Shocker to those of you who know me, but up for sale/trade is my Skjold 5 PSD. This bass is in excellent condition and is a great player. I truly love this instrument and am selling it for two reasons. The first is that this was my first Skjold, and it came from Pete's stock batch. I now know exactly what I want in a Skjold and am looking to place a custom order for one in the future. I can't afford to have a ton of money invested in various instruments laying around my house, so this one has to go to do that.
The bass is less than a year old and is immaculate. No scratches or nicks on it, except for the typical swirlies in the gloss around the knobs and above/below the pickups. Bass weighs under 8 pounds and is SUPER light. As with everything Pete does, this instrument just screams quality and plays like a mother. I got this bass to handle the Urban Gospel stuff I do and it just kills fort that.
Other details. Scale length is 35", but the design of Pete's basses makes it hard to notice. The bridge is placed at the very back of the body which brings the entire neck in closer to the body when strapped in. Fretwork is near perfect. The board uses a compound radius so that it is slightly more rounded toward the headstock for comfy low register playing, flattens out more up top for easy soloing and chording.
String spacing is 18mm, which is a nice feature. It's wide enough to make slapping easy, but it keeps things a bit tighter for faster finger style playing. The bridge is a custom hipshot made just for Skjold basses, and is extremely nice.
The Preamp is a custom venture between Pete and John East of J-Retro and U-Retro fame. It has a passive tone control, which when pulled out disengages the preamp and sounds great. The tone control works in active or passive. The EQ is a three band with a sweeping mid control. There is also a bright switch that is engaged by pulling out the treble knob. This bass has a pickup selector rather than a blend control which I really enjoy. The options are front pickup, blended series, blended parallel, and rear pickup.
These might look like soapbar humbuckers, but they are really split coil pickups underneath in a "reverse-P" orientation. They are open sounding and pure. They have a Jazz vibe about them with a modern sparkle and open bottom end. Very MTD-ish but even better IMO.
The cutaway and offset design of this bass allows for complete access to the last frets. I can place my middle finger on the 24th fret without my hand even touching the body of the bass at all. Quite amazing. The upper horn extends out so that the bass balances perfectly. No neck dive whatsoever, and with the weight being under 8 lbs, you can play this one on those extended gigs with no problems.
I need a bass to replace it in the meantime. Only trades I will consider at the moment are Laklands, 55-94, 55-02 (with Lakland pups and LH3 pre only in those models) or a DJ4 Skyline or USA with Aero's or Lakland pups, passive or with Audere pre. Honestly I would prefer to have the Skyline series plus cash, but if you have the USA models feel free to run them by me.
For cash deals, I'm looking at $2400 which includes shipping in the ConUS. If you live anywhere else PM me and we'll discuss the shipping charges.
The bass will ship in the Skjold branded Contego gig bag not pictured here. It's in perfect condition as well and is an excellent crossover bag with the protection approaching a HSC and the lightweight convenience of a gigbag.
Here are pictures below. Some of them make the bass appear darker than it really is, while others make it appear a bit lighter. In person, the bass is somewhat lighter than pictures 3 and 4 below, but but a tad darker than number 5. I think picture 6 is the best representation of the instrument, but a picture never does a bass justice. It's stunning in person. Ask questions!
