Need a Jazz Bass

JamesPaul

Well-known member
I have seen a few on the local Craig's, but they aren't string thru the body. All my Fender guitars are string thru. What am I missing here?
 
Re: Need a Jazz Bass

You’re looking at basses, not guitars. Top-load is the norm. My Ibanez Mikro, Warwick Corvette, Squier P, and Yamaha P/J are all top-load.

One of the big advantages, especially if it has a tailpiece/bridge like a Warwick, is you can take strings on and off without screwing up the wraps and breaking them. It’s pretty common for bass players to swap strings around. Over on TalkBass, tons of people buy and sell gently used strings.
 
Re: Need a Jazz Bass

String-through Jazz basses are usually found in the modern style (non-reissue) American made lines. I think this has been used on Fender Js for at least 20 years now. But lower end Js, and reissues, are usually traditional top loaders.

It doesn't matter in the slightest, other than that you sometimes run into unwound string length problems with certain string sets.
 
Re: Need a Jazz Bass

I currently have two top-loading Jazz basses and have never run into problems. Still love my P, but end up grabbing one of the Js more often.
 
Re: Need a Jazz Bass

Nothing wrong with top loading bridges. They still sound like a great Jazz bass.
 
Re: Need a Jazz Bass

That's good to know. I'd like to try some variations, but the dang things are expensive.

You should join. Most of the time the strings aren’t significantly cheaper, but people are always down to trade. I’ve also seen cool deals for someone who wants to try a bunch, like a grab bag of 5 or 6 used sets for $50.
 
Re: Need a Jazz Bass

Depending on the brand of strings, some will not make it all the way to the G tuning machine if you string through the body.
 
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