Fender Player Fretless Jazz Bass - Polar White with Pau Ferro Fingerboard Reviews

Came back to review after nearly five years! This was to become my first actual Fender bass, after years of playing Squiers. I've named this one Jill Bass. She has an amazingly crisp sound, it goes down so easily on a recording and on stage. It just cuts right through. I have been on stage with her well over 100 times, pandemic and all, and don't really ever plan on replacing her. The pau ferro fretboard is gorgeous and gives off a delightful growl that I enhance with a little overdrive on the amp. For my purposes (bassist in a power trio) I can just FILL UP the soundscape on my frequency with the various overtones and general thumpiness of this bass. It's also very comfortable to play and hold, and I can swing her around on stage for hours and not get tired. I think the basic Fender Jazz bass is (after 40 years of playing) the pinnacle of a bass guitar in form and function. If I need deep tones I can roll back the bridge pickup and an extra level of boom peeks out of the sound, it's like I turned up a hidden bass knob. If I want her to get right up with the guitar I can roll back the neck pickup and get really bright. She's very comfortable to play and I absolutely treasure this bass.

Diving into the fretless world and this bass is a great way to do it. As always top notch customer service from the experts at Sweetwater and with past experiences I had no qualms about ordering without playing it first. Set up was right on, action/intonation/string height over the pickups all good. Pau Ferro looks well hydrated and I'll make certain of that at the first string change, coming up shortly. Pickups consistent front to back and side to side I guess you'd call it and all around lovely tones from this one.

Only have a couple hours playing time on it so far and already have the feeling there two ways to play. #1 is to really concentrate and try to nail everything perfectly, not a bad thing. #2 is to just let the "zen" of that smooth fingerboard come out and take you where it wants to. I can see why players who are magnitudes, that multiple, of talent beyond where i ever will be have played fretless. I can also see how a little of the "bends" goes a long way adn can be easily overdone.

Want a fretless as a test or challenge? Get this one.

excellent, best buy

I have always wanted a fretless fender jazz. I purchased this a few weeks ago and all the visions I had in my mind were surpassed by this amazing bass. finish on the neck and body were flawless, and although I would have preferred an unlined fretboard, the lines on this are subdued and blend in pretty well, especially from a bit of a distance. The sound is incredible. you will be hard pressed to find a bad tone from this bass. I play with both volumes wide open, and the tone at about half. It has an incredible punch and growl. Fender really did an amazing job with these pickups. The setup was nearly flawless out of the box. the intonation of the A string was a little off, and the action was slightly high for my taste. this was quickly remedied and I was off and playing away in no time. The only negative I can say about this bass was the strings it came with. Although they were flats, they were gritty and flimsy feeling. They had a really tinny tone as well. I swapped them within a few hours of getting it with a set of Labella flats. Wow did this bass sing. I am extremely happy with my purchase. oh, one other note, the pickguard is slightly off white. This was not so visible in the pictures. I like it better in person than I did on the website. the pickguard is just slightly darker, adding a nice depth to the overall appearance.

A Fretless Jazz bass is a very specific genre of bass that should be able to produce the tones of a stand-up instrument in a more portable and easy to play form. This bass can do that in spades at a price point that is beyond expectations. Jaco created the first fretless Jazz bass, as you probably know. This bass is darn close to the Jaco signature model - with one fixable exception. The Players Series Jazz bass has the famed alder body, single coil pickups, round ceramic tone cap (just like vintage 1960s and 70s Jazz basses), and a maple neck topped with Pau Ferro (just like the Jaco sig model). What makes this model cost... less is the reduced luthier time on finishing the top of the Pau Ferro wood fretboard. The wood itself is gorgeous and the work up to assembly of the bass is very good. All one needs to do is remove the strings at the gears, take some very fine sandpaper (1200+) to gently smooth the Pau Ferro until it is glossy to the touch. (Go very easy - it won't take much work to make a huge improvement.) MIcro-fiber clean the fretboard before rubbing in a small amount of orange oil and beeswax to condition and darken the wood. Let it soak in overnight, then dry with a clean cotton cloth. Put the strings back on and you will have a bass with no weak links - other than the pots (which are from china). This bass is a tone monster with amazing touch sensitivity, thump and growl. She sounds huge plugged into a solid state or a tube amp or straight into your recording interface. A real pleasure to play which has allowed me to up my playing time and improve my chops. Isn't that what all us players are really looking for? An instrument that helps you play and sound better? Here it is. And btw, thank you Brendan Murphy for being the best sales engineer ever!

The price point lies. You get a really great quality bass with this Player Series. I own a few fretless basses and really don't need the lines, love the tones though. The action really close to perfect right out of the box. Ready to go and I was pulling Jaco like tone right off the rip. If you want to get into Fretless playing this is a great place to start. Already played mine at Two shows and it didn't disappoint. Tight bottom end and a little sparkle on the top. I know I'll get some people who will disagree but use round wounds for a better response and more of the growl you hear on some of the greatest fretless recordings. You can't go wrong with this one.

There's nothing fancy going on here, and that is exactly the way a Jazz - especially a fretless Jazz - should be. The stock pickups are remarkably good. The necks on the MIM Player models are excellent, easily the high point of every current Fender MIM instrument. And although many out there may not realize it, pau ferro is a phenomenal material for a fretless bass fingerboard - I personally prefer it to ebony, and I've been playing fretless for over 25 years. Pau ferro will stand up to the abuse of roundwound strings (VITAL if you are looking for the Jaco tone), and I think it looks pretty cool too.
My only gripe is the usual questionable MIM quality touches ... my Jazz came with lovely grooves *behind* the nut, from where a "luthier" in Ensenada went a little crazy with the nut files. Doesn't affect playability (and you can't see it with the strings on ... which is probably why the instrument wasn't flagged as a B-stock), but it's a reminder that the bass was assembled where it was.
However, all in all, this is a great fretless Jazz at a killer price point, regardless of whether this is your first fretless or your umpteenth.

This should be a great bass, and the components are all solid, but the attention to detail in the build — as seems to be the case with just about every Mexican-made Fender, and many of their U.S.-made instruments as well — is just not there.

The fingerboard edges are not just sharp — no comfortable rolled edges here — they're actually *rough* because of excess bits of the satin polyurethane from the back of the neck going a bit over the edge. Some also was slopped on the fingerboard itself in one spot. A bit of light sanding could fix that.

The pickups are misaligned in the cavities. The neck pickup was screwed way down and "pinned" under the pickguard; I had to remove the pickguard and unscrew the pickup entirely to be able to raise it. The bridge pickup is slammed against the top edge of the cavity, with such a gap below it that you can see the wires.

The volume and tone pots are cranked all the way down, so the stems stick out so far that you can see them below the knobs, especially the small tone knob.

But the worst, most egregious flaw: THE TRUSS ROD IS OFF CENTER. I have never seen this on even the cheapest, crappiest bass. Unbelievable. (See photo.)

I managed to get myself somewhat invested in the instrument by putting some work into addressing these issues, but honestly now that I list them all out here, I feel like I should just return it.

Beware!