Disclaimer: I'm not a photographer, writer or guitar tech so please bear with me.
The Setup:
I had been on the hunt for an active PJ 4 string for quite some time. I had had a Schecter Diamond P active that I never quite gelled with and recently moved on from. I needed something that got a very traditional P tone, had a usable bridge pup, and didn't break the bank. I looked at and played some MIM Fender active PJ's, and was very unimpressed with the quality. They felt...."fine." The MIM Jaguar's were even more bland. Warwick, Spector, Yamaha, nothing hit all the marks. Landed on Ibanez and I've owned a couple SR's and a couple BTB's, and for one reason or the other moved on (tiny neck and giant heavy body respectively.)
Enter the TMB600. Saw it online, but couldn't find any reviews or any hands on impressions. Went to my local shop to see if they had one, no luck. But they did have the TMB100 and TMB300. Fell in love with the body shape (feels a lot like my old Squier Jag that way,) as well as the control layout, but didn't really care for the pickups or the overall build quality.
Tried to convince myself of a few other basses before I bought something I haven't played, but couldn't make it happen. So I bit the bullet and ordered the TMB600 in AWD (white) as my my main bass is a natural ash finish (can't have them looking THAT similar.)
The Review:
Body/Finish: I was not prepared for the color, and the pictures online do NOT accurately portray what it really looks like. It changes heavily depending on the light that it's in. In regular incandescent light, it has the slightly antique white/blonde blonde color you'd expect from the "AWD" color designation. Under the bluer CFL spiral type lights, you really start to notice some tinges of blue in it, especially in the wood grain. Under fluorescent the blue hues become very apparent.
That being said it is well done and even. It is coated in a medium amount of gloss. Certainly enough to notice, but definitely not heavy or over done. There are no swirls, globs or dents to be found in the finish. The body itself is smaller and comfortable. No tummy cut and a very very minor forearm cut. The bass weighs in at just a hair shy of 9 lbs, and does suffer from some neck dive, but certainly not terrible and definitely tameable.
Neck/Fretboard:
Medium frets! Threw me off for a while there, as I'm used to the jumbo's that all the main manufacturer's use nowadays. No high or low frets that I've noticed, and I've manged to get the action very low, and of course the neck is bound so there are not sharp fret ends to be dealt with. The fretboard itself was a little dry, but that can be remedied easily enough. The pearl block inlays look very nice and I cannot physically feel the border between them and the rosewood. The back of the neck itself is a gloss finish, but again very medium. Certainly not a heavy gloss, there are no swirls, dents, globs or dings to be found. The neck itself is very comfortable, 1.61" is a really happy medium between a 1.49" Ibby SR/ 1.5" Jazz and 1.625 or even 1.75" P style. I would not call it overly thin front to back nor would I classify it as a baseball bat. The fretboard does not have terribly flat nor a terribly rounded radius. Neck was dead flat and the truss rod was easily and appropriately tweaked.
The neck theme is definitely: "A very happy medium in all aspects."
Hardware:
I would give a classification of "pretty nice." Tuners are accurate enough and don't slip. Do note that the tuning pegs themselves are considerably larger than on most basses, so leave some more string for winding. They are a little tight and not the smoothest I've used, but a little time and a little grease may help that out and they don't feel cheap. You know what I mean. The bridge is a standard bent metal bridge. It doesn't feel cheap nor does it feel "Hi-Mass." No rattles and it does it's job just fine. The knobs feel nice and pots turn smoothly. This was not the case at first with the bass treble stacked knobs initially though. They were pressed too tightly together and to turn one of them was to turn both of them. A quick loosening of the set screw, and a quick 1mm raise of the treble knob solved the problem. No muss no fuss.
Preamp:
You'll probably leave it in forever or switch it out immediately depending on what you want your preamp to do. There is virtually no coloration and the frequencies centers as well the +/- dB's are all very very usable. It's difficult to coax an unpleasant eq from it. The Active/Passive switch is indeed that, not just an EQ defeat. This bass will operate without a battery installed at all. With everything at it's detent, switching from passive to active will net you a very minor bump in your lows and highs. You'll notice in your living room or garage by yourself, but the band/audience would never know in a million years. In passive mode, the treble knobs turns into your tone control, and I wish there was slightly higher variance from full on to full off here, but it's alllllmost there, and can be compensated easily enough by hand position and dynamics control.
Pickups:
Wow, these Nordstrand pickups are absolutely wonderful. Clear, punchy, dynamic, balanced and just hot enough.
The P pickup does exactly what you want it to...Sound big, sound wide and sound like a P should. The nordy pleases on all accounts there. Definitely the more aggressive of the two pickups, a roaring ballsy tone is just a harder pluck away due to how wonderfully it reacts to your playing dynamics.
The J style is a different story, but not in a bad way. It does not quite have that open yet tightly focused bridge J pup sound that you'd get from a traditional J bass. However, it is not as big/wide or trebly as you get in a full blown bridge humbucker. I'm comparing in my head against the aforementioned Schecter Diamond P Active and my current ESP LTD Surveyor 415. It's a tricky one to describe...it still retains the good kind of honk that you want from that pickup, it still has a trebly bite, but not a ton, and it's definitely on the more polite side of of the spectrum. How many PJ's have you played where the J pickup isn't good enough one way or another to be played solo'd? It's been a lot for me. Not the case on the TMB600. It's just a nice pickup that adds it's own flavor to the whole package.
In usage: It's been two weeks. Haven't gigged it yet, but it's gone through a full band headphones rehearsal (DI box into a mixer into a headphone splitter,) and a live rehearsal. It has proven to be a swiss army knife so far. Between a pick, fingerstyle and slap, minor eq tweaks, and pickup balancing. I can go from sitting nicely and firmly in the mix to gnarly, in your face tone that gets noticed very quickly. Absolutely adore this thing so far. I will change the tort pickguard out, as I think it looks horrendous with blue-ish/white-ish/yellow-ish body. I'll probably go white pearl or rosewood.
Pictures below: Did that last one the bedroom to try to showcase the color change a bit.
The Setup:
I had been on the hunt for an active PJ 4 string for quite some time. I had had a Schecter Diamond P active that I never quite gelled with and recently moved on from. I needed something that got a very traditional P tone, had a usable bridge pup, and didn't break the bank. I looked at and played some MIM Fender active PJ's, and was very unimpressed with the quality. They felt...."fine." The MIM Jaguar's were even more bland. Warwick, Spector, Yamaha, nothing hit all the marks. Landed on Ibanez and I've owned a couple SR's and a couple BTB's, and for one reason or the other moved on (tiny neck and giant heavy body respectively.)
Enter the TMB600. Saw it online, but couldn't find any reviews or any hands on impressions. Went to my local shop to see if they had one, no luck. But they did have the TMB100 and TMB300. Fell in love with the body shape (feels a lot like my old Squier Jag that way,) as well as the control layout, but didn't really care for the pickups or the overall build quality.
Tried to convince myself of a few other basses before I bought something I haven't played, but couldn't make it happen. So I bit the bullet and ordered the TMB600 in AWD (white) as my my main bass is a natural ash finish (can't have them looking THAT similar.)
The Review:
Body/Finish: I was not prepared for the color, and the pictures online do NOT accurately portray what it really looks like. It changes heavily depending on the light that it's in. In regular incandescent light, it has the slightly antique white/blonde blonde color you'd expect from the "AWD" color designation. Under the bluer CFL spiral type lights, you really start to notice some tinges of blue in it, especially in the wood grain. Under fluorescent the blue hues become very apparent.
That being said it is well done and even. It is coated in a medium amount of gloss. Certainly enough to notice, but definitely not heavy or over done. There are no swirls, globs or dents to be found in the finish. The body itself is smaller and comfortable. No tummy cut and a very very minor forearm cut. The bass weighs in at just a hair shy of 9 lbs, and does suffer from some neck dive, but certainly not terrible and definitely tameable.
Neck/Fretboard:
Medium frets! Threw me off for a while there, as I'm used to the jumbo's that all the main manufacturer's use nowadays. No high or low frets that I've noticed, and I've manged to get the action very low, and of course the neck is bound so there are not sharp fret ends to be dealt with. The fretboard itself was a little dry, but that can be remedied easily enough. The pearl block inlays look very nice and I cannot physically feel the border between them and the rosewood. The back of the neck itself is a gloss finish, but again very medium. Certainly not a heavy gloss, there are no swirls, dents, globs or dings to be found. The neck itself is very comfortable, 1.61" is a really happy medium between a 1.49" Ibby SR/ 1.5" Jazz and 1.625 or even 1.75" P style. I would not call it overly thin front to back nor would I classify it as a baseball bat. The fretboard does not have terribly flat nor a terribly rounded radius. Neck was dead flat and the truss rod was easily and appropriately tweaked.
The neck theme is definitely: "A very happy medium in all aspects."
Hardware:
I would give a classification of "pretty nice." Tuners are accurate enough and don't slip. Do note that the tuning pegs themselves are considerably larger than on most basses, so leave some more string for winding. They are a little tight and not the smoothest I've used, but a little time and a little grease may help that out and they don't feel cheap. You know what I mean. The bridge is a standard bent metal bridge. It doesn't feel cheap nor does it feel "Hi-Mass." No rattles and it does it's job just fine. The knobs feel nice and pots turn smoothly. This was not the case at first with the bass treble stacked knobs initially though. They were pressed too tightly together and to turn one of them was to turn both of them. A quick loosening of the set screw, and a quick 1mm raise of the treble knob solved the problem. No muss no fuss.
Preamp:
You'll probably leave it in forever or switch it out immediately depending on what you want your preamp to do. There is virtually no coloration and the frequencies centers as well the +/- dB's are all very very usable. It's difficult to coax an unpleasant eq from it. The Active/Passive switch is indeed that, not just an EQ defeat. This bass will operate without a battery installed at all. With everything at it's detent, switching from passive to active will net you a very minor bump in your lows and highs. You'll notice in your living room or garage by yourself, but the band/audience would never know in a million years. In passive mode, the treble knobs turns into your tone control, and I wish there was slightly higher variance from full on to full off here, but it's alllllmost there, and can be compensated easily enough by hand position and dynamics control.
Pickups:
Wow, these Nordstrand pickups are absolutely wonderful. Clear, punchy, dynamic, balanced and just hot enough.
The P pickup does exactly what you want it to...Sound big, sound wide and sound like a P should. The nordy pleases on all accounts there. Definitely the more aggressive of the two pickups, a roaring ballsy tone is just a harder pluck away due to how wonderfully it reacts to your playing dynamics.
The J style is a different story, but not in a bad way. It does not quite have that open yet tightly focused bridge J pup sound that you'd get from a traditional J bass. However, it is not as big/wide or trebly as you get in a full blown bridge humbucker. I'm comparing in my head against the aforementioned Schecter Diamond P Active and my current ESP LTD Surveyor 415. It's a tricky one to describe...it still retains the good kind of honk that you want from that pickup, it still has a trebly bite, but not a ton, and it's definitely on the more polite side of of the spectrum. How many PJ's have you played where the J pickup isn't good enough one way or another to be played solo'd? It's been a lot for me. Not the case on the TMB600. It's just a nice pickup that adds it's own flavor to the whole package.
In usage: It's been two weeks. Haven't gigged it yet, but it's gone through a full band headphones rehearsal (DI box into a mixer into a headphone splitter,) and a live rehearsal. It has proven to be a swiss army knife so far. Between a pick, fingerstyle and slap, minor eq tweaks, and pickup balancing. I can go from sitting nicely and firmly in the mix to gnarly, in your face tone that gets noticed very quickly. Absolutely adore this thing so far. I will change the tort pickguard out, as I think it looks horrendous with blue-ish/white-ish/yellow-ish body. I'll probably go white pearl or rosewood.
Pictures below: Did that last one the bedroom to try to showcase the color change a bit.
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