Honestly - it surpassed my expectations by a country mile.
Yeah, the "wear" is just OK... kinda like a Fender RW Bass... not gonna convince you close up, but from 10 feet away it looks good. The quality of the satin finish itself is good though having clear coat over the "worn" areas is a dead giveaway. Just another product of mass production.
The neck "feels" great - it measures 1.627" with my calipers, just a really nice broken in feel. The nut is fine, but I'll probably replace it eventually with a nice bone nut.
The pickups are good. Not "world class", and I won't say they sound as good as my vintage P Basses, but they are pretty good quality none the less. It has a PJ setup, but I'll probably just use the P pickup for most gigs. Still, with both pickups on it has nice snap and definition, so you PJ guys will probably dig it. The pickups probably get about a "7" out of "10" for me.... not the best, but certainly serviceable.
The hardware is "just ok". The bridge is fine, as are the tuners. The tuners seem to hold tune fine, though they aren't quite as smooth as a top quality set. The bridge adjusted just fine, and was your basic Gotoh 201 copy. I wish they had "aged" them as well, because it looks a bit odd having shiny chrome on a worn bass. Still, I'll likely add a vintage style threaded saddle Fender bridge and some Resolite tuners, and I can age that stuff myself so it matches.
Weight - it is a bit heavier then I typically like, but is by no means a "tank" I'm gonna guess it is somewhere between 9 and 9.5lbs... so not bad.
Overall I could really gig this bass in absolutely ANY musical situation that I might be in - rock, hard rock, Americana, roots rock, indie, alt country, old country, new country, shoegaze, psych, CCM, P&W, etc, etc.... just a fine bass, especially for the $$$. Yeah, I'll probably do a few upgrades/mods to make it a bit more suitable and comfortable for "me", but yeah....I could play it "as is". no worries at all.
If it seems like I'm being overly critical about a couple things, I'm just trying to be honest. It is a great bass for the money, but in this low of a price range you have to expect that the hardware will not be top quality, and the pickups won't rival Lollars. I got my LTD-204 for $200 used, but I would have been happy with it for the $350 new price that all the mail order stores are retailing it for.
Some pics -
