Status Shark

[kristoffer]

A friend of mine has a Status Shark 5-string bass that he want to sell and I've borrowed it to try it out and to see if it's anything I would like to buy. The neck is really nice, and I also like the kind of p-bassy sound I get from it. The bass is modified with some kind of active preamp with bass/treble controls, but the sound of the eq isn't great and the treble has quite a lot of hiss and noise when used.

The strings are quite old, and I don't have any five strings sets at home, and my main concern is that the B-string doesn't sound very good at the moment, but it might be that it's really old.

Has anybody any experience with the Status Shark, especially the 5-string? I Don't have a 5-string at the moment, and I kind of need one, but if it's hard to get a nice sound out of the Sharks b-string i might have to look for something else.

Maybe worth putting another preamp and or change microphone?

Thanks
/kris

[kristoffer]

I played the bass a couple of hours last night and it was quite late, and I didn't want to disturb my neighbors, so I played without the amp. The bass sounds quite fantastic unplugged, and it's really easy to play. It sounds good through the amp as well, but not fantastic, so it might be an idea to change the pickup and/or preamp. I think I would like to have the option to swap between both passive and active, and I'm thinking about the putting a P-retro preamp in there, and then a really good pickup as well.

Any suggestions or ideas?

I'm also thinking about changing color (from wood to some kind of white) as to change the pickguard into a nicer color.

/k

[KeithPas]

You can purchase Status pickups and electronics from their website.