Upgrade

A few months back I decided I was going to stick with the bass playing so I needed to upgrade my bass, at least a little.  I didn't have a ton of cash but figured I would take a peek at Guitar Center and see what I could come up with.  I spent about 3 hours there checking out different basses and finally settled on this:

4-string Schecter.  Not a high-end model by any means but still an affordable upgrade over what I had.  This one has 24 frets instead of the 20 I was used to, so the neck is about an inch and a half longer.  That resulted in me getting some fun tendonitis in the ring finger on my fret hand (natch!) where the finger snapped toward my palm and needed to be pried back into position, but I seem to have gotten over that for the most part now.  I actually had to return the first one I had because the neck had bowed so badly my fingers were getting caught under the strings while I played.  The canal where you insert the allen wrench for the truss rod was stripped and misaligned (factory defect!) so they wound up giving me a new one.  I got a free 3-year warranty too, so all in all not a bad deal. 

Anyway, its a nice looking bass and you have to love the bats on the frets.  Yeah, metal!!  Or whatever.  I'm thinking about picking up a 5-string later in the year when (if?) I get my bonus.  Not sure if I'll trade the Schecter in or not, I really like it.  I'll probably go back to a 20 fret though, I really don't need the extra frets and I kind of prefer the shorter neck.