Hi
So after playing a Fender 54 reissue P, a ‘78 Fender Musicmaster and an Epiphone Thunderbird IV pro for a while I decided to check out Ibanez. Given recent shoulder and wrist surgery after being knocked off my bike by a careless motorist, I’m finding short scale basses more comfy.
I pulled the trigger on an Ibanez EHB1000s.
I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I’d had Ibanez guitars before and they were always well made but a tad clinical for my taste. In a nutshell, great to play, but lacking mojo.
My bass arrived and it felt bit cheap initially. I think that this is because it was super lightweight at around 3Kg. When In plugged it in however, it was a beast. The preamp EQ supports a wide range of tones and the passive mode is great too. Everything from old school thump to modern mid and top heavy sounds.
The build quality is generally high end apart apart some finish blemishes where the beck bolts are. The headless design is cool and the extremely flat radius neck is super fast. The tuners are great too especially for fine tuning quickly.
The one downside is the fret markers. The main inlays are so small and insignificant that they are obscured by the E string and the luminescent ones only stay bright for about 2 minutes. This makes playing a gig on a dark stage complete pain for quick neck orientation when changing key etc.
Such a shame as this factor alone will probably relegate the bass to a studio tool rather than the lightweight gigging bass that I so wanted.
For now I’ve gone back to my Fenders and will probably end up buying a Mustang which will be a backward step in many ways as everything else about this bass is great.
Alternatively I have to pluck up courage to put my own neck inlays in just for gigging on dark stages. It’s not something that I expect to do for a bass at this price point.
The pics below show a luminescent fret marker after 20 seconds of direct light and the same fret marker 2
mins later. The last 2 pics are the bass overall and the shoddy finish by the neck bolts.
Overall a great bass let down by a few niggles. The main one being the fret markers given the offset of the neck and the cutaways. The 12th fret is about where the 9th is on other basses so. It being able to see markers can be disorienting.
