1999 Fender Standard Precision Bass

I forgot to write about this bass!

After playing a few shows last year and then having some fun bux saved up from Christmas and Chinese New Year, I thought I wanted a bass. In the $300-700 range, there's a lot of options, but mainly, I was looking at getting a P bass.

Back in the early 2000s, I bought a purple P off of eBay. Someone had repainted it and when I got it, I tried to use it, but for whatever reason, I could never get it to feel right. Maybe it was the wide maple board on it, but I think more likely, it was because I couldn't get it to sound how I thought it should. I ended up selling it somewhere to someone and I can't remember where or when. I do have a video of it, I think, in the Ethyl days, maybe at a club in the U District? I did do a recording with Starchief with it, take a look:

That's a purple P with a black pick guard.

Listening to it now, with one of my favorite Johnny Low songs, And You Lean, and the bass sounds freakin great. Sits in the mix and is fat and round. Maybe I shoulda kept that bass.

Then sometime in the late 2000s (?), I traded away my Sterling for a Lakland Skyline (Korean) Duck Dunn P bass. It was beautiful! Candy apple red, rosewood neck with block inlays, matching red headstock. The original pickguard was white but the previous owner put a black guard on it and it looked incredible.

That's a good lookin' bass!

Same thing happened with that DD, though. I couldn't figure it out. I'd bring it to shows, but I'd end up playing the SB-2 instead. Since I was in 2 bands at the time, Lund Bros and the Scheme, I ended up using the DD with the Scheme (LB would tune down to Eb, so it was easier to have a bass per band).

I did do an EP recording with the Scheme and though not as fat as the Starchief song, it still sounds pretty good. Maybe I shoulda kept that one too. I ended up trading that one straight up for a Lakland Skyline Decade, which I just did NOT bond with, so that ended up getting traded in and cash for the Reverend Thundergun.

Anyway, all that to say, I decided I wanted another P.

I started looking at Reverb.com, Facebook Marketplace and, ugh, Craigslist. There were plenty of options, but I was thinking if I wanted something worthwhile, maybe I needed to buy new, like a Squier or something. Lots of great reviews of the new Squiers, but I also sort of wanted something "vintage."

After some searching, I found a really cool looking black P with a killer pickguard and pickup and bridge covers. The seller was in Tacoma and he was letting it go for $400. I ended up going down on a freezing late January night and met him in his garage.

He had some old flats on it and I played it a bit and really liked it. He said he put in some '62 Fender Custom Shop pickups in it (though I couldn't tell one way or another). I was a little bummed to see that though the bass was black, it was spraypainted that way. Not a great paint job, but from far away, one can't tell.

After a few minutes, I bought the bass. He threw in the Fender strap it was on, as well as a white pick guard. But the whole reason it caught my eye in the first place was the cool aftermarket pick guard he put on it.

As I brought it home

Paint run

I went through a quick phase of buying some tools and the like to set up the bass. I kept the flats on it as I kind of liked how they sounded and felt. It was never meant to supplant the L1K, but man, I kept playing the P and I liked it more and more.

When I checked the serial number, it indicated it was made March 1999 (despite leading with an 8, which would mean 1988), which I love.

It is Mexican and it just sounds great. The s/n also says that the original color is brown sunburst, which equates to this:

I don't hate that, but I do hate what I'd have to do to try to unearth that. Maybe I'll leave it to the professionals. Or maybe I'll try it sometime. I just don't know. Right now, that bass is a great #2. I'll most likely use it in the Sunset Grooves as I'm really riding the T-Bird hard in PITO.

The P did get its moment in the sun when I played it at the SE final show. Bob M. made a cool GoPro video out of it.