Just got my Bass put together last night. Jim Crawford of San Diego assembled it (it needed holes drilled and stuff that I couldn’t handle in my apt.) and did a GREAT job.
Installed are Bartolinis a; 75 CBJS-S Jazz in the neck position: a MV 5C-BC in the Music Man position and a NTMB 5.4 A/P pre amp.
The Bass Body is Warmoth G-5, swamp ash with quilt maple top with a rock maple with rosewood neck bound and blocked in pearl. I had D’Addario XL170-5 strings installed. The strings were supposed to go through the body but weren’t long enough.
First Take: through a Peavey Max Bass Pre hooked up in my studio. (Can’t wait to try it through my rig!!)
Wood combo has all the acoustic punch I thought it would.
Jazz pickup; Very clear a bit lower output than the MM pickup but totally useable, allows the punch of the woods to play through, through my monitors and through headphones, punchier than I thought it would be. Solid lows (B string included) and yet plenty of “air”.
When mixed with the MM pickup a smooth yet punchy combo tone results like a Jazz Bass but not quite so “scooped” more than likely my setting of choice.
The MM pickup solo sounds very full, tight & wide range, somewhat like my early String Ray sounded (late ‘70s)only smoother.
In all settings the punchiness of the wood still played its role in the tone. The strings have that “new string” sound and they’re not strung through the body yet so I tried, (keeping this in mind) to not allow this to influence my judgment.
The preamp: active, in every setting of pickup balance, the tone controls did as you would expect. The high control added air that wasn’t brittle. The mid centers (three way switch-able: 250hz, 600hz,800hz) had plenty of cut and boost and the centers are at useable frequencies, adding or cutting tones that you would need to set yourself into a mix live or give an engineer what ever he wanted in the studio. The bass control will be the one I use the most, you can get an almost compressed low end (organ type tone with soft touch finger picking) that will be great for slow songs that need sustaining notes. The middle and bass will easily send FXs & preamps into overdrive (and maybe FOH engineers too).
When switched into passive mode there is just volume and balance. With the, on the preamp, overall output control I can balance the active and passive levels so when switching there is no change in volume if I want.
Overall I’m very happy with the wide range of sounds the bass gets and will either switch to longer strings or Carvin string through ferrules so I can string through the body.
A combination of vintage punch and modern wide range response, this bass plays as good as it looks and responds to touch just like I had hoped it would.
