I own this bass for about a year and I must say it hasn't failed me..used it for a recording and for a passive bass it stood out in the mix.My only gripe is that you can't do too much slapping on it as the strings seems to hit the jazz pickup therby creating this pop sound,but can be rectified.If I want the sound of a active bass,I'll use my NE-1 Parametric EQ or the Seymour Duncan Paranormal DI EQ Box..Give it a try and you'll see what I mean..Another great form Yamaha,they never fail me.

I had this bass once before and traded it in for a Schecter Stiletto active bass, which by the way I hated. Then I found myself wishing that I had this bass back so I sold my Schecter and bought another one. This time around I bought one in the orange metallic finish and let me tell ya the pics on the website don't do it justice, in person the finish looks awesome and it was like sparkling glass with those beautiful metallic flakes. Then to boot it was setup perfect, all I had to do was change out the crappy strings with some Ernie Ball Regular Slinky 5's, and set the intonations and I was off and rockin'! I never realized how much this bass sounds just like my American P-bass and Jazz Bass rolled into one. Yamaha really captured the essence of both of those basses! The instrument was flawless not a scratch in sight, and the hardware was top notch, the fret job was impeccable, and after I tuned it, it stayed in tune for several days and the neck was very stable and like a rock. All I had to do was some minor adjustments to the truss rod because my new strings were stretching out. But all in all I'm very happy to have this bass back. And Kudos Yamaha!!!

All you need with this bass is: 1.Fat strings! For hard(fat)rock sound, more growling and nice slaping sound...your choice:(45,50,55) 2.Big amp!(trust me,J destroyed few:)) or good processor (for studio) and you are ready to play... blues, jazz, funk, rock, metal, hard core... AWESOME BASS!

For the majority this is a pretty good bass for very little cost. It's got solid hardware and electronics, and a good vintage-esque tone especially from the P pickup. For me the major downside of this bass is that every time a decent storm rolls through the neck has to be adjusted. Fortunately the truss rod is easily adjusted. All in all a good instrument, for not much money, but be prepared for good amount of initial set up and continual maintenance if the weather changes much where you are.

I've been looking for a new base for quiet a while now and have been especially looking on 5 stringes. I'm sure there better ones out there but this is the best I've played so far. The ibanez is good too but I like the look of the yamaha better. Also the b string isn't as floppy and loose as most others and it sounds great trough my amp. The only thing that is bad is that it only controls volume and tone for both pickups at the same time and not seperatly.