Like I stated before , if I could only have one bass it would be this one . And I say this after playing and owning many basses . If you're new to bass you too will own many basses as time gose by . As musicians we are always looking for that sound that we hear in our head . With so many GREAT bass players out there sometimes it comes down to the sound that YOU have that determines if you get the gig or not . For me this one is it . Buy it . And if you dont think its for you after a week or two you can return it . Thats what I have to say about this bass . Good luck to you on your musical journey .

Sound
I also play a Ibanez SR505 with the Bartolini pickups and 3 band eq . The Yamaha gives me more of the growl that I like . And tho the scale on both is 34" the Yamaha seems to have a tighter low B , it dose'nt feel as floppy as the SR bass , and so it sounds fatter , deeper , bigger...at least to me . Blending the two pickups I get a good variety of sounds , all the standards . A good jazz sound and the P-Bass sound that you'll need to cover most gigs . For my sound tho I like the midrange growl . Most basses can give you that but on this bass it seems to just jump out at you . Its not thin , you still get a deep low tone . It was easy to get on this bass . Some people may not think its all that big a deal . But to me it is . And most of the people that come to hear me play like the sound I get . They dont care if it comes from the bass . I know… read more it comes from this bass . So thats why I play this bass all the time now .

Features
Not as heavy as my Ibanez BTB bass but heavier than the SR505 , and thats a good thing . I've always played with the floating right hand , but one day I hooked the thumb on the pickup where the dent is and found it to be a great feature . The bridge is beefie , nice and solid . The battery is easy to get to .

Ease of Use
Right out of the box string hight was set up just right for me . Intonation was dead on except for the D string wich I adjusted myself . On every bass I've ever played , 'till now , the volume nob has always been the first one in the line up , followed by the pickup blend then the tone nobs . On this bass the first two are reversed . So I switched them myself . I use the pickup blend nob more than the volume nob on the bass , I use a volume pedal . The way the nobs are setup I can reach the nob with my pinkie finger and not have to take the whole hand off the strings to reach it . Kind of like the way guitar players do with there volume nobs .

Quality
The finish is flawless . No sharp frets here . I had to file down the frets on my SR505 ! Everything on this bass is top quality ! I really like this bass . I did tho have to tighten the allen head screws on the nobs . Even the strings it came with were good , I liked the way they sounded so I've left them on .

Value
This is a great bass for not very much money . Tho there are some basses out there with a 3 band eq for less money . But it is my opinion that this bass dose not suffer from that . The other two basses I own , Ibanez BTB and SR505 , are great basses but I payed much more for them . If I lost all the basses I own and could only afford to buy one I would get the Yamaha . If I knew this when I first started out I would have never bought the other basses and I would own a much bigger house now !

Manufacturer Support
I read that some of these basses were wired wrong from the factory and would eat up the batteies . Yamaha e-mailed me the fix the next day . Turns out that mine was wired right .

Musical Background:
Active Musician .

Musical Style:
Jazz , Pop , Christian , whatever the gig calls for . read less