Actually, it has loads of little dings, but it wears them well. I suspect it's the nature of the koa wood. Surprisingly, the case seems to be brand new. The foam doesn't even have a memory of the exact shape of the bass.
When it arrived, the setup was as bad as I have ever seen. I have no idea how the previous owner ever played it. It was playable for about 9 frets, but the action started to get up there. The neck pickup was set so high that fretting any note above the 12th would put the string directly in contact with it. The neck had a bunch of bow to compensate for this, and the nut and bridge were both raised up as well. The strings were ultra-lite on a 32 scale neck, so they were plenty loose to work around the action as long as you stayed in the lower positions.
Step one, adjust the pickup heights. Step two, change strings and balance pickup gains. Step three, bring the bridge and nut down to normal positions. Step four, start working the truss rods and tweaking the bridge as the neck straightens itself out.
A month later and the truss rods have seen something on the order of 3/4 of a turn, maybe a bit more, in 1/8 to 1/4 turn increments. It's just about dialed in, though I may have taken out a bit too much relief.
One other oddity is that some of the pearloid inlays had to be pressed back into position. The bass and case arrived in perfect condition, so it didn't appear to be mishandled. Rather I would suspect that this was a result of temperature changes the bass experienced during its travels. I suspect that pearloid and ebony don't expand and contract at the same rates.
I have to say that the Signature electronics take some getting used to. There's an awful lot of variety there to get a feel for how all the controls interrelate. I put on a set of Elixir strings, and they seem a bit rubbery in the top end to me, so I think there's more tone in this bass that will appear with the next string change. I think I'll try coated DRs next, although the current setup wroked very well at an XMas party I did a couple weeks ago.
One great thing about the 32 scale is that regular long scale strings work fine. The bridge and tailpiece are pretty far apart as compared to the typical all-in-one bridge/tailpiece, so it can handle long scale strings easily. The fat part of the E string just barely reaches the machine with the Elixirs.
I'll write again to say how impressive the tone is when I eventually change the strings. I may take the Elixirs off early and put them on the Spector fretless that I never play as an excuse to replace them sooner. They might fit and they'll have an appropriate tone for that bass.
-Bob
