spookydom said:
BonsaiK said:
I have an Epiphone Thunderbird and I love the sound, it sounds a lot better than the P-bass I used to have. Your biggest problem with a Thunderbird won't be the sound, it will be the weight, feel and neck-heaviness, so try before you buy. I like the way it feels but many don't, so whatever you do don't buy one blind. Also be aware some of the variants of the Thunderbird such as the Goth, Blackbird, T-Bird Pro etc do feel subtly different so try them too if you're considering buying.
Bass players with more than 4 strings on their instrument are just trying to compensate their shattered egos because they feel like demoted guitarists. There's really no need. Also 5 strings adds to their weight once again and the neck starts to feel more and more like a cricket bat the more shit you add. If you're into heavy drop tunings a bass player can just drop their E string permanently, no need to carry around another string. I'd only consider a 5-string if you were wanting to do really really fancy shit, but then if you're playing that stuff you're not really playing bass at all.
Gota agree on the whole here with Bonsaik. You don't need a five string and it is overcompensating. Not everybody can play it like they was Les Claypool you know?
I have been a session musician for almost 20 years now. In that time only ever owned one five string. That's becouse I loved the tone on it. This was a yamaha. My advice when buying any guitar not just a bass is that you have to play it first. Every guitar despite it's make has it's own kind of feeling and sound, You wont know if it's right for you until you pick it up and get a feel for it. Have owned five Ibanez guitars over the years but only two of their basses. Though I loved the guitars at the time the basses to me they felt kind of plastic and fake. But each to their own.
Yes I agree. I love my Goth T-Bird but I've played other people's and I really hate some of them so the OP should be aware that even from one instrument to the next of
exactly the same model the feel can change. That's because these things are made out of wood, and two cuts of wood even from the same tree can vary in weight and density depending on which part of the tree was used.
I've never owned an Ibanez bass so I can't comment there, I haven't seen one I like the look of enough to want to pick up with the exception of those Jet King ones which I have to try one day. I've got an Ibanez acoustic guitar which is functional but meh, want to get rid of it. I used to have a 4-string fretless Yamaha bass that I thought was really good. It was cheap too, which made it even better in my eyes. Fuck expensive shit. I also had a Gibson bass once and that was
horrible. I was so happy when I sold it for a fraction of its market value, what a hunk of junk, the Epi T-Bird is superior in every respect except build quality, but then I don't really care about build quality as my instruments are in and out of the repair shop so often that they're going to get an all-new build eventually no matter what.
