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Electromagnetism can affect pacemakers, but I'd be surprised if PA equipment in proper working order outputs anything like the levels of electromagnetism necessary to interfere with a device. When you see pacemaker warning symbols on things it's normally on seriously heavy duty industrial or medical equipment. Methinks you had a whingy punter. I'd have told him to move away from the speaker if he had concerns.

I too had to Google Rachel Bolan to find out who she is. Does the bass come with a nose ring and earring linked by a chain? 😂 I'm not a big fan of the red inlays but I guess Rachel is. I think the idea of applying stickers is worse than the inlays, especially if they're not 100% perfectly applied, you'll see tiny bits of red, or a the wonkiness again the parallel frets and it will drive you nuts.

Just looked up the Custom model, in truth they won't sound a million miles apart but I doubt the Custom is close to the Euro in terms of quality and feel. It comes down to whether the extra £1000 for the Euro is worth it. For me, once you get to that price, you can really start getting some nice used pieces. Personally if I were you I'd be looking for a used Euro. There's no way I'd spend £1000 on an import Asian bass, other than Japanese instruments of course. That said, you could probably get a used Custom for £500 vs a used Euro for £1000ish, they're going to sound broadly similar but one will feel nicer. It's up to you whether it's worth the extra.

The difference is significant. The pickups and preamps in the Euros are better though there are some combos I don't care for much, they're undoubtedly all better electronic packaged offering a higher quality of sound. The main difference is in the build quality. The Euros are through necks, the woods are nice and the attention to detail is fantastic. People with a lot of Spectors say they're up there with the quality of the US stuff and I have to admit, I couldn't find a single flaw with mine. It was impeccably built and the quality of the clearcoat finish was as smooth as glass and totally free from imperfections. Apparently Stuart Spector had them running a tight ship in the Czech shop and I can believe it. It's not really a fair comparison though as a Euro is a £2000 bass and a Legend is a £600 bass. I know you're a man of good taste, I definitely think you can see, feel and hear where the extra money goes on a Euro. I wish I'd taken some better photos of mine when I had it. It was sold to another Basschat member who got the train from London to Newcastle to collect it.

That's the one, I remember Chris playing it and had a bit of a noodle myself although I couldn't play bass at the time, I was still playing electric guitar. I seem to recall him playing "Diamonds on the Soles of her Shoes" on it and it sounded great. It was one of my favourite basses amongst the great many he seemed to own in that period, I can't remember what he replaced it with. This would have been somewhere between 9 to 11 years ago now, I can't remember exactly. I still think its most aesthetically pleasing bass ever to come out of ACG.

Nice one, if I ever own another Spector it will be a Doug Wimbish. Interestingly enough I'm just watching the Andertons review of the new Spector basses on their YouTube channel and they're still perpetuating the myth that the preamp is "cut only". I often find they get quite a few things wrong in their reviews, I think they should have the spec sheets for the basses they're reviewing printed out and in the room with them!

If you're playing rock or metal you're probably totally set, but when I had my 5LX I turned the trim pot in the control cavity down to about 50% which sweetened the tone up massively. These things ship from the factory with the preamp gain set to the maximum and it was clipping the input on my amp heavily unless I dialled the input gain right down, even then it was very grindy. I like a middy growl tone and the extreme grind wasn't working for me. Also as you may already be aware, the Tonepump preamp is often incorrectly referred to as a "cut-only" preamp, even in Spector's old official marketing materials, probably as a result of a mid-communication with the guy who designed the Tonepump, who was a Czech if I remember correctly. I'm sure I recall a Spector employee acknowledging the error on Talkbass however the website still referred to the Tonepump as being "cut only" while this was happening. Iirc, the designer posted the wiring diagram and demonstrated that it's cut / boost, with the flat 0db level for each knob being in the middle of the knobs rotation, albeit there is no centre detente to help you find that position. The fact so many people run it with both knobs maxed in the belief it is "cut only" is probably part of the reason a lot of people get such scooped, grindy tones from these.

Very unusual. Most musicians play their signature model with the same specs as the catalogue model. Sometimes you'll get an import model with some cheaper parts but generally they're identical. For example, Billy Sheehan's Attitude bass, built in the custom shop at Yamaha Japan. The real deal Attitude you can buy yourself, also made in Japan at the Yamaha custom shop, with all the same stuff Billy has on his bass. If you buy the cheaper version, you don't get the woofer pickup, the signature Dimarzio, the scalloped fretboard, the detuner, the countersunk bridge, the dual outputs, the deep neck pocket and bolting system etc. So basically nothing like Billy's bass, but they were about 20% of the price. Of course, some companies are less scrupulous than others. ESP have offered loads of Kirk Hammett signature guitars, many of which he has never even held. They're just cheaper copies of his custom shop guitars with changes made to keep the price down so they can sell them to kids who want to look like the artist rather than selling the instrument as a tool which happens to have a useful set of characteristics as requested by the artist who helped come up with the instrument.

The 20th and 21st are usable, so no different to a traditional Fender range, but 22nd-24th require a bit of reaching. A bit of double bass-esque reaching which is fine if you're John Patitucci but otherwise it's not the most comfortable bass for uppper register soloing. I'd say perhaps another thing to consider is the way the bass hangs on a strap. They are big basses and I found the best postion for a overall ergonomics was not as high as I'd wear some of my basses. I could have worn it higher to bring the upper frets towards my optimum position but then it would have been a real stretch to the lower frets. I think the ergonomics and balance of the bass are perhaps an even bigger factor in why I didn't find the upper register so usable. I sold it because I was using my Warwick Thumb more so I thought I'd free up the money for something else. The Thumb, for my needs at the time, was the better bass. The B string on the Spector was obviously better though, that Euro had real thickness and authority in the bottom end. Ask yourself how much time you really need those last three frets, is it really that much of a deal breaker? I'd have another Spector, ideally a Doug Wimbish model if I saw one for a good price. I'm lucky to own a few basses now with completely uninhibited access to the 24th fret so that kind of access isn't such a "must have" for me now.

I do feel that the upper fret access on Spectors is terrible, it's one of the reasons I sold my Euro 5LX, which in most other aspects was a fantastic instrument. I found the bass to be very well balanced and, I think moving the bridge so far forward to affect that quite badly. What I don't understand is why Rudy wanted upper fret access so badly that they moved the bridge. No comment on his ability but I've never heard anything from him where he's really been in the upper register to the point where the normal Spector access would hinder him. I like the look of his old Peavey signature, I'd love to have a go on one some day. Also that's a very noisy signal in that video. I've never heard thet with Sims pickups in other videos - sounds like the earth wire is loose.

I saw the video for this when it first went public and I do think it's a good looking bass, especially in the white. If it had black hardware I think I'd want to buy one on looks alone. The spec list is great and I can see the bass being just the ticket for a lot of players in a lot of genres. However, Jackson's typically "metal" image and marketing might put people off what I think will probably be a fantastic bass. EMGs, 35", decent preamp and all for £650. I think it would a great gigging bass if you had expensive stuff that you'd rather keep at home.

I don't know, I definitely am a Tool fan and I think the majority of Lateralus is absolutely crud and filler. I can't see how changing the order of the tracks could improve the album, you still have listen to all the boring bits, just in different sequence. I think Tool have been a consistently inconsistent band. Each album has two or three absolutely awesome tracks and a load of boring Tool-by-numbers with little of interest about it. If you cut the chaffe you could make one album that is incredible, distilling their career into one disc. It seems to be Maynard's approach - A Perfect Circle do one or two tracks per album that are amazing and the rest are bland to the point of being anonymous. This will almost certainly be the last Tool album, I'd like to think they can write something as good as "The Grudge" again but they missed that mark on 10,000 Days and I'm not sure they have it in them after all this time to do it on their new album. I'd probably put them in my top 5 favourite metal bands, because when they are good they are just incredible.

No forum is perfect, that's for sure. No matter where you go, you will find people acting in bizarre, unusual ways. My mind wanders back to that thread about Scott Devine and the OP who seemed to have some bizarre vendetta against him, even making some not-so-subtle aspersions about his decision to make his wife a director in his business. I find Scott's YouTube personality a bit cringey at times but when he takes the mask off he seems like a really sound down to earth bloke. However, no matter what you think of him, he didn't deserve the abuse he got got in that bizarre thread.

I like the other site and use it a lot. It has a huge audience and gets a lot of traffic. I've been browsing it since about 2001 and posting since I took up bass a few years ago, though I think my account dates back to 2008 I kept it dormant for the best part of a decade. It's not as good a site as it used to be, I think over the last ten years there has been a trend moving away from high-end luxury and exotic basses and more towards a "P bass is all you need" mindset. Clarity, articulation and punch used to be the order of the day, but now it's "thud is all you need", but you can't argue with these sorts as a P bass "sits in the mix", which I think is probably the catchphrase of the site these days. The P with flats crowd are the worst. I remember a thread titled "Bass should be felt, not heard" with absolutely loads of people chiming in in agreement. Cool, whatever, but I want to hear the notes. It used to be very jazz centric, it seems to have been overcome by a different crowd these days. The bass porn there used to be off the chain. It's lost some of that middle class appeal now, there is less variety and less high end stuff on show these days. Their moderating style is a bit ridiculous. Thou shalt not openly disagree with their hallowed "name" bassists or reps from manufacturers, who often happen to be advertisers or potential advertisers. Still, it has a huge amount of good content to read and you can get an answer to anything there if you ask in the right place. They do still have a lot of good guys over there.

Aha, I recognise your Smith now - it was in Scott Devine's "30 bass comparison" video that he did earlier this year at Bass Direct. I did think he did a pretty poor job as the EQ on all the basses is not flat, I thought either he should have set them all flat or just EQ'd them to make each of them sound their best. The Smith was still one of the best in the test I thought, even if he didn't show it in its best light. I bought the Pedulla MVP-5 in that video and a few weeks after I received it, Scott published the video and I saw my bass on in it.

I know what you mean Al, I love the funky growl of my Pedulla and the out and out growl of my Thumb, but the Smith has a sound that is just beyond them. It's so clean and sweetly compressed. Ken's ideal for sound was to build a bass that in a live setting, sounded as good as a bass that had been recorded in a studio, with all of the EQ and effects to bring out the best of the instrument. i think he nailed it. I know for a fact I'll own more Smiths in the future. A 6 string with maple wings will be the next one I think, preferably in the vintage BT shape. They are the dream for me, they're like the Ferrari F40, Lamborghini Countach and McLaren F1 of the bass guitar world, effortlessly and timelessly cool. I see you've got what appears to be a Yamaha Nathan East, I'd love one of those though I think I'm more likely to get a Yamaha John Patitucci I or II, but please share some pics of your Smith!

I didn't get the play on Friday as I tweaked my wrist getting my suitcase out of the car (doh) so I thought it best to leave it, I had a good session on Saturday learning "Peg" by Steely Dan. The rum was nice too! There's such a treasure trove of info to get through out there. I think it's interesting that the Talkbass Ken Smith club thread is only on it's second volume at fifty pages, where Fodera, Spector, Pedulla etc, have had many, many more volumes - I guess for some reason they never caught on with that forum as quite the fashion accessory as some of the other builders, but those who have played them rightly revere them. There are some good threads out there about Ken's acerbic style - a thread on here where someone complained that Ken wanted to charge $100 to ship a replacement pot to him, then people started rubbishing Ken so he joined the forum to explain why the cost was so. Various people complaining about inflexibility of customisation, which I'll get on to. Ken's very much like Jeff Berlin, both are New Yorkers (a famously short, straight-talking people), and when you know as much as those guys do and you know exactly what works and what doesn't, I suppose they just have little time for alternative methods when they know what works and what doesn't. People complain about Ken not offering maple fretboards or crazy wood combinations, not being willing to move the pickup positions or fit different pickups or preamps; he's said many a time that he won't change something if it will make an inferior instrument, and this is where Ken differs from other shops. He isn't building you your dream bass that you came up with, he's building you his dream bass, his vision of what a perfect bass guitar is. Some guys were upset about this, but Ken won't put his name on anything that isn't stellar and his 40 years of experience and his order validates his approach. I find him a fascinating character, he's one of these ultra-talented people who seems to do well in anything he tries. A successful studio session musician and professional concert player, particularly on double bass, got into upright bass restoration and repair and then decided to make a bass guitar that was designed and constructed with the care of an upright. I suppose 40 years back when he was starting this process, other guys like Mike Pedulla, Vinny Fodera and Stuart Spector were having similar thoughts, as really high quality instruments that moved the game on from Fender's designs didn't really exist, other than Alembic. I did find some of Ken's pointed comments about bass builders in NYC charging a fortune to be amusing. He talked about the exorbitant price of some NYC builders basses when they weren't really offering anything that you couldn't get elsewhere, except as they worked in inner NYC they were charging a huge amount to cover the rent, but they were also covering the lifestyle and sports cars off the back of their business. He said "I'll sell you a bottle of Coke for a dollar. A guy from NYC will sell you the Coke for 3 dollars and show you his rent bill so you feel good about paying 3 dollars for the Coke, but it's still the same bottle of Coke". There's certainly no love lost between him and Vinny Fodera, but for the most part he doesn't really seem interested in what other builders are doing, I like his single-mindedness. It has produced the fantastic instruments that we love. I like the fact he doesn't hide his displeasure with how the older Burners and KSD basses turned out. Some of his comments about John Patitucci's move to Yamaha were a little off-colour by 2019 standards, but again I think there is no love lost between them either. I guess the way John tried to make subtle digs at the basses he was more than happy to play for so many years didn't sit well with Ken. I also found out that John had initially wanted a maple bass, I believe it was the Smith Jackson six string #5 with a flamed maple body that John was after, but it was purchased by a guy who irrc was a rep for Ken, who ended up teaching the Talkbass member who told the story. He took photos of it at his teacher's house and it s a glorious instrument. John Patitucci ended up with the #6 6 string they made. He later said he changed to Yamaha because he wanted a bass with "real bottom end that could really hold it down with a band" - if anything I think his Yamaha lacks punch and bottom end compared to his Smith sound and I say that as a current owner of a Yamaha custom shop instrument, so I'm not picking sides in the brand war, and also as someone who still intends to own a Yamaha JP bass some time - I nearly bought one a few weeks prior to getting my Ken Smith. Reading all of the threads really gave me an appreciation of his design ideals and did also make me question how much the Japanese Burners made by Sleek Elite in Japan are "real" Ken Smiths. I know they are his design, his electronics and he inspects and sets them up before they go to the customer, but they're built in Japan, by admittedly very talented luthiers. Now, Ken's transferring his production from Pennsylvania to Kevin Brubaker in Maryland. I don't know if Ken's team are going, I guess they have something in place so Kevin can keep up with the demand but again, this will create a "pre-Brubaker" Smith tag. Even if Ken is 100% happy with Kevin's builds, which seems to be the case given Ken has given his public approval of the first Smiths made by Kevin, a Smith built by Brubaker is a Smith as far as I'm concerned, but the market won't see it that way. Smiths have always been built by many hands, but I think the fact that Ken won't be in the workshop every day will affect used values of the Brubaker instruments. Certainly as Ken moves into retirement I think the desirability of the older basses will increase again. That said, I think he's the kind of bloke who will struggle to retire, he's a high achiever sort and I think he'll always want to be involved. I think he is certainly the most interesting bass builder as a person that the electric bass has ever seen. But, all of the politics aside, Ken as a person etc, I think Ken Smith basses are just the best. They have a sound that nothing else can replicate - the US Peavey Cirrus basses were considered closest but even they are a way off. Smiths look and feel incredible. Anyone that hasn't played one really needs to jump on the chance if they ever get the opportunity to play one.

I've been on training in Milton Keynes this week (urgh...), stuck in a stuffy conference centre with bad air-con (double urgh) and I think I've read just about every Basschat and Talkbass thread about Ken Smith basses I can find. I am so looking forward to getting home this afternoon, having a big glass of rum over ice and plugging my BT5 in!

Ok, so this is copy-pasted from another bass forum, but for a lengthy review of the Ken Smith BT5 that I recently purchased from Ped as well as a few words on my Eich Bass Board that I also purchased as a result of Ped, please read on. For as long as I've known about (the other bass forum for middle class Americans) , which is the better part of 18 years now, I've wanted a Ken Smith, particularly the older BT shape models which I prefer to the newer shapes. I used to play electric guitar and my switch to bass was fairly recent, I've been buying my dream basses. I think I've always secretly been a bassist, I always coveted exotic basses more than exotic guitars and I always loved the role of bass in a band, but that's a whole other story. Here we are, in 2019 and I'm now a bassist. I actually posted last month in the "What will your next bass be?" thread, that my next instrument would be a Ken Smith. I've always loved the design ethos, the exquisite craftsmanship and forward-thinking design Ken's basses had and have. I think they sound great in live and studio recordings, though I'd never heard or even seen one in person until I purchased mine. Last Sunday night, my brother (who is a long-time member here, India_Sierra) sent me a link to a classified ad for a Ken Smith BT5, for sale near York in the UK, which is about 2.5 hours drive where I live in the north of England. The few pictures in the ad looked great, the price seemed very, very fair for the condition of the instrument and as the seller was the owner of the website the classified was hosted on, I felt confident to make the trip down with the full asking price in cash, knowing the bass would be as-described. As it happend, the bass was in virtually perfect condition with barely a mark on it. It has clearly been loved dearly and pampered over the years. So here we have it, a 1991 Ken Smith with koa top and back, mahogany core and maple layers. The neck is maple and morado. It's the old skool 2 band EQ with all original electronics, all the pots work smoothly with no noise at all and the jack socket was recently replaced. The action is super low but so playable - it gives just the right amount of buzz when you dig in hard but otherwise is easy to play clean. It requires so little strength and physical input that it just feels effortless to play. One of the big draws for me was the Ken Smith sound. There is a characteristic and quality to his instruments that no other bass has, it's present in every Smith recording I've heard. I know Ken has been famously picky about which woods would be offered, he has his ideas about what works in combination to get the best sound and I have to say, I believe in his wisddom. Despite being a large instrument, with quite a large but thin body, the resonance and sustain of this thing is incredible despite it not being particularly heavy. It's very loud and resonant unplugged and harmonics ring out with such clarity and purity. The build quality is flawless. The attention to detail, the thoughtfulness of the design, the amazing way the neck joins the body almost imperceptibly, that famous brass nut, it's beyond superb. Plugged in, it gives that instant Smith sound. I keep it flat on the EQ, pickups balanced 50/50 and volume on full and it just sounds so perfectly even and balanced, with a rich quality to every note. I struggle to put into words exactly what this quality is; it's neither a dark bass, nor a bright one, it's warm but extremely clear and articulate. It isn't harsh, but it's not mushy or soft. I think it is perhaps best described as "balanced". I think a good balance in the sound of a bass is perhaps the most important property I look for, tonally, in a bass. For me, every note must be as loud as resonant as every other note, there must be no dead spots, no strings louder than one another. There must be no booming, overpowering bass and no harsh treble. The Smith delivers on this perfectly. Another remarkable trick is that there is no volume increase when slapping - a bit of black magic I haven't quite figured out yet, I could happily slap on this without needing a compressor to stop volume spikes. It's as if it has some magical in-built compressor. I see now why Ken's basses became one of the session bass industry standards. The EQ is as flexible as two band can be and remains musical throughout the settings, it doesn't quite have the extreme (and IMO generally unusable) extremes of EQ that some modern preamps have. No matter what you do to it, it still sounds like a Smith, so it's not a hugely versatile bass, but I don't need it to be - the sound it makes is so pure it sits perfectly in many, many genres. If I played bar-room blues or heavy metal, which I don't, the Smith wouldn't be the right choice, but for gospel, latin, jazz fusion, funk, pop etc, it's fantastic. The electrical package is one of those things Ken just got right. There's a reason people who buy Smith basses don't tend to want to change preamps or pickups, everything is just so perfectly matched, it just works exactly as it should. The bass came with the original Smith teardrop case and what appears to a 1991 strap, judging by the age of it. I purchased another Dingwall racing strap in brown leather and some Dunlop straploks for the recessed locks. The Dingwall straps are fantastic by the way, I have one on another bass in my collection, but the leather is so thick that getting Dunlop straploks on is a two man job. I know it's early days for me and this bass, but in contrast to another recent thread where a user lamented his dream bass just not working for him, the Smith is perfect for me. Smiths have always held a mystique for me and I've always wanted one. I am glad and grateful for the opportunity to make this happen and of course, I must thank India Sierra for pointing me to the advert - I spent less than 30 seconds in considering to buy it as the vultures were already circling in the for-sale thread. I think it was on sale for less than an hour before I snapped it up. As it happens, when I tried the bass at the seller's house, he was using a headphone setup, with headphone running into a digital bass synth / amp unit and an Eich Bass Board underneath his office chair, powered by what looked like a little TC Electronics head. The Bass Board, if you haven't seen it, is a board that you stand on, or sit on with a chair as you play. It has two incredibly powerful drivers which take your amp signal and turn it into vibrations that you feel through the board, but the attenuation of the vibration is so perfect that you can literally feel the music in your body as you play. The Bass Board is also incredibly quiet - standing on it gives the impression of playing bass in front of a cranked up huge rig, if you've ever played a huge rig or been to a really loud concert where you can feel the bass in your whole body, that is what this gadget gives you. It has useful applications for people using IEMs during gigs who miss the feedback of "feeling" the music from their amp, but I just liked it for home practice. The engineering is spot on, when standing on it felt like I was standing in front of a huge rig, yet when not standing on it, I noted that the vibration bleed coming out of it was absolutely minimal. It has a headphone input too so it could be a great option for players who have family who get irritated by bass vibration shaking the house. I play a Markbass Ninja 1000W into a Markbass Ninja 2x12 at home, I've got some wattage to spare, so I've purchased myself a Bass Board for home use. I don't spare the decibels at home, but even at moderate volume levels the Bass Board creates an illusion of playing really loud, as if you've just walked on stage at Madison Square Garden (or the Baked Potato if that's more your thing). Sadly the speakon cables I had at home aren't long enough to connect it to my Ninja 2x12, so I've had to order another cable and I can't use it until that arrives. If you ever get the chance to try one of these Bass Boards, I urge you to do so, particuarly if you play live with IEMs and no amp as a monitor on stage with you. Even if you just want to make your home practice session feel like you're doing the closing set of the Montreux Jazz Festival, this thing will not fail to make you smile. Thanks for reading if you made it this far. I hope if you have a dream bass, that you are able to make it happen. Life is too short to settle for less. If you have not played a Ken Smith then you absolutely must. I've been lucky enough to play and own some fabulous instruments and this is better than them all.

I was just about to post that! I wonder how this concept was conceived at Gibson HQ... "Hey guys, how can we celebrate Hendrix's famous association with our main competitor brand?" 😂

Oh man, I absolutely love it. As soon as I plug it in, I instantly hear that sound thst I've loved from all my favourite recordings using Ken Smith basses. I know the original pickups were designed and built by Bill Lawrence and in 2008 Ken said that Kent Armstrong had taken over making the pickups and had done so "for about twenty years", I guess your 1984 is Lawrence and my 1991 is Armstrong. I doubt the specs and design for the pickups changed much, if at all. As the company approaches its fourth decade of trading, he still makes, almost exclusively, double soapbar basses, one pickup in the middle and one right up against the bridge. I think Ken's vision, unwaivering as it is, has defined these instruments. He doesn't let customers go nuts with wood combos as he said he likes to work with what he knows will work well. The construction no doubt gives them a good portion of the sound too, like you said when I bought my bass from you, they're thin but incredibly resonant. I've got a review written up, I'll post it up here when I get a chance. I think it is without question the finest instrument I've ever had the privilege of playing.

That is a gorgeous bass and I'm glad the "selling one instrument to buy another" routine worked ok, it's always a pain when your gear doesn't sell and the thing you wanted gets bought up. Ken Smiths are very, very special instruments. I'm sure this one will serve you well - enjoy!

Gibson threatening to tear down everybody else's house rather than getting their own in order. The new model is barely changed though, just about enough to prevent Gibson's lawyers having anything to work with. Good luck to Sheldon, I'm sure his customers will support him.

I think Ola has gone a bit mad with his pricing. I had a new Boden 7 string guitar back when they were new and harder to come by. I sold it and barely lost any cash on it at the point when I sold all of my guitars to start playing bass, although I did keep my Ibanez K-7 which I'll never sell. The pricing of the guitars has jumped substantially, the same model now costs about 30% more than mine did when I bought it new, despite them vastly increasing production numbers. You think economy of scale would bring prices down, but it seems Ola gambled on demand being high enough that he could charge more and more for the same product, increasing the price way ahead of inflation. It reminds me of the financial crash in 2008, when Ibanez increased the price of their Japanese Prestige line guitars by 30-50% depending on the model, to counteract the damage the Yen suffered against the dollar. I think Ola has misjudged the bass market. I don't think there is appetite for £3000 Indonesian bass when Dingwall are churning out cheaper mass-produced Indo basses with a spec sheet which makes more sense to people who are into this sort of this, at half the price to boot. The ergonomic achievements of the Boden guitar don't translate to the bass, I don't think. The Boden guitar is tiny, sits perfectly on the lap or strap and feels almost like it isn't there. The Endureneck is good but in all honesty didn't feel any faster than a traditional neck, though it does help people who struggle with bad technique. If you don't keep your thumb in the right place, you won't be able to play it well at all, but you don't need a Strandberg to learn good thumb placement. I think this will not be a huge success for Ola, after the initial excitement of the target audience, which is likely the "math metal", "djent" or "tech" lot, which I'd also consider, as a small aside, to be three of the cringiest genre names I can think of. 😂

I haven't played the Nathan East model but it does stick in my mind as being one of those basses that I've never heard get a single bad review or complaint. They are made in the Yamaha custom shop in Japan, same as the Attitude LTD basses, which I do happen to own. I can say with confidence that the build quality and craftsmanship of the stuff they put out is exceptional.