Get to have my hand on a 04' Fender Marcus Miller signature jazz bass that was made in Japan, and here's a few thoughts about it.  

Few ding/dents for a 10+ yrs old bass, nothing major.  The bridge volume knob had been modded to a stacked knob with bridge volume on top and tone on the bottom.  This is very practice and appearantly fairly popular mod for this guy.  Marcus doesn’t need that on his 77’ he’ll basically swap to another bass when he need a different sound

Specs:

• Ash body
• Maple neck / maple fingerboard with pearloid block and binding coated, very little chew up on the fingerboard, but nothing major. The glossy coat has a very nice vintage tint.
• 20 medium jumbo frets
• 3 bolt neck plate
• Badass II bridge
• Active and Passive switch
• Controls are: neck vol / stacked bridge vol and tone / treble boost / bass boost
• 9.5lbs on bathroom scale, the ash is slightly on the heavy side

Build:

Typical made in Japan quality, precision craftmanship, sometimes I complain they don't sounded very Fender but not this one.

Sound:

Man ...   chunky ash body with solid tone.  Low action makes it really fly.  Great 70's Jazz tone in passive with the fast attack and the active preamp gives a such strong Marcus flavour .   Very similar to a Sadowsky preamp with boost only high/low but it instantly adds the bite and bottom to the sound while not overloading the output bad suprisingly.   The tone knob makes it a versitile machine.   In general, this guy has the classic 70's ash/maple jazz bass sound with the active electronic pushing it further.   I've strung mine with a set of 45-105 Nickle string.  I would imagine putting a set of stainless steel string for that tighgher lower mid and a more aggressive top end.   It will be Marcus heaven.  

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Conclusion:

I'm digging it alot, haven't really played an ash/maple combo since I sold my Fbass BN5, the chunky 70's tone with that fast attack and energy .   It just makes me want to go home now and play more!

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