Had a chance to play both a Triad and a Raymond at my local store today, which was great! I'm not much of a reviewer, butI thought I'd share some thoughts here since it looks like not so many folks have managed to lay hands on the new toys as yet;
The Triad I played was a very smart-looking machine in Metallic Alpine, a colour I found I appreciated much more in person than I did online, in spite of it's obvious inferiority to that incredible purple burst, hah. The combo of the bound body and blocked roasted neck are (like most of the Rev stuff I suppose) a pleasantly unusual combination.
The real stand out across both basses was the Jazz Bomb pickups, which are excellent. Like the P-Blade pickup on my Fellowship bass, they're kind of somewhere between a classic vintage and modern sound, with the ability to dial in a bit of both. As advertised, they're also dead silent hum-wise solo-ed or in any other combination. Speaking of solo-ing a pickup, I'm very much a bridge guy when I'm playing a jazz bass, and I can report that the funk was present in massive quantities in that fifth position of the Triad's 5-way switch.
My only problem with the Triad was that the other four pickup combinations were rather indistinct, and that made the three single coil thing on the whole seem a bit gimmicky. While position 5 had that unmistakeable 'bwap' and position 1 had a nice smooth neck sound, I could barely tell the difference between 2-4... I did really enjoy playing the bass and it sounded fantastic, but I actually felt like I might have lost some versatility in the 3-SC/5-way Switch configuration vs. a traditional two pickup jazz bass with individual volumes or a blend knob.
I rate it a 'Bring Back The Justice With Jazz Bomb Pickups/10'
The Raymond I played was in 'Venetian Gold', which actually looked a lot subtler and less yellow under natural lighting. Other than the colour and the lack of blocks on the fretboard, it's exactly the same body shape as the Triad.
Sound-wise The Raymond was almost a little disappointing, but on reflection I think it's because I was expecting to pick up the Reverend version of a Stingray, and that really doesn't seem to be what this is. The Jazz Bomb in the neck was great as it was on the Triad, but the bridge humbucker was... Weird; waaaaay less aggressive than anything I'd normally get out of a Musicman bass, even accounting for the lack of preamp. I don't have a huge amount of experience with Gibsons, but if anything it kind of reminded me of a Thunderbird bridge pickup, with that slightly more open, woolier tone as opposed to the bright, tight punch of an MM humbucker in that position.
I found I enjoyed the sound of it more when I switched to a pick, and I strongly suspect it would take really well to a bit of distortion in a rock setting. Alternatively, I'd even be tempted to see how it handled James Jamerson lines with a set of flats and the tone rolled off, as I think the Jazz-Bomb/Humbucker combo produced an interesting spin on a classic P-bass sound.
I rate this one as 'Should Probably Spend More Time Figuring It Out Before Assigning An Arbitrary Numerical Score/10'
