LeftyBassist.com

I have a chance to trade for a 2006 Fender P Diamond Anniversary Bass (it's a lined fretless). It's a lefty of course, supposedly rare, and it has the S1 switch. I would be trading a lefty Bongo 5 fretless for it. I don't love the Bongo, and in my band I don't really use a 5 string, but otoh I prefer unlined for fretless. They were of equal value new anyway. I know it's subjective, but in your opinion - good trade?

That P bass didn't start out fretless.

Pretty sure the Bongo is worth more too, given Fender's prices were lower when the diamond anniversary series came out. Their prices may be the same now, but that P bass is a slightly different animal than a current American Precision bass too.

It is not a straight trade I would do at face value, but you need to decide what's best for you.

IMO the S1 switch is useless on a P bass too.

Interesting Andrew thanks

I agree 100% with Andrew. And that's correct, the PBass wasn't originally fretless.

Thanks for the great advise guys, I decided to pass on the trade. I really appreciate the honesty and expertese shown so often on this forum.

Me to...

Andrew,

Can you please tell me why you think the S-1 switch is useless on these 2006 P-basses? I don't know jack about what the new grease circuits sounds like, but I am not wanting to mod a bass that I hope will one day have value as this fretless fool did. It seems to me that I can get a pretty good single coil and split coil tone out of the S-1 switch. Isn't that what the difference between series and parallel is? Thanks in advance. Cheers.

If you're getting tones from the S-1 on your P-bass that work for you then the S-1 is worth you having, but generally the consensus is that the S-1 option was not useful on the P bass (hence it no longer being on the new ones).

I personally pulled it out of my Fender P that had it and installed a control harness from Butch at Bayou Audio and was happier with that.

Thanks for you point of view Andrew. I have issue with the statement it wasn't useful in the P or it would still be available. I believe that they also pulled the S-1 from the J in '08 as well as the P. Why do you think this would have occurred? Cheers.

Removing "The general consensus..." from what I previously said about the S-1 not being useful changes my statement though. Fender removed the S-1 from both the P and J because it was a feature that most people did not find useful. It would've been a more expensive part to include on the bass and with people mostly not using it, it must've made sense to Fender to remove it.

This makes sense and you are right I inadvertently changed the meaning of what you had said. Sorry for that and all the best. Cheers!

I thought the S-1 switch was very useful. I tried it on a lefty Precision at the local Sam Ash few years back, and it's purpose was clear: if you even start thinking the bass doesn't sound all that great, push in the button and see how much worse it could sound!

LOL. This is a great post! Thanks for making me smile. Cheers.

And yet there are other people in the world such as zackoff on TB that have this to say "I'd say just make sure you get something that allows for series wiring... The S1 switch on a Fender will do it, the switch on a Reverend XL will do it, and one of the switches on a Jaguar will do it. I wouldn't buy a J without it because most of what I play requires it. As for the most versatile J-style bass... Fender Jaguar gets my vote for sure. Has a ton of options on top of the series/passive combo that I normally rwak." Cheers.

Very different on a Jazz style bass. I have a series/parallel switch on my Regenerate Axiom (essentially a fancy jazz style bass) and find it useful on that bass.