Reviewed by:
brotherdave, on november 21, 2006
2 of 2 people found this review helpful
Price paid: $ 212
Features: My first Jay Turser 401 is either a late 2004 or early 2005 model (depending on how slow the boat from China was) which I purchased April 10, 2005 the day it arrived at Mullis Music in Concord. I say it is my first because I'm buying another one when I find another one I like this much. I've now had my first 401 for 19 months. The $212 cost (tax included) was from a nearby authorized Jay Turser dealer that I trust. I've seen it for up to 55 dollars less from online dealers. But I like to play a bass before I buy it. I'm old fashioned I guess. I really liked the looks of the bass. But the sound was unexpectedly full and thick. I think this first generation P-Bass design, the original fretted electric bass guitar design, somehow works better for me personally than any other. The bass is fairly light which is good, but it is also top heavy, meaning the headstock will dip if you take your left hand off. Apparently the reason so many basses are heavy is to offset the neck and balance the thing out. I use a 4 inch wide suede lined strap and that helps the balance issue, but it still will ride down if you don't pay attention.
I previously owned a Brand New 1968 Telecaster Bass, which was pretty much a Fender copy of a 1951 P-Bass. (The Fender Telecaster basses command astronomical prices now. I'd never spend $3, 000 on a beat up old bass! But people are buying Telecaster basses left and right on eBay for small fortunes because they are so "rare" when actually far FEWER used Jay Turser 401's show up for sale on eBay! Think about that for a few moments. Why are there never any used Jay Turser 401's for sale on eBay? They are one of the cheapest basses you can buy, yet nobody is selling a used one on eBay. Why not? There are sometimes NEW Jay Turser 401's on eBay, but it is danged rare to ever see a used one. I know I wouldn't part with mine).
Comparing the Turser to the 68 Fender Telecaster is a natural thing to do as they are both copies of the first generation Fender Precision Bass so here goes. The Fender was made at Fullerton while the Jay Turser was made in China. You'd think there would be no comparison. You'd be wrong. To me the Turser plays as good, sounds better, intonates better because it has a 4 saddle bridge instead of the original 2 saddles, has a gorgeous finish (mine is Vintage white which is more of a light yellow.) I believe the Turser's body to be basswood but I'm no expert on lumber and I can't actually see the bare wood anyway because it has a nice thick creamy Vintage white paint job, the Turser neck is maple and mine has a rosewood fretboard. The Fender was maple/maple. Both are a 34 inch scale and best that I can tell both are 1.750" (44.5 mm) wide at the nut, give or take a few tenths of a mm. Each has 20 of what I'd call medium jumbo frets. But the fret material itself is looks and behaves differently. The Fender Telecaster bass frets would tarnish rapidly while the Turser frets seem to stay more shiny. The Turser frets are well finished, very smooth and do not have any sharp edges. The Fender was likewise. The Turser has four standard generic clover style tuners that seem to function smoothly and stay in tune very well. The Fender Telecaster came with small "butterbean" shaped oval machine pegs. The chrome plating isn't overly heavy on the Turser, but I think it is heavier plating than Fender used. The Fender plating may have had more nickel in it. There is one ugly single coil pickup smack in the middle of the space between the bridge and the neck on both. That is the perfect spot for a pickup. The Turser pickup actually sounds better to me than the Fender Telecaster Bass pickup. It is thicker and has more highs when you crank the tone wide open. This is the heaviest sounding passive bass I've ever played. Very lush rich tone. There is one volume and one tone control and that is it, because frankly that is enough. The knobs are some sort of metal covered plastic. There is no set screw for the knobs but they seem to stay on very well. I bought some Fender metal P-Bass/Telecaster knobs ($12) and put them on, but no matter how tightly I turned the set screws they still would work loose in short order so I went back to the original plastic knobs which look like metal until you pull them off. The back of the Jay Turser 401 is body contoured, unlike my Telecaster Bass which was a plain slab front and back and after a three-hour gig would leave a crease in your belly and your right forearm. The current production Fender '51 reissues are slabs too. People often describe the 401 as a "1951 P-Bass Clone." Fender introduced the body contouring to the Precision bass in 1953, so the Turser is actually closer to being a '53 clone than a '51. I like the countouring, the four saddle bridge and the awesome single pickup on the JT401 bass better than the Telecaster bass. With the Turser bass I got a couple of hex keys for truss rod and bridge adjustments and a short wimpy cord that is better than no cord at all. I've never used the cord. With the Fender came one of those nifty Tolex covered wooden cases, the most ridiculous strap I ever tried to use (now called a "vintage style" strap) and a short wimpy cord that was better than no cord at all. The Turser has no case. The Turser is longer than the Fender. It won't fit in a P-Bass case. It barely fits into a Jazz case. It is hard to believe the Turser came all the way from China in that flimsy cardboard box with the styrofoam inserts glued in and arrived in perfect shape. I bet lots of these get damaged in shipping which is another reason I would want to buy it in person. // 10
Sound: I play old school r&b, classic rock, dance and a genre unique to the Carolinas & Virginia known as "Beach Music" (this is not Beach Boys or Jan & Dean, it is more like the Northern Soul genre than anything else. Lots of Stax & Motown type stuff in both genres). I've owned a lot of basses prior to getting this one. All of them were Fender and mostly USA Fenders. However I've owned one Mexican Jazz, one Mexican P-Bass special. I've played the Japanese '51 P-Bass Reissue, The "Sting", the Mexican Mike Dirnt and I like the Turser better than any other current first-generation P-Bass clone. I liked the Mike Dirnt bass a lot but the Turser works better for me and I'm pretty sure it has a wider range of tones. The Turser 401 is the best sounding and best playing bass I've ever owned. I was running it straight into either an Ampeg BA-115 for practice/rehearsals or into my Ampeg gig stack, but I'm now plugging it into the Aphex Bass Exciter and from there it goes to the Aphex Punch Factory Compressor and then to an amp or mixer. With the Aphex tools this is without a doubt the best sounding bass rig anywhere around here and the best sound I've ever had. I have been playing the Turser as my number 1 bass most of the time since I got it and put some Thomastik Power Bass strings on it (the TI PowerBass strings work great on this bass and opened it up like nobody's business. They are the Thomastik-Infeld EB344 strings). I sold my 2004 USA Jazz about two months ago because I didn't like it any more and bought an Ibanez SRX700 as I'd heard great things about it and it played good at the store. I don't like the tones from it as much as this Jay Turser 401 as it is right now. Instead of trying other basses I've decided to get another Jay Turser 401 when I get rid of the Ibanez SRX-700 and set up the new 401 with flatwounds as my backup. Straight into the Ampeg gig rig the 401 gets tones ranging from mellow thud to splashy upper mids depending on where I set the tone control. Through the Aphex unit I'm getting a much wider range of usable tones from jangly upper tones to a fat bottomed moans. The only drawback to the honking single coil is that it is more prone to hum when you get it close to hum inducing electromagnetic fields like a computer monitor or right up against the amp rack. I'm also using the output from the Aphex compressor direct into a mixer for practice and recording with great results that can sound exactly like a '60s Stax or Motown recorded bass line tone. I can also get great funky slap tones for '80s funk like on the Commodores "Brick House." This bass will play smooth and easy or you can snap it harx for really sharp attack. I do have a gripe about the tone control. It has a very narrow range of travel that has any notable effect. You can rotate the control all the way from full bass to full treble and there is an area just a hair from full bass setting where about 20% of further pot travel seems to do almost 100% of the tone control. You can keep turning the knob but you might as well not. Anything above this range seems to make no difference at all. This really isn't a problem as I'm used to it and usually play at the full treble or the full bass setting anyway. This is sort of a "greasebucket" tone control meaning that it only controls the highs. You roll off the highs without boosting the bass. The bass seems wide open all the time and the tone control seems mainly to control the highs. This is good for me because "me like bass." // 10
Action, Fit & Finish: This is not a custom shop guitar. However the workmanship, fit and finish seem as good to me as Mexico Fenders! The neck is thick and meaty and you can really dig in without worrying you are gonna snap it into. The truss rod works fine. I play really hard sometimes so I have the tech that does my setups set the action to the "Fender Factory Specs" for a bass. That works fine for me. Frankly he has had more trouble setting up my Fender stuff to the Fender standard than the Jay Turser. I had one Jazz bass that had a serious truss rod issue. I wound up selling that particular Jazz on eBay about a year after I bought it and lost about 500 dollars in the process. But the Jay Turser seems just fine so far. // 10
Reliability & Durability: The only problem I've had was the strap button on the upper horn became loose. I tightened it and a few days later it was loose again. This was all my fault. I installed strap locks but then got a leather strap custom made to match the bass from Italia Straps and this strap is so thick that the Schaller strap locks won't attach to it. So I had to put the original strap buttons back on. I guess I buggered the screw hole up somehow in this process. So I broke off some toothpicks, took some "Gorilla Glue" and coated the toothpicks in the glue and glued the toothpicks into the hole until I couldn't cram any more toothpicks in. I let it dry until the next day and reinstalled the strap button. I had to redrill a tiny pilot hole. No further problems. The bass has a lifetime warranty on materials, except electronics which have a one-year warranty. I have gigged with this thing a lot. I keep another bass ready as a backup and have never had to use a backup yet in 19 months. I play once or twice a week. When something on this breaks I will get it fixed. If it was lost or stolen I'd have the police issue an "Amber Alert!" The parts are all generic so it won't be a problem. I don't see anything that looks "iffy" right now. I have no pot noise, no loose screws, no rust. I'm impressed. The Telecaster bass pickguard screws rusted after the first outdoor gig I used it on, the Jay Turser has played many outdoor gigs in the oppressive humidity of the Mid-Atlantic with no such problem. // 10
Impression: No it ain't pretty. Neither are lots of other things that work great such as an M-1 Abrams Tank or a Maytag washing machine. I acquired a 51 P-Bass bridge cover and pickup cover and installed them myself. These covers are a perfect fit and they add a lot to the Vintage appeal of the bass but the pickup cover also helps shield the single coil from interference. James Jamerson also insisted the pickup cover made his second generation Precision sound better. These covers are a highly recommended upgrade that will be 30 to 50 dollars for the pair depending on where you buy them. This bass is the bass for me. I really love it so much that it is the first bass I have "officially" named. I had the neck plate engraved with the bass's name at the local trophy shop and with my driver's license number in case it is ever stolen because there are no serial numbers on any Jay Turser instruments since they churn out so many so fast that they can hardly keep track of them.
I have not even touched any other Jay Turser bass, so don't apply anything I've said to any other model other than the 401-B with rosewood fretboard. While the bass cost me $212, I've spent $75 on set ups, about $35 on strings, about $50 on pickup/bridge covers, $50 for a Musican's Friend tweed case, $60 on a matching strap and $6 on engraving for the neckplate. So I spent more than she cost on her and I'm sure I'll spend more. Nothing is too good for this bass. I love it to death and will never let it go. Jay Turser should get some sort of award for this bass. This is the best kept secret in the bass world bar none. I can't count how often I'm asked where in the world I got it or what is it? When I say I paid about $200 for it new on April 10, 2005 nobody believes me. I have also heard there was a limited production run of natural finish one-piece Ash bodied Jay Turser 401's and I'd love to find one of those. They also come with a maple fretboard. I know I've rambled on about it, but somebody has to get the word out about these things. My final word, everything I have is for sale, except this bass and my 1979 Peavey Century bass head I now use only for rehearsals. // 10
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