I'm going to try not to go too deep into "I love Rick Turner" mode, but I really respect the man, and I do love this bass. This bass has so many sounds! The neck soapbar sounds like a (giant) P bass, but with two of them you can blend to a very focused "jazzy" bridge pickup sound as well. Blend in the piezo and the sound gets massive, with lots of clarity and thump. If I A/B this and my other basses, they all sound much smaller in comparison.
The neck feels nice - I guess I'd describe it as "more P than J". This bass reinforces my opinion that a relatively thin rosewood laminate on a big fat piece of maple (please see photos below) is great for sound and feel. Fender may have introduced thinner rosewood boards as a cost cutting measure, but in terms of sound and resonance, it's the best of both worlds if you ask me!
These basses usually feature two carbon fiber rods in the neck, and although I can't see them I'm going to assume they're in there - it's a pretty stiff neck.Kinda light weight for a 5 string - somewhere between 9.25~9.5 pounds, and very well balanced, 35" scale, wearing it on a strap is easy and familiar, as it positions itself like a jazz bass.
The electronics all check out. It's an 18 volt system and controls are: stepped volume, magnetic pickup pan, magnetic-piezo pan, and a treble roll-off ("tone control"). There's also a tiny trim control accessible through the control cavity cover that I forget what it does. The cover is secured by stainless steel machine screws set into brass inserts - yay! I wish more builders would do this if you're going to need to change batteries every once in a while.
Comes with an extra set of black tapewound strings (Rotosound I think?) - they're worth keeping around because they really change the character of this bass into an almost-upright bass sound, and anyway they seem to last almost forever. Right now the bass is wearing a pretty new set of LaBella stainless steel flatwound set, which also last "almost forever" too I guess. There's a thin shim in the neck pocket to increase the range of adjustability on the Hipshot bridge, useful since this bass can make such a wide range of strings work. Of course this can be removed if you want/need higher action - for example, with the black tapewounds, or maybe nylon core type strings, etc.
Please note that this is not a new or near mint bass. It has some bumps and stuff. I think it looks beautiful, but if you like pristine, untouched instruments, please don't buy this bass. I've included lots of photos to help represent its condition. I took the photos with a regular iPhone SE, no fancy photo editing, and tried to choose the ones that look as close as possible to how the bass looks in real life.
Original (kind of dingy and sad looking) Turner gigbag included.
I'll split shipping with the buyer, but only USA buyers please.
Thank you!
