Sunday, August 10, 2008

Ibanez Artcore AFB200 hollow body bass guitar



Bought this one last year and finally had a chance to play it a bit more.
It's a short scale bass with a fully hollow body. Thicker body than my Gretsch and with a deeper acoustic sound. Pickups aren't great, but the bridge pickup seems pretty usable. I'd like to change all the electronics in it for more flexibility. As it is, it has a pickup selector switch (which I don't like) and volume and tone. Maybe some ThunderTron pickups from TV Jones would improve the sound.. Don't know if they'd fit though.
All in all, it's fun to play and can walk some badass jazz.

Thursday, May 8, 2008

Gibson Thunderbird 5 string Bass


The coolest looking bass ever! Sound is HUGE and punchy! Lots of sonic difference between the two pickups and both are quite useful.

Fender "Victor Bailey" 5 string acoustic bass guitar


This bass sounds great!I Today I will be taking it to change the nut and put on a high C string instead of the low B.
But.. There is an issue with string output with the piezo pickup in the bridge saddle. VERY uneven between strings. Also, the fishman preamp-eq-tuner that is built in makes some noise in certain positions. Otherwise very comfortable and fun to play! Super nice to have around the house!
UPDATE: Not quite as fun as the four string.. But perhaps this has something to do with the strings. I use the phosfor bronze on the 4 string, but no one makes a five string set of these, so I have half wound D'Addarios on it now.
I contacted Fishman about the preamp and they told me that Fender has them make this super cheap model to put in these basses and the best thing to do would be to replace it with their regular model preamps. Same with the pickup. They don't even use this type of pickup anymore (since like 1990!) but since it's cheap, Fender uses it to keep costs down. There should be an option when you buy it! It's such a pain to find out all this crap after you buy the bass. So I'm having Fishman build me a custom sized pickup for the 5 string (they don't make the new pickups that long) and a new preamp. I also bought a new pickup for the 4 string, but this one is off the shelf, regular size.