I paid $229 for this Dean Edge-1 five string. Put D'Addario light gauge chromes on it and played it for a year and a half and never once had to adjust the truss rod or bridge. It was the best sounding bass I ever played at my church. 
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I love cheap basses!
- Thread starter bigdaddybass12
- Start date
Same here. Been looking at selling my ray4 for a ray34, but my ray4 is solid. Neck grain is north/south,
I’m an unapologetic Squier fiend. My #1 is a VM telebass that I defretted, also the most expensive bass I own, as I bought it new for $300 in 2011. I sold my Carvin, as it went unused on the rack, returned a Gibson as it wasn’t as comfortable. My other basses are: a pair of CV P basses I got used for $200 and $150 respectively (sold my MIM P bass after getting the first one), a Grote Hofner club bass copy that was $160 through Amazon, and a hand-me-down fretless Peavey foundation and a $120 used T-20. I LOVE cheap basses. They’ve never let me down, or felt in some way “inferior” to more expensive basses. Every bass is just some wood, magnets, metal bits, and strings after all.
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I de fretted it and popped out the old dots, filled the dots and the old fret lines in with color matched epoxy and re surfaced the fingerboard. Not easy but a fun project!
Ric5
Inactive
- Jan 29, 2008
- 29,772
- 30,452
- Disclosures
- I like 5, 8, 10, and 12 string basses
I really like this bass here ... built from cheap parts from ebay. It is a 32" scale 5 string bass. The body is an epiphone ebo body.
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Ric5
Inactive
- Jan 29, 2008
- 29,772
- 30,452
- Disclosures
- I like 5, 8, 10, and 12 string basses
The cool part of cheap basses built with cheap parts is they need work to make them a good bass ... so they become a project. I had to work on the frets on that neck because the neck is not flat. Also the parts used do not fit together. They need to be modified to fit. And in an era when many people say a 5 string bass has to be 35" ... I have one with a good low B at 32" and the B is .125.
And I did not spend thousands of dollars on this bass!
Ric5
Inactive
- Jan 29, 2008
- 29,772
- 30,452
- Disclosures
- I like 5, 8, 10, and 12 string basses
Here's another one ... $147 from ebay ... I spnet more than that fixing it up ... but it is still a cheap bass ... I got dressed up Van Halen style last year. It currently has a 4 band Audere preamp. The pickup is wired for single / parallel / single operation.
Ric5
Inactive
- Jan 29, 2008
- 29,772
- 30,452
- Disclosures
- I like 5, 8, 10, and 12 string basses
D
I dunno, but I'm having trouble thinking of a design/quality difference that would make a bass stiffer than another played the same difference from the bridge.
But here are some things I can think of that MIGHT account for your experiences;
1. Age and type/brand of strings on the different basses
2. Location differences of the bridge pup relative to the bridge (e.g., 60s vs 70s pup spacing).
I be been building my own cheap Basses from scratch. Costs about $200/$300 and I get to use the top quality parts.
beautiful basses... you have CNC router to make all bodies and necks?
I'm in the camp of almost every bass I own is cheap. Mostly stuff from Rondo (SX, Douglas and Brice). I'll eventually thin the herd, but it has allowed me to learn a lot about setup, what I like, and different configurations.
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