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Official ESP club

#1,581
andysvec said:
Great Bass, my favorite 4str I own! I wanna get a vintage white one someday tooView attachment 4724853 !
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That's awesome! Love the black/maple look. Mine is TSB with a tort guard and rosewood fretboard. The tort might have to go but we'll see how it looks in person when it arrives.

I played some Vintage 4s when they were new and I absolutely loved the feel and the tone. Waited too long and missed getting one back then. I have narrowly missed a couple in the classifieds and on Reverb too.

This acquisition has been a long time coming!
 
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#1,582
The Vintage 4 arrived today!
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#1,584
bass-shy said:
View attachment 4728479 View attachment 4728480 View attachment 4728481
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So, it has been a few weeks since I received my Vintage Four and I have been playing it A LOT.

This is one of those basses that you can pick up and play and it just disappears, leaving only the music. It feels like an old, broken in pair of Doc Martens. The bass balances beautifully and it feels light on the strap. The neck has just the right amount of girth for my long fingers and large hands, neither feeling like a baseball bat nor a pencil. Just right. It is finished smoothly and the fret and nut dressings are as good as I've ever seen. (All of my Ltd's have immaculate fretwork too.)

The tone, while subjective, is everything I look for in a good P-Bass and the addition of the J pickup opens up the possibilities immensely. Having never really been a Jazz Bass guy, I don't know that I am a good judge of what a bridge position J "should" sound like, but this one is definitely usable. I expected the soloed J to be thin and noisy but it retains a lot of low end while adding a snap to a note's attack. Nice!

Both pickups and Tone full up is where it's at for me, though. The pickups balance so nicely that I can get a huge range of tones from changing my hand position or plucking technique, allowing me to get a wide range of tones without touching the knobs.

The only downsides to me are little things: I could do without the relic treatment and I'm not really wild about the sunburst/tort combo. The control layout has to go, too. I will swap the pick guard out for a 3-ply B-W-B and I ordered the pots to rewire it to V B T instead of the stock, V V T scheme it has now. Easy and inexpensive "fixes" for things that aren't really a big problem to begin with. The dual volume controls are helpful for blending the pickups for sure, but all of my other basses and guitars have a single volume. That being the case, I have gotten used to doing volume swells and tremolo effects using the volume control and this layout doesn't really work for that.

All in all though, I am definitely satisfied with the Vintage Four. It is a fine companion to the ESP/LTD Surveyor '87 I bought earlier this year and between them, I can't imagine needing anything from a passive bass that these two can't handle.
 
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#1,588
Arrived a day early...E-II GB-5 (Japanese). Seems like a keeper...BIG B-string, even response across the strings, and with my Elixir strings, I'm getting pretty close to Spector gnarliness. Will have a tone report probably this week. This thing's got some attitude.

Yup, I put new knobs on :D

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#1,592
I have a 2018 D-5 (merbau body rather than the mahogany body with burl top as on the 2020 and newer D series) and I absolutely love it. It's a little heavy (since merbau is a dense wood like bubinga or something) and the new mahogany bodied D-series basses should be lighter.

The ESP pickups and electronics should not be slept on. I know the average bassist will look at them and immediately want to swap them out for EMGs, Barts, or Duncans. Personally, I wouldn't because I think they sound terrific. Passive soapbars with an active preamp is my favorite paradigm. Currently, my favorites are Duncan SSBs, but these house-brand ESP soapbars are a close second.

As for the kind of music I play, my current projects runs the gamut from folky stuff to heavier Joe Satriani style rock. My D-5 can handle all of that and could likely handle a punk or metal gig too.

What I love about the D series is their thin-U neck profile. The B series tend to have the extra-thin U neck profile which feels more like a Soundgear neck. I prefer the slightly thicker/rounder thin-U because it's still fast, but gives me a little more to grab onto. (I have smaller hands and you would think Soundgears would be my ideal, but my hands find them to pencil thin. They love LTD thin-U necks, though).

When it comes to LTD basses, I like the D series a lot and if the opportunity to procure a new D-5 presented itself, I would bite. But, again, that's just me and my opinion.
 
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#1,594
I initially tried to fully retrofit Ultralites, to lessen some neck dive on my GB-5. The bottom screw holes didn't reach down as far as the stock Gotohs, SO I'm experimenting with just the posts' fastening nuts to hold the pieces in place. Seems like that might work, as I tightened them pretty well, but not too tightly to damage anything. I put the top two screws back in for each tuner, from the Gotohs, so there aren't any holes left. Plus, I didn't affect possible future resale value, due to not drilling any new holes, (new holes/filling stock ones is a big no-no in my book).

The look is pretty cool, and lower-profile. The stock clovers barely let the bass fit in it's bag (the pictured hardshell is for home). Best of all, the neck dive is a lot less now, and there's more resonance from lighter weight. Who would've thought...maybe because they're still all metal? Gotoh's Resolites have plastic buttons, so who knows about that comparison (two of my basses have those tuners...solid tuners, also).
 

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#1,600
Sigi Joerg said:
View attachment 4783195 Hello,
i have bought a ESP C 305 Fretless and need some information. The bass is difficult to a LTD C 305 i just have.
Is this made in Japan?
Thanks for your help an best regards,
SigiView attachment 4783187 View attachment 4783189 View attachment 4783190 View attachment 4783191
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Cool bass! That one is either a prototype or someone has modified it.

I have two Korean C-304s from the early 2000's. Both of them are awesome and very versatile. The ergonomics of the body and longer scale make them a pleasure to play.
 
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