NBD Sandberg Cali TM4

[Subbeh]

My new bass turned up today, Sandberg California TM4, the old shape, which might explain why the price was so good.
Righty and lefty models were around £750 at Thomann and I couldn't turn it down at that price.

[url="https://flic.kr/p/vHLCRu"][/url]

[url="https://flic.kr/p/vHLoAd"][/url]

Finish is black burst, looks a bit lighter in the pics and I like it a lot more than I thought I would, especially with so much of the grain coming through. I also really
like the nice clean look of the fretboard without markers.

The setup was surprisingly good out of the box, lovely action and no buzzing and there are so many usable tones, neck pickup has a nice modern jazz feel
and the MM has bags of punch to back it up, or you can run that in single coil mode to complement the neck pickup nicely.
Then you've got passive mode which tames it a bit but still has more punch than I'm used to with the passive basses I've had before.

[CamdenRob]

Phwoor... Looks fantastic.. Happy nbd

Sandbergs really are cracking basses and great value.

Enjoy...

[Subbeh]

Cheers! It really is good value, Owned a good few basses but never had one without a solid finish before
It just feels so good!

Don't know if its because of the plek fret job but Ive never had such a low action buzz free setup, the videos of the
Machine in action are pretty neat.

[Chiliwailer]

That looks great, love the burst and strong grain showing through. Awesome value you got there too, enjoy!

[Veils]

I had a blackburst JM4 many moons ago, beautiful finish, you've got a cracker there mate!!!

[discreet]

Really nice. But why is the chrome green? Is the bass surrounded by foliage, or what?

[Woodinblack]

I was wondering about the green too!
Looks lovely. What model was it? I only saw the fretless on thomann for that price?

[Subbeh]

I'll have another look when I'm on my desktop but I swear they were doing the r/h version for the same price last night.

Took the pictures under cover as it was raining, cover was indeed green. That's why I normally get the other half to do it, she's a photographer, I can barely figure out how to turn the camera on!

Must change the strings as well, they sound nice but even for stainless rounds I've never encountered strings that feel so coarse. My finger tips feel like they've been sand blasted.

[discreet]

[quote name='Subbeh' timestamp='1437000645' post='2822816']
Took the pictures under cover as it was raining, cover was indeed green.
[/quote]

Just curious really, still looks amazing.

[Bassman Sam]

I like green.

Nice bass at a good price.

[Subbeh]

Gah! not really used the Sandberg until recently and much to the surprise of myself and my tech it seems
they installed the bridge too far back, not enough travel in the saddles to intonate it correctly.

Thomann concur and they've sent it back to Sandberg for correction or a possible refund. Three
Sandbergs in a row and an issue everytime! this is getting bloody annoying. I think they must
have the YTS kid doing QC on the lefites

On the bright side I dug out my first bass, my Encore E83 precision copy. Hadn't touched it in maybe sixteen
years. Stripped it down, cleaned it, tweaked the truss rod, set the intonation and wow, I can't believe a bass
that was only £130 to begin with that hasn't seen the light of day in so long feels and sounds so good!

Edited November 25, 2015 by Subbeh

[discreet]

[quote name='Subbeh' timestamp='1448479436' post='2915813']
Three Sandbergs in a row and an issue every time!

I can't believe a bass that was only £130 feels and sounds so good!
[/quote]

I can't help but think that there's a lesson here somewhere...

Edited November 25, 2015 by discreet

[fretmeister]

Weird. I've had 3 and they've all been lovely.

[Subbeh]

To be fair the first two were damaged/used and sold as new by Thomann, only this one seems to be Sandberg at fault. I figured I couldn't possibly get three duff basses in a row from Thomann, you have to look pretty hard to find many people who've had bad experiences with them. Just lucky I suppose!

[Naetharu]

Beautiful - the wood grain looks superb on that!

[bassbiscuits]

Great looking bass. I've got a California TT4 ( a straight passive jazz bass basically) and its a thing of wonder.

the plek'd fret thing means mine also has the lowest action of any bass i've played, with no buzzing and spot-on intonation throughout.

Surprised to hear about the bridge being wrongly placed - quite a major mistake really, and not what I'd expect from Sandberg, who seem all about German efficient engineering.

good luck - hope you get to sorted.

[Subbeh]

I was pretty surprised too! Thomann were great and said it'd be a two-four week turnaround via Sandberg with no communication update expected from Sandberg. That bit seems much less great.

Hopefully they can put it right and then I can sell it and buy something else, I just can't seem to own any bass for too long without getting GAS for something else!

Edited November 27, 2015 by Subbeh

[fretmeister]

Sandberg are doing really well at the mo- 5 month wait for a custom order, up to 18 months now for the hardcore aged ones. Can't make them fast enough.

[Subbeh]

Maybe it'd help if they went a tad slower, maybe put bridges in the right place

I would love another PM4, ideally I'd swap this bass for one of those. I really do like the TM4 but the Precision variant is even better.
Despite the issue I've had with this bass the pickups/eq are really, really good. Stupidly easy to dial in huge range of sounds and
the passive mode is just as nice.

Edited November 28, 2015 by Subbeh

[M@23]

I've only got experience of my current Sandberg. It's immaculate. But, I've had two experiences of Thomann sending me 'new' basses which are quite obviously damaged.