| I had an Indonesian Cirrus, second-nicest bass I ever had. These are strange beasts, Jeff, and need to be understood. They have a uniquely rich and deep tone and I found that they really do respond best to Peavey's own Cirrus strings...no other string I tried sounded quite as good. IMO this is a boutique bass at an assembly-line price...the Indonesians are very nicely made for non Japan/Korea Asian product. The scale and design make for a solid B bottom (very little brappiness), I found little deadness anywhere on the neck, and the sustain was excellent. I bought this when shopping for a Millennium BXP because it showed up locally at killer price when I was shopping...VERY glad I didn't get the Millennium! The tone is somewhat similar to the Millennium but much richer and better articulated with the unusual pickup design of the VLF pups. It is, IMO, a KILLER rock/pop bass...the 18v preamp system produces a thundering bottom so heavy that I had to dial it well back when recording and the most vivid and well-defined top end of any bass I've owned...seriously, for the hard rock stuff I was doing last month, I got the best, thickest, most well-positioned neck-pickup tone on this bass with ALL THREE BANDS dialed back to 0. I almost think the pickups might be built something like thin, short lipstick tubes, one coil per string, with the preamp voiced in a way that makes them sound extremely powerful. (There's relatively little magnetic pull on the pickups, so there couldn't be much actual voltage coming from the un-amplified pickup.) The top end of these pickups was VERY hard to tame...so hard, in fact, that I couldn't gig this bass. (I am an amputee, and must play pick-style.) It really is a whole level beyond the Millennium BXP. And at that price (probably gone by now), I'd have done my best to beat you to the deal. I'm hoping to replace my "one-that-got-away" Cirrus for under $450. (I don't think this kind of opinion violates policy; I suppose I'll find out soon enough.)
Playability wasn't the best IMO...I like a narrower neck. But the neck was relatively thin, and the string spacing really worked for my ability...I still tend to flop the B over the edge of the fingerboard on my Ibanez SR405QM. It always felt like a quality instrument. Comfort was a definite step down from my Ibanez SR405QM...it feels much more like a Stingray, and I wished it had a chamfer.
I think the Indonesians were only discontinued last year; I saw a PILE of clearout Cirruses on ebay after Christmas last year. Since then, I see post after post suggesting that this bass is a future classic. I don't think it's as versatile as a lot of the above-$500 basses, but what it does, it does VERY well. And while writing this, it occured to me what I could have done to make my old one worth keeping: change to a less-bright string! OUCH. (I got mine 6 years old with the Peavey strings that came on the bass when new. Those strings, even at that age, sounded better than the NEW RotoSound reds, D'Addario XLs and Sfarzo Alloys that I tried afterward.)
Perhaps the most telling statement on this bass is that Peavey still sells an American-made version, same engineering and hardware apparently, for *several* multiples of the one you saw.
Last edited by Braindancer : 02-01-2013 at 03:29 AM.
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