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Spector NS-4
Reviews Views Date of last review
1 8308 Mon March 22, 2004
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Recommended By Average Price Average Rating
100% of reviewers None indicated 9.0
4697Spector_-_body.JPG


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Description: Quilted maple body wings attached to 3-piece hard rock maple neck. Mother of pearl inlays on a Pau Ferro fretted fingerboard. 2 EMG DC humbuckers with 18 volt 2-band Haz Labs preamp. Gold hardware, gotoh tuners, proprietary bridge.


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RAM

Self-appointed ambassador to Jerzy Drozd

Registered: May 2000
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 4841
Review Date: Mon March 22, 2004 Would you recommend the product? Yes | Price you paid?: None indicated | Rating: 9 

 
Pros: Dead quiet electronics, even string-to-string balance, versatile tone, extremely well balanced
Cons: Heavy, can get a bit \"clanky\" if you play with low action

This bass has been with me since 1995, and has been my main workhorse for most of that time. It has a bright tone that cuts through everything, and switching the balance between pickups yields a great range of tones from a warm P-bass to a growly Jazz bass tone. It\'s a very modern-sounding bass, in that the clarity is undeniably undeniable.

The string spacing is good for finger-style players, as the strings are slightly closer together than \"standard\", but this might be bad for slappers. To me, this is odd, because this bass BEGS to be slapped! The width is somewhere between P and J bass width at the nut, and I\'d guess about 17 mm at the bridge. I\'m used to it, so it\'s no biggie. Also, the neck is very round. It\'s pretty thick profile is surprisingly comfortable for me, though some have complained that Spectors are like \"baseball bats\". I\'ve played Spectors that had thicker necks than this one, and I find it comfortable. The fretboard has a very flat radius, which I particularly like.

A downside to this bass is that it can sound a bit clanky if you don\'t play it with a light enough touch. I like a really low action (Carl at Lakland set it up for me and told me it\'s \"Entwistle-low\"), but if I\'m not warmed up enough, I hit the strings to hard and it\'s really clanky!

Another thing that really bugged me was that the fretboard was not level (several years of playing in a crazy environment like Chicago) and I sent it back to Stuart Spector. He called me with this bass in his hands and swore there was nothing wrong with it. Unhappy, I took it to Lakland for a freboard re-planing and re-fretting. Kudos to Carl at Lakland for the most amazing fretjob I\'ve seen. But, negatives to Stuart for not recognizing this bass needed work. Surprising, because when I bought this bass new, I noticed how well the frets were seated and dressed...the mark of a true professional. Now I\'m not 100% convinced.

At any rate, it did cost me a bit to have the fretboard worked on, but the bass now plays dreamily!

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Too young to be reflective; too old to be young.
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