Hi,
My bass arrived now two days ago, and I have a lot to say about this bass.
I usually give a review when receiving a new instrument, whatever it is, and since this is an ashbory site, the ashbory review gets pasted here.
My main comparison will be towards an electric bass, as I've been a bass player for over 5 years now; and I will try to name the good the bad and the ugly in this thread!
Upon arriving I was startled how small and light the package was, only to find there was a smaller box within the box. And in that box was a gigbag, and within that gigbag was the ashbory bass. Needless to say how over(under)whelmed I was by it's tiny appearance!
At about 75cm (29,5") roughly seen, and not even weighing one kilo (2 pounds), this instrument is pretty remarkable, and about the same size as a regular guitar!
I went with a blue "The Armond" bass, however they sent me a Fender one.
Brock might be right, the The Armond basses are just Fender basses without the Fender logo on em.
I personally like the blue color, it's more a blue purplish color, less IN YOUR FACE than the red one, but a little more character than a regular black bass.
Black really looks the coolest, but with a black bass chances are noone would notice your exceptional instrument, and mistake it perhaps for a guitar.
"Weren't you playing the guitar?"
For those interested in the technical details:
The logo on the front just says "Ashbory" and "TM" in small next to it.
On the back there's written "Designed and backed by Fender, and crafted in Indonesia"
The serial number has a format of "ICF 10000***" (with the 3 stars as last s/n numbers).
I picked it up and immediately noticed a couple of things:
1- the tiny gigbag, which seemed very basic, toy like but upto the task of gigging when well taken care for.
2- the guitar how light weight and small it was! Together with the color made it look more like a toy than a real instrument!
3- The neck is made from a shiny fingerprint attracting plastic.
Then I noticed some good things about the bass, and things that surprised me:
The bass was responsive, did not have overwhelming peaks or bursts of volume in the attack like most piezzo pickups have.
The sound could be both upright-ish, deep, or mid/agressive-ish,
The bass was remarkably simple made! A one piece stick with most basic stuff of a regular electric bass except for a visible pickup, and much smaller and lighter.
The jack cable fitted very snugly.
The bass actually does not look as bad in real life than on photo's! At first I disliked the shape of the body and headstock a lot, but upon seeing the bass in real life, and since it's smaller than I had expected, those areas on the online pics where you'd think they wasted a lot of wood on empty (useless curves space), are less 'in your face' on the real thing, than on the photos I seen!
Now the normal things I noticed, and the bad (and the ugly)!
I personally think you can learn more from reading a negative (but true) review than reading only about the good and praises!
I have a lot to say about this bass that may be negative, but wanted to let you guys know I thoroughly enjoy playing my bass, even with these many faults and negative points!
My greater joy comes from playing a moderate bass I know costed me very little to nothing, than playing an expensive bass that broke my bank.
I see this bass as an ultra portable variation on an electric or electric upright bass (cause that's how it somewhat sounds like).
Soundquality:
Don't expect to have a $1200 electric bass sound, far from it!
Due to the nature of the stings the highest frequencies the piezzo pickup picks up (from the strings) are between 1 and 3kHz. There is some mid-bite in the sound, and some lows. I yet have to test it in live situations with vibrating lows from the amp!
The treble knob works well for that 3kHz frequency, and gives plenty of boost.
I find the bass knob, which is hard for me to notice where it focuses around, probably around 100Hz, does not make as much difference when you dial it in!
The volume knob seems to be silent in either full open or full closed position.
The more you turn the knob to half open, the more static you hear, passing half open, the more the static dissapears, and the more stringvolume comes through.
Slapping the bass gives a loud 'thud' between 500hz and 1kHz(and sub harmonics), and I would seriously recommend anyone using this bass as an upright (with plucking and thumping), to use it in combination with a good hard knee compressor or limiter that limits the initial thump.
The strings:
The equipped strings arrived about 5 notes below the standard EADG tuning, so I gently pulled the strings upward, out of the nut, as I tried tuning them more and more towards the EADG tuning, so that the nut might not 'scrape' the already weak strings!
As some may have said, the first time it's impossible to tune, and took me a good 30 minutes of slightly over tuning for the tuning to sound right for 10 minutes, before being out of tune again.
The second day the strings only detuned for 2 semi notes.
Again, slightly overtune it, and after a minute or two tune it down to the right tone.
The string tension differs between strings,and are not the same tension as what man tries to achieve with an electric bass!
The G string, the smallest of them all, seems the only string which feels like it has the right pressure and tension (though I can imagine why it'd break so fast with that tension).
The E and A feel very sloppy. I wish there was a way to add tension to the string, which is seemingly impossible or it'd be out of tune.
The E and A string kind of feel like on a 5 string bass you'd detune your B-string to a low low F.
The build quality:
Here's where the bass' weakness lies.
Although the fretboard is made out of plastic, it's good enough for nylon or rubber strings,and I don't expect it to wear down anytime soon from use!
It also keeps the neck in position (makes it harder to bend forward).
The sound you can get from the fretless fretboard can be very nice, but is very hard to get good notes sounding!
The frets closest to the nut are actually about as close to eachother as an electric bass' last octave frets (closest to the pickup).
From somewhere halfway the fretboard it's nearly impossible to play dead on! Intonation, and using vibrato is a necessity there!
It kind of reminds me of playing a violin!
The frets on the second octave on the neck (12 and up) are so close together, that at two octaves my thumb is as wide as 3 frets.
The nut seems very bad made. First of all it is too thin and sharp, causing the strings to be slightly damaged in there. My estimation is that:
1- When you continue to play the strings, there is a possibility that the strings will weaken and break at the nut.
and,
2- when the nut has bent the string in an angle (corner) the angled part of the weak silicone string is damaged.
As the string loses tension, and you wind it up to keep the tone, the damaged part also gets wound up, towards the tuner.
A couple of months later the bent section of the string will start to give in, and because the string did not break at the nut, noone really suspects it's actually the nut that causes the destruction of the string; not a random event!
Also, not only is the nut too thin, it's also pretty high.
Strings are about 3 millimeter from the fretboard (AT THE NUT). For those who like their strings low, and don't mind a bit of silly looks, I would suggest you'd take a round file, and file off the nut 'till the string groove is as high as the fretboard.
Then cut a small piece of paper, bend it 3 times(bend to double, double bend to quad, quad layer bend to upto 8 layers of paper if necessary), and place it in the nut groove, and place the string over it.
If everything is alright you should have 0.5 - 1mm of string height at the nut, good enough to get sound without buzz, and the string does not get bent in a sharp curve because the paper is rounding off the tension at the corners of the nut.
The string height at the second octave is insane!
At 9mm it is starting to become as high as some uprights!
I do admit that string height must be higher than on an electric bass because of the lower string tension, but it could be lowered by 4mm easily!
There is a problem that has to do with the bridge.
The bridge is too high as well (like the nut) but you can not simply file in the bridge like that, and the bridge is not adjustable.
The only solution there, would be to demount the bridge, and scrape off the layer of paint underneath it (depending you might need to scrape off a small layer of wood from the body too.
I believe when the bass was made everything was well calculated, but with the layer of paint added on the body, the bridge saddled the strings too high!
The bridge is a very peculiar thing, it seems to exist out of 3 pieces,where of 2 visible ones.
The first piece seems to be the base piece,mounted on the body. Underneath it is the piezo pickup. On top of the bridge (and the piezo), there is something like a nut, kept in place by what looks like black silicon glue.
I can easily peel it off should I want to, and the nut (with grooves for the strings)seems a bit loose in the silicon glue saddle...
This almost looks like a home made device, certainly not industrial made!
I'm a bit dissapointed in Fender's rough work on this bass, especially after how well they've always made their jazz basses!
The LED isn't as bright as I first may have thought, just enough to see your bass is on in daylight, and at night gives enough light but not too much that it'll hurt your eyes.
On a sunny day outside, the light might be too little to be visible.
The strap buttons are located at very awkward positions!
The first is located at the front, above the bridge. The second on the back of the body, behind the second octave on the fretboard.
I find these positions rather bad. The bass tilts forward too much,and it's almost as if it's expected of a bassist to either play uncomfortably, always pushing up the neck with the hand (and for me with large hands,playing while lifting the neck is not really fun), or play with his right hand leaning on the back of the body (above the vol/eq knobs) to counterbalance the weight of the neck; but that would make me only able to play at the bridge, and get a very aggressive tone!
Unlike with a regular bass, this bass has an unnatural body contour or shape, that requires you to place it on your legs (when using the bass sitting down),where the legs actually are behind the pickup, even further pushing the neck downwards.
There is no comfortable sitting position where the legs would balance the bass well (at least not with current straplock positions), except when you are really going to play in the upright position.
I believe what a forum member had done, unscrewing the straplocks and mounting them above the jack plug, and behind the headstock seem the most reasonable positions to me!
The bass' color is nicely finished, they did a great job except for behind the bridge where there's a cutoff in the body (to enable the user to change strings). This cutoff does not have much paint in it, an unfinished work, which one way make it very Fender (by not painting what 'can't be seen by normal eyes'; but seemingly some do see it), and makes it look very sub $200!
A 2 seconds quick spray from a can could make this bass look perfect, even in the incaving.
The neck is slightly bent forward, between 0.5 to 1 mm (1/64-1/32") over the whole neck.
This is very acceptable.
The pot knobs are somewhat floating above the body for a good 4 or 5 mm (~1/8"). It seems the factory did a bad job on pressing them down far enough on the pot. I could press the black plastic knobs downto 2mm (1/16") from the body, which is still pretty far away from the body, and makes it possible to see the screw beneath the knobs!
The tuners seem to do a good job, however, I always fear tuning too much, and too rapidly.
Especially with these rubber strings I believe they need time to set in. Tuning them from 5 notes down straight to the desired tone, could make them break. They need a break-in period,where they are tuned every hour or two about 4 notes up, 'till they have the desired note.
The tuners themselves also have a very tiny grip. Eventhough you don't need to put a lot of force on them, I would believe making them at least 3-4 millimeter wider, would allow for a much better grip and way to wind the strings!
I haven't opened the electronics compartment yet, but from what I've gathered it's not going to be a very complex or noteworthy system. Besides, many just care that it works!
I tested my bass and it seems the battery was still in a good condition!
If in the future, I ever want to MAKE an ashbory like bass (For fun), I'd probably get a certain wood, shave and file it in a certain shape, buy a $4 birthday or christmas card with internal piezzo for melody, rip it out and use that for the pickup, order from this site the bridge, and the strings and the tuners.
From another site get a good preamp, that is made for piezzo tweeters (speakers or pickups,whatever you prefer, they are all and the same),in other words the preamp compresses the signal and may give you a 3 band eq, and build your bass from there!
You could buy your own nut from animal bone,or just get a wooden one.
The hardest part is to create the fretboard.
So far very few sites (none that I know) sell Ashbory (sized) fretboards.
You could create a bass like this from wood, a piece of a metal pipe, or a piece of plastic.
Make the body more ergonomic, build in a metal block in the back of the body, to counter weight the weight of the neck (not necessary if your strap provides good balance)...
As far as a strap, Brock was right!
You don't want your classy 7cm (2.7") wide leather strap, it's just in the way.
You will want a small and thin strap in the likes of eg: a sandal strap, a cheap digital camera strap, or a neck strap sized strap that they often give away on events (2cm in width (0.8"); the smaller the better).
Things I definitely do on this bass:
- cutting out the nut, for a more soft and round support for the strings, as well as a lower string height
- placing a layer of paper underneath the strings for protection of the strings against sharp corners of the nut, and against scraping of the nut when winding the strings
- Unmounting the bridge, scraping off the paint there, or dig a bit deeper in the wooden body to lower string height (if you end up cutting too deep, you can always just put a cut sheet of paper (or a few layers) under the bridge to elevate it again.
- Wind the E-string in the opposite direction on the tuner.
- Move the straplocks from front and back of the body, to above the jack, and behind the headstock.
