Hasn’t arrived yet so not really real (or ready for show us your basses thread), but it is on its way! and I’m am so excited I had to post
So if you like long rambling stories about basses read on for the story so far…
Purchased it on Reverb from a store in Japan:
I have wanted a vintage fender (of some type) for ages but was not planning on buying a second bass for sometime. I pretty much stumbled onto this listing when I was ‘just looking’ at MIJ fender basses. It had been sitting for 4 months so can’t be that amazing (I thought), but it looked pretty good, if a little beat up. At this point I was more focused on another listing, but kept coming back to this one. The weird thing was the listing was never in my left-handed bass search results but when I opened it from my history it was still a live sale.
Anyway, I put in an offer and it was accepted!!! and now I have another bass on the way. It was only at this point that I twigged that the listing was marked as electric guitars/fender i.e. wasn’t classified as either a bass or left-handed on the site, so it may have been effectively ‘hidden’ on reverb as it would not appear in most standard left hand bass searchs. If you look at the listing views it is just over 200 for a 4 mth old listing which is very low, which supports my theory. I can’t recall how I found the listing myself, but I did and bought it, and now I wait anxiously for it to arrive.
But the rambling continues…because I like to research purchases like this. One nice thing I found and put through google translate was the 1983 fender japan catalog. Despite some rather odd translation phrasing it was helpful, now seems likely the body is alder which was the main thing I want to know (the fact it ‘makes mr. bassman growl’ is a bonus too).
My conclusion from all of that is that this bass is probably much more rare than I realized at the time of purchase (exciting!). The JV serial MIJ guitars are even so revered they have their own reissue series, so they were definitely making good stuff at this time which bodes well for my bass. I now feel a bit privileged to be getting one of these rare JV serial models. I worry I am almost into too good to be true territory here, but time will tell.
I will update will any new info, or if all goes well you may see this bass pop up in the ‘show us your basses’ thread sometime.