Sleekbass...
I just got my K6 last week and all I can say is....um....well, read on further....
First of all, for the positives...I absolutely love the looks and feel of this bass....the looks and feel are very good.....but...I have LOTS to say about this bass on the things that really count....which is sound and the components used on the bass...
Let me start with the construction and parts:
A) It sounds like a truss rod is loose in the neck...I sometimes can hear a strange vibration that seems to come from inside the neck at certain notes that I play...even with the amp off....I even suspect that some of this vibration may actually be getting into the sound ?
B) The bridge pickup works sometimes....and sometimes it doesn't. ?????
C) Two of the tone pots either cut out, or are VERY scratchy when you turn them
D) I recently learned that the body of this bass is not 100% solid wood....it is what they call a chambered body....basically it is hollowed out on the outer wings of the body. The website does not mention this.
Now...as for sound quality....
I own 9 different bass guitars, and all I can say is....
The sound of this bass is absolutely terrible in my opinion....probably the worst of all of my basses. I own basses all the way from the expensive Conklin to Peavey TL-5 to Fender Jazz all the way down to a Squier Bronco....All I can say is that even my son's Squier Bronco bass (about $150) and my Douglas WOB 826 ($189) sound better than this bass. Something must be wrong here. Although the sound has a very very punchy attack, the sound, for all practical purposes, is still unuseable in all applications I have tried this past week. The sound is VERY thin, and has a problematic very strong (overly strong and unpleasant) muffled midrange sound spectrum that I cannot seem to tame down...I simply cannot get any sort of warm tone out of this bass (for various reasons and problems with the pickups and/or electronics)...and the active electronics are basically unusable to try to get any good tones. And yes, I have brand new Energizer batteries it it. In fact, the bass often has a slightly distorted sound...kind of like a fuzz tone...even when in passive mode! ??? I played the bass live on two occasions this past week...it has a buzz or hum that drove the sound crew crazy...they had to literally use a gate to mask some of the noise. So I switched to passive mode, but the sound output was so weak, that I have to crank my amp to about 90% of the max just to be able to hear it (my Fender Jazz basses and Conklin on the other hand, only need to be about 50%). I have determined that passive mode, although very weak in signal, may sound better than active mode.
I absolutely love the looks of this bass, and the feel of it, therefore I have tried and tried and tried and tried and tried again, to take a liking to this bass during this past week....to find a signal that is loud enough, yet yields decent tone, to convince myself to keep it. I have spent over 6 hours playing on different amps at GC alone, all in hopes of trying to dial in useable tone...but to no avail. The end result is that it has either too thin of a sound, or an overly grainy midrange sound that is far from my liking. I even put on brand new strings....one of the brightest possible strings I am told (DR High Beams), and when in passive mode, the sound is still muffled ??????? Really?
General concensus from me and others? Yes, it is a very punchy bass, but it really doesn't sound nice.
In my opinion, the sound of this bass is very similar to the sound of a bass I have heard and played from a well known department store.
At this point, I have come to the conclusion that something is either wrong with the pickups and electronics, or, well....that's just the sound of this bass.
I plan on returning it, or at least see if they (Bassmods) will take it back and replace the pups and electronics...I mean, something is going on here....for $729, I would expect a bass to have more useable tone than this one has.
Good luck.
If you did buy your bass already, can you tell me what you think of it? I am really interested in hearing what your experience is? Thanks.
