I tried this at Guitar Center in Houston and loved it from the first moment. I had never (ever) bought a cheap bass before, but the sound of this instrument is really nice and the craftmanship is far beyond it's price. Everyone comments on how beautiful it is. With the discount I get at GC from my sister in law and my super friend Ray it only cost me $240! It was a deal even if it sucked. But it didn't. At the store I was trying an old vintage Gibson of similar design that cost $2000 and the Ibanez smoked it! It has a very full, punchy sound. It sounds big even up in the high register. I love it. I played a concert which required double bass and I used the Artcore instead and it worked very well. It has a sort of hollow woody tone to it that makes it a nice crossover between a solidbody bass guitar and an upright bass.
I had Larry at Aero Pickups make me a replacement pickup for it, not because it really needed it (the original pickup is great!), but just to see if I could actually improve the sound. The Aero pup is not in yet, so I'll get back to that when I get it installed.
As an afterword, I tried the NEW Artcore basses last month when I was in Texas again and they seemed to have tried to fix something that wasn't broken. I did not like the new semi hollow model (AGB200) at all! It's essentially the same bass but with two pickups and I hated the pickup placement and the sound of the pickups. I couldn't get a decent sound no matter how I tweaked it. And I really wanted to like it. The fully hollow body model (AFB200) was better and has some workable sounds. I asked my friend Ray to hold the hollowbody for me.
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