The most detailed review on Jaguar Bass VI you will ever find.
Written: Oct 22 '06
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Rare instrument with interesting possibilities, stands up to it's F-name.
Cons: Boomy basses, gaps in the neck pocket, price.
The Bottom Line: Jaguar Bass VI is a very good instrument; it mainly depends on you whenever you will like it or not so try out yourself.
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| meatex z's Full Review: Fender Jaguar Bass Vi Custom |
I've been chasing Fender Bass VI for many years with no success, and in a mean time Fender introduced a new Japanese model called Jaguar Bass VI.
The idea behind the model is pretty funny: given the fact Jaguar is a cool looking guitar with some interesting features Fender applied Jaguar's body design to a whole bunch of different guitars and basses. The new Fender Jaguar line includes Jaguar bass that's basically a Jazz bass with Jaguar body, Jaguar baritone special which is a six string baritone tuned in B with two humbuckers (probably for nu-metalheads), our
Jaguar bass VI which is a Bass VI with Jaguar body and tune-o-matic style bridge and - at last - Jaguar guitar. I like the way folks at Fender invent new models! Take a couple of nice old guitars, shuffle the parts and - viola! you've got a whole new instrument. I can't wait to see Jazzmaster bass and Coronado Strat in the nearest future.
But let's start with some
Technical information:
We're talking about a shortscale six string bass. The scale is 28.5" which is significantly shorter than 34" of the long scale bass and even shorter than 30" of some other shortscale basses (Mustang, Musicmaster and others). The thickest E string from the Jaguar's special set is 0.95 which is pretty close to 1-1.05 from the standard bass set but still feels thinner. I don't know if you can put regular bass (or guitar?) strings on it. It's tuned one octave lower than a guitar, so any guitarist will adopt easily. It's a well known fact that John Lennon had Bass VI and played it on many tracks with Beatles (for example check out his furious grind on Helter Skelter from the White Album) but McCartney played basses, he never had Bass VI.
Made in Japan - that's okay with me, anything Fender that's not from Mexico or China/Korea/Indonesia is good. The only concern is the price which seems a bit high for Jap instrument, I would expect something cheaper. In order to cover the high price Fender added a word "custom" to the instrument's name.
Body = alder, neck = maple with rosewood fretboard - a standard choice of woods that works for most of Fenders. The body is three-piece, which is also something you will see on 95% of Fender instruments. The only available finish is sunburst, just like the previous jap reissue of Bass VI. The neck has 21 medium jumbo frets and no binding.
Pickups - 2 Special Design MIJ Single-Coil Jaguar Pickups. They look exactly like those on Jaguar guitar, with those weird saws on the edges. Although they're single coils the hum level is not something to worry about.
Electronics - there's too many switches and I will talk about them a bit later. Generally it's passive.
Hardware - all chrome, the bridge is Fender version of Tune-o-Matic (called Adjusto-Matic Bridge with Anchored-Tailpiece). The Bass VI had a tremolo bridge which is cool but not really usable, so this time we have something more conventional. Tuners look small, about the size of guitar tuners. Even the string tree for two thinner strings is very small. Despite the size they seem to work good - there were no tuning and intonation issues.
I had a chance to try this bass (guitar? baritone?) in Utrecht, Netherlands, at Dirk Witte's guitar shop. The staff was very friendly and they allowed me to try it with any amp I want. I've played it through a Fender Twin Reverb and then through a solid-state Bassman 100 (from the recent Fender's bass amplifiers' line). Here's my impression:
Looks
If you've seen the pictures, you know it looks awesome. It looks almost exactly like Jaguar guitar, hard to say it's a bass. Cosmetically there's really nothing to complain about. Fender's "specifications" say this instrument has "special features" which are "60's styling". huh huh huh. Back in the 80's my literature teacher also had this special feature.
Feel
It's about the same weight as a Jaguar guitar, maybe just a bit heavier. The neck feels like a guitar neck - narrow and comfortable. But on that neck you've got bass strings, which is something unexpected. All the strings are wound and the string spacing is minimal. It feels more crowded than a guitar neck because the strings are thick. The string gauge is right for the scale and it's not flabby. Still it feels unlike a bass and unlike any guitar I've played and the main question is -
How to play it?
I've tried several different approaches and here are my notes on different techniques:
Pick
This is probably the most natural way to go. Your fretting hand thinks it's a guitar with super-heavy strings and your right hand simply picks the strings with a plectrum just like on a regular guitar.
Fingerstyle
There's no chance to play it like a bass. You won't put your thumb on a pickup and pluck the strings with your index and middle finger - the string spacing is too small for that. Instead, you can try Knopfler - style picking or even a classic guitar technique. When your right hand is placed right over the strings you may pick the strings in a more gentle way and it works.
Slap
Hmmm, not really. When you slap you hit a couple of strings together and when you pop you just can't get a finger between the strings so you can only pop the high E-string. If you're able to slap on guitar like Reggie Wooten than you'd probably will be able to do it on Bass VI, but I couldn't. It makes a proper slap sound, but it's almost impossible to do it.
Tapping
It was a bit hard to do but I think it will work. The main problem is - again - the string spacing which is not sufficient and you must be super-precise when you tap a note, because your fingers will touch FAT neighbour strings all the time. It should take some exercise.
Slide
It works, but on lower strings it sounds just like slide on bass which is not really exiting.
In general, guitar techniques are much more appropriate for this instruments but it also takes some time to get used to a different feel of the Bass VI.
The sound
This is, of course, the most important issue. Jaguar Bass VI sounds like a Fender with single coils should, but there are some special features that I'd like to point out.
First, let's start with the basses. If it's a bass, it must cover the bass sonic spectrum, that's what I thought. Unfortunately, it's not exactly like that. 28.5" scale is very short, and you won't even get close to a growl any Precision or Jazz basses may produce. It is bassy and I was said it's much bassier than Gretch or Epiphone baritones, but still it's weaker than a longscale bass. When I was playing it through a Bassman 100 amp it sounded like a bass but there was a sort of a feeling the designers tried to squeeze more bass out of the instrument than it is capable to produce. The basses were a bit boomy and not articulated, as if some EQ was added to boost the bass (everything was set flat). If you understand what I'm talking about I'd mention Jazz bass which has a very pronounced midrange and the bass string sounds like there's not too many bass frequencies - but when you put it in the mix it's HUGE. Jaguar bass VI was a bit of the opposite direction - there was too much bass frequencies in the E string which made is sound muddy but actually the basses were still weak.
The happy news are that the upper register sounds unlike anything I've heard. It's a very, very interesting sound, articulated, bright and I loved it.
Open chords in the first position sound okay although I'm not sure they will cut in the mix because it's simply too low. But when you go higher on the neck the chords shine with a very special voice and I'd say it again - this voice is the most important quality of the instrument. I know that Robert Smith (I'm not sure that's his name, I'm talking about the Cure frontman) played Bass VI and he used it for the higher notes. If you're familiar with Cure you'd probably be able to recognize his parts, they sound pretty distinctive.
With the Twin Reverb Jaguar Bass VI sounded nicer and more guitar-like, the extra bass of the lower strings was less annoying. But I missed the bass sound of the instrument - it was almost like a guitar.
I've played the bass mostly clean, but it also works with distortion, although if you're looking for a detuned nu-metal sound you need to filter some basses - otherwise it overloads the input stage of your pedal or amp and gets muddy. I understand Fender has another Jaguar model tuned in B - Baritone Special HH (two humbuckers) more suitable to handle hi-gain duties.
Electronics
I was not able to understand what exactly all the knobs and switches do. I'm also lost with the classic Jaguar guitar. Anything that goes beyond tone and volume is too much for me. I thought I'll check Fender specifications to get a clear picture but what I've found made me think I've missed something. The specifications state there are two switchable circuits, each with it's own volume, tone and so on. I really don't know what to say, what I've found was like this:
There's a master volume and tone knobs. There are also two wheels which are pickups' volumes. The switches on the lower horn are all sorts of filters probably inserting different capacitors in the signal path and changing pickups' phasing and they're usable to filter basses or get some funky sounds. On the upper horn there's a bypass switch which probably sends the signal from both pickups straight to the output jack - neutralizing all the knobs and switches (incl. master volume). The bypassed signal is significantly louder and more rich-sounding than all the other options and I was playing in bypass mode most of the time. The bypass switch is a very cool tool - you can dial something very funky with some mid-honk and switch between two completely different sounds without touching anything but the switch. There will always be a difference in the volumes but you may use it for a "grunge" type of arrangement - use a filtered sound for a verse and then switch to the bypass for extra meat and grind on the chorus.
Looking for construction flaws
I've inspected the instrument from the outside (is it a good idea to open a guitar and check the potentiometers in a guitar shop?). The neck was straight as an arrow, the intonation was right, frets were very even and generally everything looked nice. But then I've noticed something really uncool: the neck joint was loose. There was a gap between the neck and the body - about half a millimeter from each side of the neck. I'm talking about the neck pocket which was not tight on the front side. Of course, the joint was stable but as far as I know this area plays a very important role in transmitting vibrations. If you have a gap between the neck and the body you loose lots of vibrations and sustain. There was no second Jaguar Bass VI to compare, so maybe this gap was not affecting the sound, but I still think it's not something you should see on a $1000 instrument.
Possible uses
The reason I started looking for Bass VI was me being involved in an instrumental project with two drummers and a woodwind soloist. I was the only instrument to play the harmony and the bass. While stretching on a Jazzbass may be a challenge I was dreaming about something more suitable.
Although (Jaguar) Bass VI could help me to play everything on one instrument it's not the best bass and maybe some (regular) sixstring bass could be better for this.
Until someone will find an appropriate use for this strange instrument I think any guitar player will enjoy having such a tool. It can be used to double guitar or bass parts in a studio for an extra flavour. The fact that it has it's own voice and it's own range gives a rare chance to add something that's not in a conflict with other instruments. It's refreshing.
A guitar player's bass, but not a bass player's guitar.
It's about time to sum things up. Jaguar Bass VI is a unique instrument. It's weird, it has it's own vibe and I feel it's still "undiscovered". There still was no Hendrix who could make this guitar his weapon of choice and this is a huge plus. Guitar players will feel more comfortable with it than bassists, but it's not a bass or a guitar, it's a different animal with it's own voice. Despite all the things I wrote about flabby basses and construction flaws I would still buy it - if it was a bit cheaper. Or maybe I'll wait a couple of years and buy it second hand. Or maybe anybody wants to sell one?
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
meatex z
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Location: Jerusalem, Israel
Reviews written: 24
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About Me:
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