Two of my daughters play bass. Both have Fender imports. We bought a Fender Precision Special for her a couple of years ago. Black satin finish, rosewood fretboard - in your price range. Fender has other fairly good basses starting even less. You'll pay more for than you want to for the American made versions.
The only knock against Fenders is that they are noisy. I bought a Boss noise suppressor for her - she plays at church with me. That works well - I can adjust out the noise with almost no impact to the tone. I've used two of her basses to record with through a Sans-Amp and was able to eliminate the noise completely during recording.
Rodger
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Rodger
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