Use – mostly for personal pleasure, but will be used for an occasional gig. My usual amp is an Ampeg Portaflex 500 through 2 4x10 Kustom cabs. Also sounds good with a Behringer 300w head.
Summary – Good value for money for this style of bass. I like this, already playing it a lot. Looks the part and sounds good. It is very reminiscent of a certain US manufacturer’s classic basses, one of which I used to own.
General - I have not had happy experiences with HB basses, which unlike HB guitars have often in the past been poorly made and sound terrible. This though is somewhat different, looks great, seems well made enough, but still far short of being beyond criticism. It does have that RB like growl – the neck pickup is a thing of beauty. It also has a very nice thin neck profile with a more traditional wide fretboard – a very different playing experience compared to more modern neck profiles and widths. The polar opposite of a jazz bass.
Pros – plays very well. Intonation and neck relief were perfect out of the box, and action height suited me too, so nothing to adjust. As it has acclimatised to my house I have had to make a small adjustment to the neck. The tuners seem fine. The growl and mids from the neck pickup are IMO what I am looking for in a bass of this style. The neck and body binding are really nice to have, and on the neck helps with the slick playing experience. The bridge pickup saddle makes a perfect wrist rest for a bit of slap bass.
Cons – a few minor finishing issues, some chrome missing from one of the bridge saddles, the odd bit of not quite tidy finishing, a few sharp fret edges at the dusty end. No fret buzz, but a lot of buzzing from somewhere around the pickups from any G (+/- one or two frets) played anywhere; this is a sympathetic mechanical buzz and you can’t hear it through an amp. The bridge pickup is set far too far from the strings, and the height adjuster screws are also what hold the chrome cover on. As these are screwed with springs over them into a plastic plate underneath the pickup the whole assembly is prone to moving. I re-engineered the setup to get the pickup higher and the saddle solidly mounted, which unsurprisingly has also eliminated the buzz I mentioned earlier. I’d rather have a higher output, but that’s what the gain control on the amplifier is for. It did arrive with the bridge pickup saddle badly bent – I am not a fan of Thomann’s new paper packaging, it definitely does not work as well as the blown plastic packaging did.
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