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Ibanez basses played by pros?
- Thread starter jonnybass1
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- ibanez soundgear
I'm a full time musician, and Ibanez basses make up the majority of my rotation. The Premiums are all surprisingly good quality for the money, and you can usually find used Premium or MIJ/Prestige basses for pretty cheap compared to their list price. Most of the Premiums I've played and owned needed a bit of work, usually fret/fingerboard or nut work, but afterwards they play as well as any bass above their price point.
On the guitar side, I only associated Ibanez with high school metal bands... until I went shopping for a guitar and stumbled on the Artcore series of hollowbody/semi-hollow guitars. Beautiful instruments and popular with the jazz crowd. I only noodle on guitar, but I use an AS53. Great tone, amazing value.
It's the same with Yamaha I think. You can get a Yamaha bass for £500, but you can also get one for £80. They would be much more appealing if the low end stuff got a different label, and it is about the label to some extent.
These guys have been paying the bills with this tune for nearly half a century, so I guess that makes them professionals...
So much of this debate seems to come back to signature tone, and unlike a Fender P or J or a Stingray there is no Ibanez signature tone. (I wonder if that is why EBMM has trouble building a sustained market for the beautiful Caprice and their other non-traditional configurations?) I throw my lot in on the side of bang for the buck and versatility of the Ibanez’s except...
I actually like the look of the Soundgear range, but far more important to me is the ergonomics and weight. My bass is a 2015-16 SR755NTF (PJ config, Nordstrand designed pickups) and it was specifically made and marketed as a Fender-ish sound. It may not absolutely be a P or a J but more than close enough to me and I’d say most listeners. However, I find the contours of the top and back of the body to sit much more comfortably and more in line with my shoulders than my previous Fender J and whilst I can gat along with the neck of a Fender the shallow neck profile and flatter fingerboard of a Soundgear is far more relaxing and easier for me to move around on.
that said, I can get the same ergonomics with a significant variation in pickup types, pickup brands and pre-amps as well as different mixes of tone woods. So whilst there is no signature sound to a Soundgear there is a signature feel, a signature ergonomics which works for me and a great many others. Fenders don’t “play like butter” for me even if they do for tens of thousands of others but my Ibby comes close. (Oh, and I tried an Ibby ATK and it didn’t work for me at all.)
I actually like the look of the Soundgear range, but far more important to me is the ergonomics and weight. My bass is a 2015-16 SR755NTF (PJ config, Nordstrand designed pickups) and it was specifically made and marketed as a Fender-ish sound. It may not absolutely be a P or a J but more than close enough to me and I’d say most listeners. However, I find the contours of the top and back of the body to sit much more comfortably and more in line with my shoulders than my previous Fender J and whilst I can gat along with the neck of a Fender the shallow neck profile and flatter fingerboard of a Soundgear is far more relaxing and easier for me to move around on.
that said, I can get the same ergonomics with a significant variation in pickup types, pickup brands and pre-amps as well as different mixes of tone woods. So whilst there is no signature sound to a Soundgear there is a signature feel, a signature ergonomics which works for me and a great many others. Fenders don’t “play like butter” for me even if they do for tens of thousands of others but my Ibby comes close. (Oh, and I tried an Ibby ATK and it didn’t work for me at all.)
I think you may be right, insomuch as most of the Ibanez line uses or used dual-coil soapbars*, while the big box American basses (Fender, Gibson, Ric, G&L and EB) absolutely had their own more or less proprietary thing going. Your point about the Caprice is well made. EB can't sell the Caprice because most folks who want a P or P/J would just go buy a Fender without even thinking about which bass might be better overall. G&L has some of the same thing going with the SB-1, but my uneducated guess is that they sell even fewer basses period than EB.
*Soaps have as much or as little of their own sound as the various P and J combos, but yeah, the generic ones do seem to be dual-coil blades, which I could argue DO have their own sound...
my bass (not a pro, but I'm-a sneak this image in here under the guise of talking about pups) has EMG MM5CS pups, a BTC and a VMC. I suspect it'll sound like a bass with EMGs when it's all wired up and screwed down, lol.
The hole will be filled with a dummy switch. The two most leftward knobs do nothing- the pots are gutted underneath so I can fit the second battery in there. It's V/B/concentric TB/concentric VM. Should be a nice workhorse for pretty much anything that doesn't require a 60s visual from the bass.
If your bass is alder or ash and the pups are standard passive Fender wind and in the same location, I'm sure it wouldn't be picked out of a proper blind test of other Fender PJs.
You could also do this with a Fender, if the ergos weren't a problem, and the pickup/pre you chose could make it sound different from other Fenders of the same model. I always felt like there are going to be differences anyhow, because they're made of wood.
I'm kindasorta beginning to think Soundgears don't have a signature sound because the sort of guys who can hear and do care about signature sounds (like the guys who hang out here) drop USA guts into them as soon as they can.
It's interesting that we both mention the same thing: variations in pups. I suspect that a higher %age of Ibby owners here have modded them than the %age of Fender owners have done.
Is that the same as saying all Fender Ps sound the same, and all J sound like Js, where as each Ibanez model sounds different to the other? On the whole I can't think that as being a bad thing.
I was lucky enough to pick up a Grooveline G104 for a really sweet deal a few years ago. It is a great bass, and much better than I am as a player, however have a listen to Anthony Crawford having a go on one and see what it sounds like. A modern active J? And then you start playing with the tone from there...
That’s not really what I mean. Obviously the Fenders have changed over time, both sound and ergonomics but not too much. A purist will still be able to tell a P or a J (even if they have a preferred pickup position).By contrast the Soundgear basses can sound radically different with a huge variety of pickups and pre-amps but the bodies are all very similar in size and shape and the neck profile and feel are very similar.
I've always seen Ibanez as the guitar and bass equivalent of a Toyota.
Does everything well, inexpensive for what you get, reliable, but maybe a bit 'vanilla'. However, it's nice that, with the Prestige, Premium and Bass Workshop ranges, you also have 'Lexus'.
I tend to see guitar manufacturers very much the way I see car companies. I'd class Fender as the equivalent of Chevy or Ford - mass market, and kinda the default if you want something American. Gibson (certainly on bass) are more like Dodge/Chrysler - not known for their reliability or build quality, but classic and good-looking.
Does everything well, inexpensive for what you get, reliable, but maybe a bit 'vanilla'. However, it's nice that, with the Prestige, Premium and Bass Workshop ranges, you also have 'Lexus'.
I tend to see guitar manufacturers very much the way I see car companies. I'd class Fender as the equivalent of Chevy or Ford - mass market, and kinda the default if you want something American. Gibson (certainly on bass) are more like Dodge/Chrysler - not known for their reliability or build quality, but classic and good-looking.
