Ah, it seems to work! Right, here goes. I was doing a jazz gig on DB above a pub in Oxford a few weeks ago. I lugged all my stuff up the stairs. The guitarist mentioned a stick in PMT, Oxford's leading music tech shop which was quite cheap. When I asked if it was any good his reply was ' at that price does it matter?' So a couple of days later I went down to PMT and saw this Stagg in cherry red, just like my old EBO, at £390. The nice assistant let me have a demo and it was quite impressive. He obviously saw that I was enjoying the experience because he sidled up and said the magic words 'you can have it for £239' So I bought it.
It's obviously a budget version of the Aria but whereas the Aria has three controls (what for?) the Stagg has two - vol and sub base. I find that to get reasonable deep bass I have to keep the sub bass at max, and even then the E is not quite as strong as the others. This could be because my amps are a bit on the light side (GK, Hendricksen JazzAmp). The Stagg works a bit better through my Roland Cube and I'm sure it would be great through a small BG amp such as a 1x12" Hartg combo.
The neck is a bit plasticky - it's not ebony or graphite - but plays well enough. I think this instrument is great for a cheap entry into uprights for a BG player or perhaps a DB player wanting to explore EUBs - as I am. I might not bother with anything more ambitious for the present.
I haven't gigged it yet but took it to a rehearsal the other day. The guys were well impressed and the guitarist said it was very good, 'how much did you pay, about £1200?' !!!!!!!!!!
