Washburn Taurust 5 string (T25) bass

[Watchootognbout]

Watch out for the Chinese T-25 Taurus bridges!!
The saddle slots are not centered correctly.
Which force them to mount the bridge off center of the stringers.
Which looks like CRAP!(See below)
There are many that are lke this!

Do not order from a site that does not show a real picture of the bass.

If you can find an older Vietnamese Taurus,go for it.
They were far better in quality.

They had body contour cuts.
The Chinese ones don't.
They are slabs.

The Chinese Taurus electronics are backwards!

The Vietnamese body wood was real.
The Chinese ones are some kinda stained wood.

 

[Watchootognbout]

Well Washburn must have been listening because I walked into a Music-go-Round store in Kenosh Wi. and saw one with a Duncan Basslines MM pup in it positioned in the sweet spot! This was not a project bass either, it was factory routed just for that Basslines. It also had gold hardware and a different bridge. It may be a NAMM piece. Many of the flaws of the origonal where corrected such as the sky-high neck profile and the cheesy oil finish, this finish actually looked good. The frets were dressed pretty good but a look into the cavity revealed that the pickup was wired incorrectly. This bass I havent seen on the website so I dont know, mabey its an overseas model. Music-go-Round had no information on where it came from.

That had to have been one of my old Vietnamese Taurus's I sold to MGR in 2004?.
I had a T-24 and T-25.
I live 12 miles south of Kenosha.
I go to Music-Go- Round in Kenosha all the time!

The pickup wasn't a Duncan.
It was a Carvin HB-5.
I always upgrade the hardware to gold Hipshot bridges and tuners.
I also installed a coil splitting switch.

 

[Real Soon]

Saying all this notwithstanding that photo of the butchered bridge job. Whoa! (4-string content below, and some of it may not apply)



I've got a T24, the 4-string little brother, that's the lightest bass I've owned next to a Danelectro...and I think they started chambering the bodies to get the weight down in the last few years. I got mine in 2015 or so, I think.

Mine came wired as if whoever was doing the work ate shrooms, then picked up the soldering iron. So, I learned how to wire a VVTT setup, then later on modded it to a different config and pickup set. The frets were fine, though, neck straight, bridge centered, tuners well-placed.

From what I can tell, you roll the dice with these things, but the roll absolutely can come up good.

Though I recently upgraded to a new 4-string, I'm keeping the Taurus for stuff like practicing slap and doing gigs where instrument abuse might happen, or if I just need that Model J tone.

If you get a good Taurus 5-string, it'd probably be fun (and I'm convinced it'd be worth it) to drop in a preamp and make it active. May need to carve a little battery space, though, as the wiring compartment isn't huge.