1971 Yamaha SA-70 Vintage Hollowbody Short Scale Bass Sunburst w/ Case

Up for sale, a 1971 Yamaha SA-70 hollowbody bass in excellent condition and in perfect working order, complete with the original hardshell case. This vintage Japanese-made short scale Yamaha features a hollow maple body and a maple neck capped by a bound rosewood fretboard. Acoustically warm and resonant, the SA-70 has a certain airy quality and treble articulation faithfully captured by the stock pair of humbuckers.The pickups are full and round-sounding, with plenty of breadth in the low end and good detail in the upper midrange. The neck pickup is wooly and thick, while the bridge pickup has more nasally cut and focused attack. The center detent Balancer knob ensures a smooth gradient between the two pickups. This SA-70 weighs 8lbs 2oz, benefitting from a professional setup here at Mike & Mike’s Guitar Bar with 45-100 roundwound strings, easy-playing action, and accurate intonation.The maple neck has a substantial C-shaped profile carve with full shoulders in every register, measuring .865” deep at the 1st fret and 1.040” at the 12th. The bound rosewood fretboard features rounded split parallelogram pearloid inlay and practically perfect original slender fretwire. This bass plays cleanly up the 30” scale with a straight neck and a responsive, optimally-adjusted truss rod, and the fretboard measures 1.650” (42mm) in width at the zero fret, just forward of the carved bone nut. On the headstock, the original tuning machines turn smoothly and hold accurate pitch, with oversized black plastic buttons. There’s a moderately-sized touched-up ding on the treble side headstock edge, along with a missing piece of binding in this area.The pickups are governed by Master Volume and Tone controls plus the center detent Balancer. The original trio of knobs are present, with ridged grips for easy swells and on-the-fly adjustments, and the raised five-ply pickguard rounds out the plastics, with some requisite scuffing along the pick path and a trio of small filled mounting holes in the plastic where a “tug bar” was previously mounted. The chrome-plated bridge cover and trapeze tailpiece have plenty of shine, and the bridge cover has an adjustable foam mute with two thumbscrews, plus a rosewood base. The F-holes have thin plastic membranes mounted inside, designed to reduce feedback at high volumes.Cosmetic wear on the gloss Sunburst finish is limited to one moderately-sized ding adjacent to the output jack, limited buckle rash on the back, and just a handful of tiny nicks on the body as a whole. The neck profile retains its smooth gloss.The original Yamaha-branded hardshell case is included.