Fender Player Mustang Bass PJ - Sienna Sunburst Reviews

Fenders Mustang bass plays and sounds great. Sweetwater does a good job taking pictures of the guitar you're buying and my sales rep. Joe Schafer made the transaction very easy. I changed the strings to Ernie Ball Flat Wounds as they are my preference and the Mustang is even more to my liking.I would recommend this instrument to anyone looking for a short scale bass.

This bass is truly a work of art. The short scale takes a little while to get used to coming from a full scale bass. But once you're familiar with the frets it's a really good bass to have on hand. I love the simple volume and voicing knobs and it is just a classic. Love this bass and a must have for Jimi Hendrix Experience fans.

Being a guitar player, I always felt odd playing a bass. On the gigs that I was asked to play bass, my hands always cramp up doing the fun finger yoga. A buddy of mine suggested this Mustang bass. I played his, and I really enjoyed it, so I needed to buy one for myself. The shorter scale feels familiar, and I really love the maple fingerboard on this bass. The pickups sound so nice, especially that P-style pickup.

I needed a bass to round out the guitarsenal, this one is perfect.

Great guitar ! Love the short scale... good action ... recommend for beginner to advanced players!

I was doing home recordings with my electric and needed an instrument to record bass parts. I didn't really want to get a full-sized bass but came across this short scale. I viewed the video reviews online and like what I heard and saw as many were very favorable. In addition to the comfortable size, I was sold on the PJ configuration which gives one access to a good range of sounds to experiment with. I frequently use this in home recoding sessions and I am very happy with the sound it produces. It doesn't hurt that it is very nice to look at.

The one downside is this: it's hard to find a gig bag for short scale basses.

Completely new to bass.
Decided on a short scale, very happy with that decision.
Love the instrument.
Came with standard round wound strings, which are pretty noisy when sliding up and down.
Swapped them out with flat wound ones, and it's perfect.

Short scale was great for me coming from guitar, love learning difference between the pickups and each of its tones. I now own this and a P Bass and the Mustang was great to play, gives you many choices for tone.

I've played bass for many years (well, I play guitar and own basses!). I didn't even know that short scale bass was a thing! I have an American Jazz Bass, but it's heavy and long for my shoulder, arm and fingers. So short scale seems like the solution. So far this bass is filling the role. It's far more comfortable to play than the full scale.

I took off 1/2 star because there's a very slight neck dive, probably because of how light the body is. I'm using a Fender elastic strap and that takes care of the issue.

The top is beautiful and, as always, the setup from Sweetwater is great.

First time ever trying to play. This mustang makes it easy to learn. Love the color thanks to Gage (also my son's name). Karma.. Still trying to figure out what sound I like but it's fun trying. Will definitely be back to Gage when I get this down. Already looking at other basses.. Thanks again Gage and Sweetwater.

In Dec of 2021 I started looking. Chose this model for it's short-scale, PJ config and the lighter Mustang body. The truss adjustment is at the headstock, so I picked the Player over the American version. I don't like dark fretboards no matter what they're made of, so I picked this finish in order to get Maple. Then it came to the photos based on the paint job, wood grain and weight. These were flying out the door back then. Seemed they were more on the way every day or so. I finally got one, right weight 7lbs 10 oz, but it had a dark hue (in the gold part) compared with my Am Pro Strat which is a truly beautiful example of Sienna Sunburst. I sent it back for a 7lbs 6oz with a lighter finish. A couple days later there were 4 more, and one with the right color burst, 7lbs 13oz. So I bought it too. I was able to do a back to back comparison for a full week and sent #2 back. I took the plastic off #3. Try that anyplace but Sweetwater !

All this talk of aesthetics, what about the instrument ? Its body and neck are of good quality, so is the finish on mine... The standard hardware is decent and ought to last awhile. Saddles fully adjustable and lubricated nicely. Nut is dressed ok and the fretwork isn't too bad - a little gritty on the ends. They all had a little neck-dive - nothing like an SG-style unit. You'll have to gently nudge the neck on occasion.

And for a month or two I was pretty happy, looking forward to a string change. Flat-wounds seem be a popular choice for this bass. They all needed the action setup for one reason or another. I also thought the he J pickup needed dialed in some. The P pickup was outstanding until it died. Yes. The J worked fine, the P went to 1/4 of it's previous volume. Ohmmeter test had wonky readings in the P position.
The ear test revealed noise and lack of "clarity" even with no Gain.

I finally replaced the switch with a pan/blend pot. This involved surgery and about $80 of parts on a brand new instrument. The smaller pot required a pickguard change, didn't like the OEM black anyway. Looks a little different now. I then did a setup. The truss had no tension on it whatsoever. Yeah I used flat wounds.

So I picked this up a couple of weeks ago, my first short scale bass. Before getting it I thought this would be a fun little bass to play every once in a while but this thing is the only bass I've played since I got it, it's a blast and the tone I'm getting from this paired with my Sans Amp preamp just WOW, seriously in love with this bass. The build quality on mine is excellent, finish is perfect, neck shockingly is almost perfect(found one dead fret but that should be an easy fix) no sharp fret edges and from the factory the neck was almost perfect just had to do a little turn on the truss rod and she was perfect, I'm not a fan of roundwound strings so tossed a set of LeBella flats on her and she came alive. I would highly recommend this bass to anyone from beginners to pro's. Their are 2 reason for the 4 star review, first is the pickup switch, it just feels cheap,and the second reason is the bridge pickup, it's so weak it's pointless to use solo so I'll be swapping that out for something different soon along with the switch. But overall this is a solid bass and glad I made the decision to get it.

I've had this bass for 3 years now, and from the beginning it sounded amazing. I like the fact that it's short scale because it fits my body better, but over time the volume, tone, and pickup knobs and switches start loosening, and move too far in positions that cannot be resolved without some help. I like that it has both P and J pickups, and it's a good bass, but I've had minor quality issues.