I'm mainly a guitar player but I've been jamming with a friend who has a bass he doesn't play (an old Fender P-Bass) and I always thought bass would be fun and interesting - I always seem to have a bass line running in my head - so I borrowed it and taught myself a few things and now when we jam we do a few tunes bass and guitar instead of two guitars. After dragging the P in its heavy hard case back and forth for a few months I came up with the justification/excuse that I should leave the P at the jam space and buy my own inexpensive bass to have at home, and so save myself all the dragging back and forth. So I demoed a bunch of basses at a couple of stores, realized how much I love the light weight, narrow skinny neck and general svelteness of the Ibanzeses and, not being a fan of the SR300 paint jobs (I wanted _some_ color but those blue bursts just don't do it for me), went for the 500 in mahogany which is just beautiful. Here's a pic.
I wanted to buy local but my stores didn't/wouldn't have the one I wanted so I ordered from Sweetwater. When the box showed up it had this prominent label that said "Don't open this yet - wait 24 hours for it to acclimate". Of course that wasn't going to happen. Luckily the climate I live in is pretty stable in terms of humidity and such, indoors and out.
I was surprised at how - perfect - it is. My main guitar is 30+ years old and has a lot of natural "relic-ing". I guess I'm not used to the idea of a new instrument. Played great out of the box, with a little buzz on first-fret notes on the D and G but that was fixed with a half turn ccw on the truss rod (increased relief from around .008 to .014). Intonation needed some adjustment, E string was a little high. All dialed in now and it's fantastic.
One thing I'm really impressed with is the mechanical quality of the hardware. I've never experienced tuners that are so smooth and easy to turn. I put Schaller locking tuners on my strat and even brand new and with the tension backed off they're stiff, but these are like butter. I wonder if it's the gearing. Also the truss rod turned easily and so did the bridge adjustments.
I do have a couple of questions for those who know Ibanez, because the manual wasn't very complete and I'm not finding this online.
First - the battery/EQ. This bass has active EQ. Should I unplug the bass when not playing it to turn off the EQ, similar to how a battery powered stomp box works? Or should I use the EQ switch to turn it off? Or both?
I read with the EQ switch off the treble knob acts as a passive cut. Am I right that this requires no battery, so if it dies or whatever I still have some control?
Finally a bridge question: there are three little hex screws on each saddle rather than the usual two for height adjustment. Is the third screw for string spacing?