, and was willing to ship it out to me.
They are both WONDERFUL instruments, and nothing that is ever going to come up on a list of, āWhat instruments should I look for?ā
The bass I keep at work to practice with during downtime is the only one that I actually was searching for that make/model. A Yamaha BB434. As something nice that I would enjoy playing, but inexpensive and pedestrian enough to not feel bad about keeping in the harsh environment at work.
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Lots of good advice already. Mine would be to get the best setup possible. I bought my daily driver at Sweetwater, and opted for the āPlekā setup. It was convenient but spendy ($300 I believe) and very probably overkill, but it plays like a dream. In fact, if you havenāt, Iād take the Amazon special to a respected local shop and see what they can do with it. It makes an amazing difference to have the strings level and āclose, but not too closeā to the frets.
Super glad youāre digging it 
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Oh yeah. Iāve been all excited to use it on my first gigā¦ except that one of our songs is āSmooth Operatorā, and the solo goes up to the 19th fret. Although I can reach that, Iāve got to reach past the body cut. Itās awkward, and I canāt do vibrato. So itās a tough call which bass Iām going to take.
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Not to be political, but I bet a lot of there craftsman are now south of the border
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I wish itās true and simple. They laid off a bunch of skills luthiers at the peak of their sales record then later replaced with greenies. The problems come when they donāt know what they donāt know. How can this be rectified.
This is what happen when the CEO doesnāt have a musical instrument background. Reminds me of when Pepsi CEO ran Apple.
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I actually have a Fender player 2 Jazz bass I love but I just bought a squire CV p bass and itās to me the best bass I ever played. Itās now my #1
I donāt necessarily think itās a requirement for a CEO to have a background in the products being sold, as long as said CEO is open to learning from the history of the company and why and how they got to where they did and work within that context. You can change things around but if you donāt try to understand the soul of the thing, youāve already lost. If you change the fundamental reason why people bought your product and why even potential customers held your product/company in high-esteem, why would those customers stick around and not go elsewhere? Customers, especially repeat customers, donāt just look at the one product. They look at how the company treats them in pre-sales, post-sales, support, customer service. If you treat them right and offer a competitive price on a decent product, customers will return.
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Those are both fantastic finds! @howard put the SBV 550 on my radar too tho I have yet to spot one in the wild 
Feel so incredibly lucky to be living in an area where there are a bunch of different stores and for whatever reason I guess I look reputable enough that they keep letting me play things unbothered. The basses youād think Iād be the most in love with were the Nordstrand Acinonyx 4 and a 1986 PRS Curly 4. Both were responsibly goofy and had the sort of sound I dig but theyāre not the ones that live rent free in my head. The first one was a very affordable 1969 Teisco BL2 that was just so weird and psychedelic sounding it made me giggle with delight. The second was a not so cheap 1965 Maton Mastersound hollow body bass. Thing weighed a metric ton, was nearly as tall as I am, and was just ridiculously fun to play.
My only bass (currently) in an Ibanez jazz frankenbass that I did a bunch of mods to that mades me happy every time I play.
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Yeah. Not many SBV-550ās with the P/J config made it to the U.S. Just a handful of the 500ās with the jazz config. @howard talks up how good that P pup on the 550 is, and heās not exaggerating. It sounds fantastic. Like nothing else. Itās surprisingly bitey. Almost in between a jazz and a humbucker. (Itās driving me nuts on āSmooth Operatorā because it has the tone I want, but not the ergonomics for the solo.)
Iāve got lots of good options here too. Two Music-Go-Rounds, Guitar Center, a couple small independents, and a very active FB marketplace.
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Yeah itās really special, my favorite P pickup I have owned, by a lot. And they were consistently good, all three of the 550s I have owned were the same. I wish they still made them.
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