recommend me a 5 string bass!

Fragle

Fragle

Member
Jul 27, 2005
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Germany
hey,

already used the search function, but didn't exactly get what i was looking for..

anyways, aside from recording work i've been playing guitar for 8 years now, and i'm feeling an increasing urge to pick up bass, too :D

basically, chances are that i might join a brutal death band as the bass player soon, plus i'd also like to have a bass around in the studio in case anyone brings in a real shitty instrument.

i'm definitely looking for a 5 string bass, as i'm playing a lot of B tuned stuff.

so, any recommendations? i don't exactly want a super expensive instrument, more on the lower midrange side, but still something that is decent enough to record with in the studio.

i've heared a lot of good things about the yamaha rbx 375, which would also fit my price range very well :)
so, what do you guys think about that one?
any other/better alternatives?
edit: i'm also considering this one:
http://www.thomann.de/de/ibanez_sr305ipt.htm

also, it would be great if anyone could point out some aspects that i should keep an eye on too (like active EQ, pickup selection etc). i know next to nothing about basses as of right now...always considered them to be the enemy, haha ^^

thanks in advance!

edit: btw, the stuff i like to play (and the kinda style most bands that i'm recording play) is mostly death metal, ranging from beneath the massacre (dystopia bass tone is SICK, and is exactly like their live sound....) to suffocation kinda bands....with the occasional swedish death band here and there. so i guess it's mostly picked and rather distorted sounds i'm shooting for.
 
Hm.. I would happily recommend Warwick, Sandberg or Spector bass guitars (though they may be above your budget range).. especially for Death metal you can get a great tone out of these.
I'm using a passive Warwick corvette for 4 years now - and I'm very pleased with it's character so far. It costed me about 900 Euro.

Yamaha (check out the BB-series) and Ibanez bass guitars have currently the best price-performance ratio in my opinion. I'd say you should visit a big Music Gear store in your area (like Amptown in Hamburg or Music Store in Köln) and try out some bass guitars. Since every single Instrument might have it's own private little ideosyncracies, I always warn people of just buying via internet.

I would favour an active system and emg pickups but you should keep in mind that my perception of tone and quality differs from yours and everyone else's. There is no objective criteria here.
 
Owning a BB, great bass. It has a little bit of everything, very middle of the road for a bass. Though, I owned an RBX older 5 string at one time, could never get a decent tone out of it, sold it. I also have a 6 string Ibanez sound gear... it plays great. Tone is just OK. One bass I am very impressed with is my Schecter Omen 5. It is simply a BEAST when it comes to a very rumbly tone. Lots of low end in that thing... Thats probably the one I would recommend. I found mine with a nick in the headstock for like $285 shipped (in the US of course), so they can be had for cheap used or new w/ minuscule flaws.
 
I was in exactly that situation last year.
So I went to Amptown in Hamburg testing gear and fell in love with the Ibanez SR505. To this day I have not regretted buying it, and have since then seen it recommended very often on forums.
Comfortable body, pretty slim neck with narrow string spacing (guess that's a good thing for guitarists switching over). The korean-made Bartolinis and active EQ are very nice, and I believe the mahogany body to be a much better choice then the Agathis body on the SR305. Gives very nice deep lows. The additional money is well spent here IMO.

FWIW, my SR505 sounded much better recorded than the SRX595 of our bassist. Found that out the hard way, I only tried mine after we had already recorded three songs with his bass. We actually did retrack those three songs and recorded all others with the SR505. :)

Then there's the Ibanez BTB series, almost polar opposite to the SR models: 35" scale, wide string spacing (therefore really wide necks), weighing quite alot. In my new band where I play bass I had our singer's BTB405QM (a discontinued model) in the rehearsal room for a while. The 35" scale helps alot in getting a tight and defined low B, and it's actually not much harder to play and pretty easy to adjust from a 34" scale. Even with my rather small hands I had alot of fun playing that bass.
Definitely try the BTBs out as well, you might actually like them better than the SRs.

Warwicks sound great but have very thick necks, so as with the BTB you NEED to try them. Not that much an issue on the 4-strings, but the 5-strings are really meaty.
 
MIM Fender Jazz + Bartolini single coils + D'addario ProSteels = this (totally raw DI there btw, except for compression simply to tame dynamics ;))
 
I have the Ibanez you posted. I love it but I don't know anything about basses haha, I play it like a guitar -_-. The only thing I don't like is that there is 5 knobs. WHen I bought it, I thought 5 knobs would be cool and would give me a better control of my sound. But now, each time I record it I have to spend a lot of time adjusting the 5 damn knobs to get the sound I like haha, I'd prefer to have to adjust only 2 knobs. And I don't know if it is the pick ups or my playing, but the 5th string always come up muddy and dark when I record it.
 
That was another big appeal of the Jazz Bass for me - all passive, with one neck volume, one bridge volume, and one tone knob (AKA treble cut), and it sounds best with all three on max! :headbang:
 
Just set all the knobs to centre and use the knobs on the amp sim/eq or whatnot.

Just to chime in on the whole issue, one of the best basses I've ever heard was a Ibanez SR500, loads of people on here recommend them. I'm gonna be picking one up one day when I have cash.
 
hey, thanks for the input!

regarding the ibanez btb and schecter omen 5 basses, those look really neat...unfortunately they're a bit more expensive than what i wanted to shell out....i was thinking more like 400euro max, preferably less & used. after all i'm just picking up the instrument, no band yet, so i'd rather cut some costs here and put the money into more studio gear, haha.

anyways, as for the sr505 bass, my friend actually has a sr506, and while it plays OK (after all it's a sixstring ;) ), i wasn't too impressed with the sound tbh. it's OK of course, but not as clear on the low B as i'd like....he also has HK wthb-7 (edit: http://shop.strato.de/epages/62079703.sf/de_DE/?ObjectPath=/Shops/62079703/Products/WTHB7) that sounded way better to my ears when i had it around here. seemed to me as if the dry tone of the sr506 was more honky, with an abundance of lower mids, whereas the HK was the opposite basically....more scooped, more highs/lows, kinda funky right out of the box.

marcus, when saying fender jazz, are you talking about a real american fender, or the mexican one?
i keep hearing great things about these....even though they are fugly as hell as far as i am concerned ^^

btw, for my style, should i prefer active electronics/PUs or passive ones?
when recording stuff i always had all the EQ knobs (on the active basses obviously) centered, but that was more a matter of consistency....didn't want a dumbass bass player to change these mid-recording. so, how would one actually go about properly using these??
 
Mexican, that's what the MIM refers to (Made in Mexico ;)), still fantastic quality on mine though! And my clip above is all passive, but I think it sounds pretty metal! :cool:
 
Thanks! It was the Inst. in of my Mackie Onyx 400F :) (higher impedance than my Redeye, which I nevertheless use for my guitar, cuz it has EMG's and thus input impedance of the DI doesn't matter nearly as much)
 
so, what's the advantage of the sr505 in contrast to the sr305?

as i already said, my friend has a sr506, and i'm not too impressed with the thing....sorta honky/muddy sounding, unless you screw with the active EQ of course, but then again there's the risk of accidentally changing the settings.
 
alright, so i went to a music story yesterday and played a couple of basses!

unfortunately they didn't have the sr305 in stock, but since then i've been told by quite a few friends of mine that there are WAY better basses out there for the money.
i mainly played ibanez, cort, gl, and yamaha basses, and i got to say, the yamahas were the most impressive ones by far!

i played the rbx375, and the bb415, which is a passive bass.
i felt that the bb415 sounded and felt just a *tad* better, but the rbx375 is active, which is said to be better for playing live, was more comfortable to play standing up, and overall just looks way better than the hideous bb415.
so....i'm not quite sure where to go....i'm pretty decided on getting either of these two, but well, does anyone have experience with either or both of them?? especially the bb415!

also, would you consider passive basses to be superior for recording, or active ones? and why?

thanks!
 
Warwick Corvette $$ NT 5 string. Have had it for a year now and never looked back.
Solid rock tone, plug'n'record sort of thing... and if you can find the bubinga model check it out (thomann), it's said to have even tighter low end.
 
akarawd said:
Warwick Corvette $$ NT 5 string. Have had it for a year now and never looked back.
Solid rock tone, plug'n'record sort of thing... and if you can find the bubinga model check it out (thomann), it's said to have even tighter low end.
Click to expand...

Those are over 1000€ at Thomann though
 
Spector makes some awesome stuff. My cousin bought one (cant remember the model) in a 4 string version and it played as smoothly and felt as nice as some higher dollar range basses.
 
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