wich of these 3?

Ibanez, nice tone solid all around

 

an atk

 

i played an atk 5 string the other day. very impressed

 

Have you played an ATK? It does not have a thin neck at all. If those specs are your dream specs I'm not sure you'll like the ATK. I love mine though - it's great.

 

MIM Fender Deluxe Precision Bass Special.

It's active, it's got a P/J setup, you can get rosewood. It's got a P-Bass body, and a J-Bass neck for fast action. It has a 3-band EQ, and at $599, it's not that expensive.

Also, I know you want active, but if you decide later that you want active and passive, I got mine modded for cheap, and it was an easy mod. So you could do a lot of playing around with it.

I heartily recommend it!

 

+1. Add a Sadowsky Preamp/DI stomp box if you need active.

 

I agree with JaySeeDoubleYou >>>> I had a USA Precision deluxe ( the MIM is close) and wish I'd never let it go. Great everything. Can you get your hands on the G&L Tribute basses? Although, That ATK is impressive. It's got to be the closest thing to a Stingray that's in that price range.

 

Yeah. I had it done, I didn't do it myself. But the way we did it was remove the pickup selector knob and install a pickup selector switch. We replaced the midrange pot with a push/pull pot. The push/pull pot governs active/passive. The treble and bass knobs stayed the same, the midrange works the same too except that it's now push/pull. The master volume has become the active only volume, and where the pickup selector knob used to be, there is now a stacked pot that governs passive only volume, and passive only tone.

So, originally, it was only active with a master volume, pickup selector knob, treble/bass stacked knob and mid knob. Now it's active volume knob, passive volume/tone stacked knob, treble/bass stacked pot (active only), and midrange push/pull knob (mid control only works in active) It also has a mini three way toggle switch that serves as a pickup selector.

The beauty of having two separate volume knobs, as well as separate tone control settings for active/passive is that you crank the passive volume, dial in the passive tone you want, then switch to active, dial in the eq settings you want, and then scale down the active volume knob til the active and passive are the same volume. Then, you'll never have to mess with a volume or tone control, all you'll ever have to do is flip the toggle to switch pickups, and use the push pull pot and everything is at your disposal.

The whole project only cost me about $80. You'll need a 500k push/pull pot, a 500k stacked pot, a mini-toggle switch, a dremmel to make a place on the pickguard for the mini-toggle, and then either the skills to solder everything yourself, or else have someone who will do it for you and you'll be set....and, of course, you'll need knobs to sit on your new stacked pot (good luck finding ones that match!)

The -only- downside to this setup, is that when you first plug the bass into the amp, before you turn the volume up, you'll wanna work the push/pull a couple of times because if you don't, when you switch the first time, you'll get a loud pop. Adding a capacitor will take care of that, but I haven't done it because I don't wanna take the chance of jeopardizing the purity of my passive sound, because from the time you get past the push/pull pot which is right behind the pickup selector switch in the circuit path, all the way til you get to the output jack, which is the tail of the circuit, the passive and active circuits are totally discrete. You don't have to mess with the compromisy situation of going through one path to get to the other. Doing the push/pull/push/pull a couple times before turning it up is no big deal to me.

But that's how I did it and it gives me an enormous amount of options. Ironically, about 99% of the time, I leave it in passive P-only mode, so for my purposes, I could just as easily have a standard passive P. Except every now and again, in the middle of a song, it's nice to switch from passive P sound to active P/J sound for more dynamic moments! That's another thing: trust me, you will become addicted to being able to switch from active/passive on the fly.

I did up my deluxe active J 5 the exact same way. Only I couldn't find a knob to match, so that's kind of ugly...oh well.

 

+1. The ATK's have a big old chunky neck. Personally, I really like them; but if you're looking for something with a thin neck, you won't like the ATK.

 

Yes, of course, but that doesn't mean that just anyone can do it.

 

It's pretty difficult (if not impossible) to judge a bass based on pictures. If they'll let you play one of theirs, and you really dig it, then go for it.

As for an active bass with a thin neck, a used Carvin comes to mind. They are great value used. Of course, their default fingerboard material is ebony, but they have rosewood boards as a no charge option. It might be hard to find used. Still, a no frills, active Carvin B4 with a rosewood board prices out at around $700.

My has a few added options (including a RW board), and I love the thing.