For most middle age music lovers, there should be at least one or 2 instrument that you happened to tried/played but did not ended up owning back in the day .. Beside the 30th Anniversary Stingray 4H I acquired last year. Here’s come another one of those special one. It was at around 2011-2012 that they had these Japanese made Ibanez in the very odd shape hanging on the wall in my local store Cosmo Music … Being a EBMM Bongo owner at that time , My tolerance for odd looking things are pretty high . I picked it up and played one .. oh man .. it was ridiculously comfortable, the bass balances perfectly .. the entire neck are easy to reach .. I had fun for a good 45mins and couldn’t put it down .. too bad that I wasn’t able to afford one at that time .. and it was gone after my next visit 2 weeks later ….
Background
I feel grateful to find one about 12yrs later …. Most of my impressions about the bass remain the same ..
This is a Ibanez Prestige line instrument made by Fujigen with their highest level of craftsmanship . The design is innovative even until this day. The whole package contains a lot of ergonomically thoughts .. Combination of materials is uncommon , they also had the proprietary bridge, pickup and electronic. Not a lot of people now a day would put this kind of resource making new instruments.
Specs
- Alder body with Ash top and back
- Unfinished Wenge and Bubinga neck with titanium reinforcement.
- Rosewood fingerboard with 22 frets
- Gotoh tuner and proprietary high mass bridge, 19mm string spacing
- Proprietary noiseless j style pickups
- Proprietary preamp with 3 band EQ cut/boost, active/passive switch
Playability
Unreal …. This is the most well balance bass .. works beyond the best especially in sitting position .. rest perfectly on both laps …. The shape of the body, the neck angle all seemed to be perfect .. the unfinished Jazz u-shape neck is also slick and effortless to play. Fretwork on the instrument is exceptional .. can easily archive a straight neck with low action ..
Sound
The stock hum-cancelling j pickups and electronics are about average. They’re slightly hot, with decent headroom overall. Mid and low controls are efficient. Hi control cuts well and is a bit harsh to my year when boosted . It’s very professional sounding bass with refined sound(and very quiet) that works well in playing setup. The bass is versatile, but doesn’t have a lot of characters like a lot of Japanese made instruments out of the box, I think that’s part of their culture and the market needs, but there’s definitely room to playing around with different pickup and preamps to open up the potential further ..
Thoughts
This is a prime example of Japanese guitar making artistry .. the thoughts and efforts they put into building this is unbelievable. They were in production between 2011-2015 I think the market is not really ready for something odd looking like this but they’ve definitely left me a very strong impression. Beside the pickups and electronic performance (I’ve tried a lot of things in the past 15yrs) .. everything else are just as nice as I thought from the day I first touched it. So after acquiring this one and the SR4 in the past 18month .. (and I’m able to find a 5 string version of this recently, YES!! ) .. I’m pretty completed now with all my bass needs …. I’ll already have the parts and plan about the 5string one .
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