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5-string or BEAD?
- Thread starter mini-milli
- Start date
I vote make the trade. You will still have the four string vibe covered. I found myself in a similar situation a few years back. I strung up one of my fours to BEAD. It was cool, but just felt odd to me. I pretty much decided immediately to go with a five string. Once in my possession, my little brain seemed to be able to process the extra string easier than the BEAD four string.
Gimme a 5 string.
I still use the G string an awful lot to have it gone.
I still use the G string an awful lot to have it gone.
I imagine you’ll get a whole lot of conflicting answers but for me it’s been 5 strings for years now with no thought of going back to 4. I just can’t see any reason to go back.
The SR655 is a great bass, I have one and love it. La Bella flats and those Nordstrands are working very well.
This is the reason I switched to 5 strings. We were doing some soul covers and most were men’s keys that had to be transposed to female keys and the bass lines suffered badly going up a 4th in most cases and lost their power. Playing in D on the B string is so fat and mighty. I love it now and will never go back to full time 4 strings.
Get the EHB. I've had many SRs from 300s to premiums and the srms805. Now my only Ibanez is the EHB and the only other one I'm interested in is the new BTB multiscale.
I love detuners but the double just released too much tension and the strings went flop city, I'll only go one step with those.
See above.
my sandberg grand dark. 35" four string. i did the BEAD on it and a little AEAD but missed having the G. So now I'm back to EADG and a very light set of strings.
A 5 string bass plus only 5 semitones on the low end, with a 4 string bass tuned in BEAD you lose only 5 semitones on the high end. It's relatively a little bit, it has more to do with the "format", the hand positioning in scales and chords than with these 5 semitones. Scott Devine and Jeff Berlin, for example, don't give much importance to 5-string basses. I have a Sandberg 5 tuned BEADG, and a fretless 5 tuned in EADGC, because the difficulty to play in tune after the octave can be avoided by using another hand "format" and/or play in another region with the C string. A 4 string bass has a more comfortable neck, is lighter and for me also more beautiful. I would adapt the bass to BEAD.
Confirming GAS is what we do here. Get a new bass. You're welcome
Also, I had the chance to try the EHB in several flavors. If I was going to get a 5, it would most definitely be on the shortlist. Other 5's I've played were too heavy and had a fat neck. Somehow the EHB didn't feel fat at the neck, and the overall weight is really light. On the other end of the spectrum, the GSR205 is relatively cheap, and the one I played felt good. not too heavy or baseball bat neck. Where the GSR205 shines..... standard parts that are easy to mod.
If you've got money to burn.... Birdsong 5 string. You will not be upset.... If you want unique Bootlegger Ace 5. Not many people have tried the Ace 5 so idk.
Bootlegger is supposed to be coming out with a Absinthe 5 string bass too. It isn't on his site yet, but it's 2022 and supply chain is kinda a problem everywhere....
I converted a Lakland 4 string to BEAD. I thought I wouldn't miss the G, but I did!
It's all personal preference.
It's all personal preference.
Hell, a set of bass strings is like $20. Buy a 5 string set and slap it on one of your basses. That's a fairly cheap way to yay-or-nay the idea. Actually, I have used 5 string sets laying around. I'll mail you a set for testing if you don't want to spend the $.
The last time I owned a 5 string was over a decade ago. Recently I wanted one again as a creative tool to see if the low B would spawn any new ideas. The problem is that nowadays I prefer short scale basses, so 5-string options are limited. Also, the low B typically wants a little more length to really punch, so after doing some brainstorming, I decided to take my 32" scale frankenstrat bass and restring it BEAD. A bit of an adjustment as all of my G string notes now fall past the 5th fret on the D string (and I'm technically missing at least 4 of the very highest) but all-in-all it did the trick for me. Plus the extra 2" of the medium scale are convenient in light of the new B. So I say, go for the BEAD! If you're still wanting a 5 string afterward, you can always just get a new nut to turn the 4 back into EADG. Not too much of a hassle.
Get the 5-string. The Ibanez SGD655 (5-string version of your existing bass) is relatively light-weight and should be have very similar dimensions as your 4-string.
Just yesterday I dropped off a 35" scale 4 string Peavey Millennium USA to my luthier to convert it to B-E-A-D tuning. Can't wait to get it back. I only briefly owned a 5 string & felt this was the only way I'd continue to play my other 4 strings instead of buying a 5.
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