It’s really amazing how good they are. I don’t even really like J pickups, and I was impressed with the nice MIJ Fender J that a salesman here casually handed me to test an amp.
Were I to get a Fender, I would definitely go with a MIJ, but that’s a lot to do with location and pricing. And quality too, but it would just be dumb to go for a MIA here.
But really if I wanted that style of bass I would probably get a Vellmor, Bacchus, or Sandberg. Or Fujigen, Momose, Atelier Z, or ESP Surveyor. Etc etc.
This is what I meant about Fender not likely to be in the top five, for even that style of bass. Higher quality descendents of the lawsuit era are thick on the ground here, and have been in a quality war for 30+ years.
Turn 55 in Dec, telling myself for my 60th i am going to Japan to buy bass, assuming we are all not dead by murder hornets, killer bees, ancient sea creatures, flesh eating bacteria or the Zeta variant.
Happy to show you (or any other bassbuzzer) around if you visit. Open invitation. We’ll grab @Tokyo_Rat and make a day of it. I have a big regret about missing @JerryP the last time he was around. I have a longstanding appointment with @TNKA36 for this.
I have a CIJ Strat that I absolutely love. For those not on the Fender bandwagon, there is a slight difference between MIJ (Made in Japan) and CIJ (Crafted in Japan) Fenders. Mainly it helps date the instrument because the serial number system is … idiosyncratic, at best, and it’s not always easy to tell when the guitar or bass was made if you’re buying used. That tangent aside, I ended up with my CIJ Strat because it was significantly higher quality than the American made Fenders at the time I bought it, at least among the lefties I was able to sample.
It’s one of those things that varies by year. Japanese manufacturing is pretty consistently high quality for the MIJs but the quality of US manufacturing varies as you would expect. So there’s definitely years where the MIJ/CIJs will blow away the MIAs.
It’s almost like the lawsuit era happened for a reason
I do love my MIJ Fender Jazz, but if I had a time machine (or more spare cash, haha) I would have sprung for a Fujigen bass. No regrets, but I would like to give their own brand a try for sure.
A switch in manufacturing from FujiGen (MIJ) to Tokai (CIJ). The CIJ guitars came with Texas Special pickups, and, according to some sources, slightly better wiring & switches. That’s about it. The MIJ/CIJ tags on the neck block mostly just help with dating the instrument.
You’ll sometimes read that CIJ instruments were for Japanese domestic sales & MIJ were for export . . .
BUT, given that I bought my CIJ Strat in Wichita, KS, I don’t give that theory much credence
I’ve seen this term used a bit, but what does it really mean? What was the lawsuit era? I’m assuming there was a time period where Fender sued a bunch of other brands for “replicating” Fender products?
