The rears of the P and J have elegantly carved, exquisitely smooth ribcage (or beer belly, of course) cutaways and it's at the back that the standard of the finishes of both can be best seen. The two-tone tobacco sunburst of the P and the cherryburst of the J are really lovely, with oh-so-subtle graduation from dark to light and an absence of any hard 'colour change' lines. The colours, to our eyes at least, are very well-suited to the shapes of the instruments too. The P is a nicely rounded, chunky take on a familiar outline, while the J features an equally well-known offset silhouette, but with a slightly more aggressive, tapered lower horn than we might have expected. The only aspect of the aesthetics of this pair that has us divided is the graphite scratch plate on the J. It looks great on the black model currently on the Status website (www.status-graphite.corn), but perhaps a little incongruous sitting on such an exquisitely finished translucent top. Whatever, the off-white 'plate on the P is spot on - there's more than a hint of the original '51 Precision about it and it's the perfect classic icing on a decidedly modern cake.

HARDWARE
We featured Status's in-house Hyperactive pickups and active circuitry in last month's "Animal Magnetism" pickup feature, and included the very two units we find on the P and J. Either bass can be supplied with a pair of single-coils (as on this J) or the P's combination of single-coil at bridge and split coil at neck. These are harnessed to a switchable 18v (for tons of clean headroom) active circuit with volume, pickup blend and stacked 2-band EQ controls. This makes for a decently flexible but contained and streamlined system - even the true active/passive switch is on a push/pull volume control so as not to clutter up the top.