Cool! Nice snag.
I think you just got to the dealer a day early. The bass is now showing (pre-order) on Guitar Center and Sweetwater. Keep us posted on how you like it, please.
I’m not a seasoned player and I don’t have a lot to compare to. I started with a Glarry type thing (completely unbranded) about 10 months ago and a while back I bought a TRBX174. Both are P/J. The Yamaha was noticably nicer than the Glarry, but not the improvement I hoped for. The Schecter blows the Yamaha away. Tonewise, I should’ve had this style of pickups all along, but I was too inexperienced to know what I wanted.
Build quality of the Yamaha and Schecter are both flawless. Not a huge difference in reach anywhere other than the Schecter neck being noticably smaller and some things I struggled became instantly easier.
I just play at home in a small bedroom and I dislike all the string noise that round wounds give you. I like to play with lots of slides and I’m a wimp 
So I put on a set of flat wounds. They didn’t affect the brightness much compared to the stock round wounds. The stock rounds were very think so I fiddled around with the truss rod and string height to accommodate the smaller strings. The range of tone adjustment and overall volume of the instrument is twice what I had before. Im no longer playing with any knobs maxed out anywhere. I’m happy just cruising along on the bridge pickup until a modern song that I think needs a little more brightness (?) comes along, then I add a touch of neck pickup to perk things up a bit. Amp eq and tone knobs are just sitting in neutral, clean positions. I don’t feel like I have to push the instrument to make the sounds I want.
I was happy with the Yamaha, I’m thrilled with the Schecter. I have no complaints, for whatever that’s worth, and I can’t put it down 
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Yeah that Schecter compares more across with the 504 than the 174.
I also love the tone of humbuckers! My first bass had Humbuckers, and that was pure luck (I just liked the design of the bass). After that, many basses I tried sounded cheap to me.
That is one great looking bass you have, especially for the price!
One day at the shop I picked up a Epiphone Thunderbird Vintage Pro, not knowing what it was, just thinking it was a wild looking thing. I loved the sound but couldn’t bring myself to spend $1400 or whatever it was. That’s when I realized I needed to start looking at humbuckers.
They wrote the bass up as $427. I picked up a pretty nice Fender bag with backpack straps ( to carry it on a motorcycle) and everything came in at $500 after tax. I’m very happy.
Im gonna be keeping an eye out for a clean, used Thunderbird, though.
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Pretty much. I tried to get in to them, but didn’t personally care for the styling. Plus they’re active and so many knobs. If I were a good player I might appreciate what an active bass with a buffet of knobs could give me, but I’m happy with a simple instrument.
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Well, they are active/passive. Some people never play them in active mode; work just fine without the battery, etc.