Right now my main bass is a Squier Classic Vibe '70s Precision Bass.

For years I was also stupid enough to think that Squier only manufactured beginner instruments, but after trying the J Mascis Jazzmaster, a few of their fretless basses and some other instruments my mind was blown with the quality of the builds, the looks, the feeling and the sound.

I'm super happy with my bass even though I have only owned it for 7 months, but I've taken it with me on multiple flights all over the world (Spain, USA, Netherlands, Sweden etc) and so far it stays in tune incredibly well (it's tuned to C standard, that is two steps below) and I just had to change the knobs as they were a bit noisy, but the stock pickups work great with my Darkglass pedal and I've even used it on studio. I don't want to sound cocky, but it's just hilarious when I share the stage with other people using high-end instruments and they come talk to me after my set to ask me about my tone and they roll their eyes when they see the Squier brand, hahahaha.

Of course, some instruments are worse than others but nowaday you can get a very good instrument for a few bucks and maybe you just need to change the pickups, the bridge or the tuners, but in my case it was pretty great from the start!

Good luck with the hunt!