Welp, at the request of Officer Bukowski, I got me a Mustang Bass. It's the Japanese reissue and it's a pretty solid bass. My first go with it was a little... I don't know... weird. I've never bought a brand new bass, so obviously it felt really... NEW. Haha.
Anyway, it's built well... there is a little bit of a gap in the neck pocket on the right side, but not on the back or left side, so I think that's alright. Other than that, it's a beauty.
I'm becoming more of a thumpy, 60's flavoured palm mute kind of bass player, and the Mustang sounds AWESOME with palm mutes. Really great. Like raw yet still ballsy. People say that short scale basses don't have as much oomph to them, but both my Hofner and this Mustang seem to be even bassier than my P-Bass (ON SALE NOW!

One question: Since I've never bought a new bass guitar, I'm not very used to the sound of these brand new Fender strings. They're really... metallic sounding. I figure that once I dirty them up and wear them in they'll sound a little darker... woodier or whatever. Is that true? Or should I just get some new strings? I thought about putting some flatwounds on it, but I don't want it to lose the raw punch when I palm mute. Specifically the low E string sounds pretty weird when you play it open... almost like it's chorused. Weird. It's a very round sound and not that thumpy/dark.
Second question: Where would you recommend that I get a good red tort pickguard for it? I like the brown one it came with, but I've always thought red pickguards on Mustangs look reeeeally hot.
I want it to look like that. It didn't come with a "thumbrest", which I was just reading is not the proper term for that thing, but I'd like to install one. I don't use it, but I like how it looks.

Yep.
C