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Strandberg - somethings cooking - boden bass


winterfire666

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  • 3 weeks later...
1 hour ago, Dazed said:

It just sounds like another modern bass to my ears. Far too limited choice for the cost. The price doesn’t translate sonically. 

Is it all in the experience of playing it?

For me, yes.  Sound, boring. Playability, A*

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Well the thing is you could easily get a headless fan fretted bass custom made for, I imagine, a fair bit less than these are being offered for. Then again something has to pay for all that advertising and marketing

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8 minutes ago, Dazed said:

Well the thing is you could easily get a headless fan fretted bass custom made for, I imagine, a fair bit less than these are being offered for. Then again something has to pay for all that advertising and marketing

The only thing special/unique can see about it is the neck profile.

You're right, you could easily match and likely beat all the other specs in a custom made bass just for you for less.

I'm not sure they're going to do well without dropping the price by at least £1000, probably more. Every review and reaction I've read about the basses, bar people who are endorsing them, has raised the price as an issue.

Shame given how anticipated these were, they took too long to appear and even if they've hit the mark they've missed the expected price point by a mile.

Eude

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21 hours ago, fretmeister said:

I’d be surprised if there’s enough margin in them to drop the price by anywhere near a grand.

 

If a UK based luthier can make something similar for less, and I know of two well established names that definitely could, they must be making a profit otherwise, they wouldn't be in business.

These are being built overseas, Indonesia? I can't imagine it's a production line, but it'll be a lot cheaper than a one man band over here per unit, especially if they'll building a lot of them at once.

I expect there's a pretty significant profit margin here, but regardless if there is or not, they're at least £1000 off the mark in my humble opinion...

Eude

Edited by eude
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  • 3 weeks later...

I saw Plini's live show two weeks ago, where the bassist (Simon Grove) was using one of these, and was disappointed by how much thinner & hollower it sounded compared to the tone he got out of his LeFay before. Even the Sandberg he had before that...

Came across one (5 string original) in the flesh in a local shop in Tokyo, so thought i'd give it a spin - in part out of personal curiosity, in part, to share the experience with you guys :). The price here is similar to the UK - around £3k equivalent.

In this price bracket - sadly - it felt like the worst finished bass I've played. The fretwork was ok, but a few frets were sharp. The "out of the box" setup had action around 4mm - the guy in the shop said it came in like that & they'd not really adjusted it. He was averse to adjusting it much, but we dropped the action to where it was more playable. 

I also got told that the finish on these is so thin that it scuffs very easily and the other bass in the shop (a 4string) was already scratched, hence "please don't slap on it". That suited me just fine... but still. The knobs felt light and a few pots were mounted off-of vertical. None of this is obviously tone-relevant, but doesn't inspire a quality feel for £3k instrument.

As a side note - I'm not writing this out of snobbish disregard for Indoensian-made instrument: i've played many Ibanezs that were great, and indeed even my Squire JagSS felt solid!

The sound, despite the Nordstrand pickups, was oddly hollow. Didn't have much time to fiddle with the preamp, so played mainly passive - but the first impression wasn't encouraging. I'm sure that with more knob-fiddling & passionate EQ'ing you could get any modern sound you'd like - though given what I heard on stage with Plini - (i think the bassist uses a Helix rig?), I still preferred the tones from what he'd used before. 

I liked the satin finish, and the shape of the EndurNeck - and the low weight would certainly be a bonus in longer term playing. Given the body shape & general alignment, the bass sits very "close" to the body and it's easy to reach the top frets. The fret angles weren't much of an issue (i've owned a Dingwall combustion before), and the 35-33 scale did feel a bit easier to play than Dingwall's 37-34. 

However, given that for a comparable price a Canadian-made dingwall (perhaps even a Super P or J with a similar scale) is easily obtainable 2nd hand, for me this is a tough sell. Even the China-made Combustion, at half the price new feels like a much more solid instrument. 

In terms of new price - for less than the Strandberg you can get a Japan hand-crafted top of the range Atelier Z, Bacchus, or even an FCGR Dulake/Rhino, all of which are impeccably finished and will come (at least within Japan!) adjusted to perfection, with excellent follow up service. It appears that a few top-tier UK luthiers would also deliver similar quality at that price.

So: at about half the current price, I'd consider this bass, and would happily mod/tune it to where I'm sure i'd be happy with it. At the moment, it's a hard pass from me. I wonder whether the one I got my hands on was (as we sometimes say) a monday-morning factory special,  and i'm curious to hear what experiences other will have when you get the chance to try them.

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23 hours ago, kumimajava said:

However, given that for a comparable price a Canadian-made dingwall (perhaps even a Super P or J with a similar scale) is easily obtainable 2nd hand, for me this is a tough sell. Even the China-made Combustion, at half the price new feels like a much more solid instrument.

You can pretty much get two secondhand Super Ps / Super Js for £3k.

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I’m just hoping that they take the almost universal feedback on the price on board and have a rethink, be it cutting costs in some way if the profit margin isn’t as high as everyone thinks it is, or something else.  But the fact these basses are this price, made in Indonesia AND aren’t all coming out perfect is a real issue.

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2 hours ago, Kev said:

I’m just hoping that they take the almost universal feedback on the price on board and have a rethink

Nah... not going to happen in the short-term for this model. It's a product into a market and they will see how it performs. The business model in this case is design over domestic hand-built so they'll see how that sells. As soon as I heard it was built in Indonesia I realised that this step is for many manufacturers is the price-reducing production shift. The fact that they've started with this means that any price change is a little way off.

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  • 3 months later...
On 24/02/2019 at 12:37, fretmeister said:

I’d be surprised if there’s enough margin in them to drop the price by anywhere near a grand.

 

They making them in the Cort factory so with a retail of £3,000+ there's plenty of margin there. We're paying for the design in this case, not the say, Alembic build quality. Quite fancy a six. Have they done one yet? Have any BCers pulled the trigger on these current models? What are they like? Worth the price?

Edited by visog
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