Too late - the blue one just sold and I've just finished boxing it up. :-(
I am deliberately not opening the orange one because I am afraid I will bond with it and then it will be too painful to let it go!
The ABZ arrived today, so I let her say a quick hello to her cousin before her cousin went into the box.
If you close your eyes, it's pretty tough to tell the ABZ-5 and the NG2-5 apart! The ABZ is a quarter pound lighter - not super noticeable. This ABZ has the same Darkglass preamp so it's very similar tonally.
It is very cool, I like it a lot. It has good usability across the entire range on the tone controls. I really like that it has a low mid and high mid, which is quite useful as compared to low, mid, and high. The the one quibble is that you make a trade-off in that there is no tone control available when in passive mode. But if you run active mode with everything flat, it is the same as passive mode anyway.
The ranges on the pots are very well-thought-out, they are usable across their entire range, as opposed to being to the point of ridiculousness at the end of the range. Hey complements the instrument very well, and sounds good both clean and dirty. Overall, an excellent pairing.
