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I was amazed at this bass. I was looking for a sub-$800 5-string flexible bass for recording and some church playing and small gigs. First think that caught my eye was the finish, I saw the 4-string in my local music store and I loved it, I know it's not for everyone, the sparkle from the metallic finish bleeds on the clear coat on the poplar burl, my particular bass has some flaming on the top which fades into the gold burst. There are 2-3 little imperfections with the finish, but that's it and I really looked. When it comes to playability, the bass was set up perfectly out of the box, the spacing between strings is really close which is is great for me, I just find myself putting too much pressure in the B string when resting my thumb and it ends up hitting the pickup, I got to get used to that. Besides that it has a really fast neck, great action, and the bass let's you try a lot of different techniques. another imperfection that I found is that the pick up blend knob was not as sturdy as I would like, besides this, all of the controls in this bass manage to let it be really flexible. As I came to understand there is no really passive switch on this, it's just humbuckers, single coil and a boosted single coil, so all of your options are active, I personally love the single coil and the boosted single coil. I love the mid boost and cut which is less aggressive than the bass and treble. I can emulate a P-bass sound, really good J-bass sound, but playing with the versatility of the modern active bass sound is just what I was looking for. I tried, several bases even from better tiers in Ibanez, and I stuck with this one, the fact that the Mars Gold Burst is a Yearly color, makes it more special. I was not disappointed with this purchase on the slightest.

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