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NBD: Hagstrom Beluga II-F

N

Naviiin

Jun 2, 2019
622
1,485
Netherlands
#1
It's a NOS get! Bought it from a small French shop that had one left. With a discount, because it has some troubles with a battery drain when it's not plugged in. But nothing my local luthier can't fix, hopefully.

It's not as light as I expected it to be, but it's so comfortable when sitting down. I'm a medium sized guy, so that might help. Neck feels a bit flat, but fast. A shame it's been discontinued! I guess this one was ahead of it's time. Nowadays this shape is a bit more in style. A headless short scale version would be awesome. :D

20201006_161221.jpg

20201006_161208.jpg
 
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#3
Had one just like yours. A bit heavy and not really "semi-hollow" (it's more cosmetic than anything). The bridge is unadulterated crap and the pickups are nothing special, but it plays great and has a very nice neck (with a weird truss rod system, I never understood how it worked, it has that H-Expander thingy at the end of the neck and something at the nut and I think you're not supposed to adjust the nut bolt? But actually you do? Luckily the neck is very stable and it never needed adjusting). I was thinking of switching the pickups to active EMG ones, maybe the TW model so that I'd keep the coil tap options, but eventually I gave it away because it really saw little use.
 
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#4
Boneless said:
Had one just like yours. A bit heavy and not really "semi-hollow" (it's more cosmetic than anything). The bridge is unadulterated crap and the pickups are nothing special, but it plays great and has a very nice neck (with a weird truss rod system, I never understood how it worked, it has that H-Expander thingy at the end of the neck and something at the nut and I think you're not supposed to adjust the nut bolt? But actually you do? Luckily the neck is very stable and it never needed adjusting). I was thinking of switching the pickups to active EMG ones, maybe the TW model so that I'd keep the coil tap options, but eventually I gave it away because it really saw little use.
Click to expand...

What was wrong with your bridge? Might convince me to really go for that headless conversion... ;)
 
#5
It's an extreme pain to adjust, in order to adjust string height you need to unscrew the very small hex screw at the base of the saddle, then unseat the string, rotate the string support, then screw the very small hex screw back in to lock it in place. It's extremely fiddly and at the end of the process you realise that the action can never get lower than medium because the support only goes so far (fine by me, but I'd like to have had the option). Give me a Fender style bridge every day, or even the Gibson three-point bridge!
 
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#6
I have the same bass, I love mine other than I have the same issue with battery drain when not plugged in. Got so tired of it that I pulled the battery and just run it passive and it still sounds monstrous (I'm a flatwound/thump tone guy).
My other big gripe was the stupid rotary pickup selector switch so I replaced it with a Freeway Gearshift, HUGE improvement, easy to see what is selected (neck/bridge/both humbuckers or neck/bridge/both single coils) although the volume difference when dropping to single coils is substantial even when in active mode, which I guess should be expected.

Still a really cool bass that punches WAY above its weight for the price (I paid $400 CDN for mine)

beluga with new switch 2.jpeg
 

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