Here's comes a fancy one; the Fodera Emperor 5 Standard bass.  

Fodera has been building high end fancy electric basses (and now guitar) for over 30 years and to me their level of craftsmanship is simply the highest in the industry. And in about 2013-2014, they've incorporated more machineries in their production flow and were able to build more quality basses in a larger quantity, that's the time where these Standard line comes in the market. This Emperor 5 Standard is the first generation that features a fancy Flame Maple top, later on they offered various wood tops and now they've got the painted Classic line, but to me, it's a must to have a figured wood top for such a wood sounding instrument.

 Specs:

• Ash body with Flame Maple top
• Old growth pau ferror Fingerboard
• 34” scale length, 24 frets, bolt-on neck for great punch
• 19mm string spacing
• Duncan dual coil pickups
• MIke Pope preamp
• Controls are: Vol/Tone stack knob, pan, Active/Passive switch (active mode has a trim pot for level matching), single coil/humbucker switch
• 4 band EQ, hi/lo stack, hi mid/lo mid stack cut and boost, selective frequencies on each band(extra jumpers included)
• 9.5lbs 

Comments:
This is the first generation of the Fodera Standard line.  Comes with the upgraded stacked mid EQ pot for further tone shaping. This is a well balanced and naturally woody sounding bass, yet the onboard electronic makes it beyond versatile for all situations.   The main difference between the standard line would be the neck construction.  It was always a joy to watch how the neck joint were crafted on the custom fodera, where it's the neck through single cut, the neckthrough dovetail, or the setneck(closest to a bolt-on imo), the wood work is truly amazing.    However, Bolt-on neck is just a long proven working method for electric basses, the amount of punch, the cut from a bolt-on neck construction is simply irreplaceable.

Sound:
Just like most Fodera basses, it's a very wood / organic sounding instrument, the bridge pickup has a very distinct mid sweetness.  The bass is extremely clean, which does require some focus on the right hand when playing, but it does rewards you well.   I do have the bass on humbucker mode most of the time as it's already very open sounding, beside the single coil hum, the difference between single coil and humbucker is not drastic.   There's a level trim pot in the cavity that allows fine adjustment of the preamp volume, which I found it very useful to match the volume between active / passive mode.    And having tone control is essential too.   The bass is beyond versatile, can go from piano like hi-fi open sound, to big fat neck sound (similar to P), and to the mid focus bridge sound.   The preamp is powerful yet transparent.  It's truthfully boosting and cutting things on the frequency.    All 4 band eq have selectable frequency for further tone shaping.  

Playability:
The construction was made to precision.  The've plek'ed the fingerboard/frets and it's able to archive extremely low action with no buzz.  The neck joint is totally smooth making playing at higher position effortless.   

Gallery:

Video:

Conclusion:
They're a pretty ultimate end for modern electric bass.  The other end would probably be vintage Fender instruments.   This is surely a holly grail for many players at a slightly more affordable cost.   I do believe being in Brookly/NYC is part of the secret for archiving such a highest standard in what they're doing.   This is the 2nd Fodera that I got to spend some time with, I owned a MG Standard backed in 2014-2015, another amazing instrument but not fitting my need at the time.  They're both the finest in their category.