Lets talk about the Yamaha BB

[getBAK]

Hey all - it's been a couple of months and I could no longer resist.
Offered a deal, my BB435 is on the way. All of the tech stuff aside, goddamn if it isn't pretty

If my wife kills me, bury me with my instruments

 

[eddododo]

I find this to be kind of a fascinating conversation… On the one hand, as someone said above, they may be fixing a problem that doesn’t exist… Or a problem that doesn’t have much demand to be fixed, at very least..

conversely, I remember reading a thread a day or two ago that discussed how Yamaha was very conservative and efficient in terms of putting things on the market that have a known demand.. how they don’t have a huge catalog, but what they have is very well-researched in terms of market demand, and then it’s well-executed from there.

an interesting dichotomy of ideas there

 

[T_Bone_TL]

There actually is a difference between Phillips and JIS screws. They look the same, unless you look really close, but they’re not.

...And if you use the wrong flavor of driver on the respective screws, the heads will strip 9 times out of 10. Did not take much time to figure out that the "cheap screwdriver" in the motorcycle toolkit was far better than "a nice one" that was Phillips for any screws on the bike..

 

[parttime]

wow, nice bass and an excellent discussion! heres the very deep thought i felt compelled to add:

it sort of peeves me that we call them "bolt on" necks when clearly they aint no bolts. we've been hronswaggled by the marketers into thinking we have beefily made instruments when its just a couple of crappy screws. also kinda makes me get frustrated at manufacturers for trading quality construction and superior durability for manufacturing efficiency. i get it, thats what they do and historucally 4 screws works just fine, so why beef up that part with unneccesary parts. but can we please be honest with ourselves and call them screw on necks?

i know some companies do actually use bolts, but we know which guitars and basses have screw ons. phew, thanks i feel better. rant over

 

[getBAK]

The bass finally arrived yesterday - and I got to spend some time with it

First impressions:
Sound and Feel
This thing is LOUD, the pickups are passive, and maybe the hottest I've ever experienced. I may end up dropping them down a bit.

As it sits, the bass requires a light touch. Where I could really wail on my Dingwall, The 435 gets 'clicky'. This might be me needing to loosen the truss rod a bit more. I usually run at ~.010 at the 8th fret, which I know is minimal.
The sound is extremely flexible. I can go from traditional P-Bass-Glass to Jaco-tone easily. In general, I've been running the Neck at 100% and backing the Bridge pickup off to maybe 25%. Rolling off the tone a bit seems to help.

Not a great slap-instrument thus far, but that's not what I got it for. Eventually, I'll probably throw a set of D'Addario Flats on it.

Build
Construction is shockingly good for a ~$500 instrument, on par with $1200+ basses I've owned. Very light, despite looking burly. The neck fits my hand nicely. That said, the nut is ugly plastic.

It's built like a tank. This bass spent 11 days in a UPS truck (FU UPS, it was 6 days late.) I brought it to pitch, waited an hour, and adjusted the truss rod. It was tight by .0010" (.009 ->.010). Intonation is dead-on out of the box.

Overall:
Massive Value, More P-Bass than a P-Bass

 

[Steve Cooke]

Congrats on the new bass! Looks like a winner and thanks for the update + review.

 

[SunByrne]

More P-Bass than a P-Bass

This. Exactly this.