NBD - Hartwood Satellite Bass

[Obrienp]

This is a slightly delayed new bass day report on the Hartwood Satellite bass. Hartwood is a new house brand of Gear 4 Music. Here is a link to their website for the colour I have gone for: https://www.gear4music.com/Guitar-and-Bass/Hartwood-Satellite-Bass-Guitar-Metallic-Blue/6TIG. However, some of the specs are incorrect, so I will correct them below.

 

This is a medium scale (32”) budget bass. It comes in at just under £200, so I guess the nearest competition is the Squier Affinity Jaguar HB, which comes in at about £40 more. They have quite a lot in common in that they are both single pickup basses with jazz style necks and offset bodies. On the whole I feel the Hartwood is slightly better made (based on my memory of owning the Jag). 
 

The best feature of the Satellite is the neck: claimed to be roasted  maple. It might be but it has clearly been stained to emphasise the toffee colour, so the jury is out on that. It was carved from a single billet, rather than having a scarf joint at the headstock. Time will tell if this is susceptible to cracking if bashed but it seems pretty strong at the moment. The frets on my example are really well finished but quite shallow. There are no sprouting, or high frets and they are cut a little back from the edge of the fretboard, so it was easy to roll the edges by running a sanding block along them. That is not to say that it was sharp or rough to start off but I prefer the feel of rolled edges. The fretboard wood is laurel which seems a bit softer than rosewood and it was quite dry but was easily revived with some lemon oil. The nut, which is 38mm (not 40mm as claimed in the specs) was a bit too high and not that well cut. Easily remedied as well. Really nice touches are the fretboard markers that roll round to the edge of the board, so can be seen easily from above and the wheel truss rod adjustment at the heel. An adjustment bar comes with the bass and the correct size Allen key for the saddles.

 

Sticking with the neck, the headstock is reminiscent of the the Sire shape but smaller and not as fuggly. It looks pretty good IMO. The machine heads look like standard pattern vintage Fenderish items in the photo on the website but in reality are tiny (see photo below). The shafts are just under 10mm and the baseplates only 35mm long, even smaller than the smallest Gotoh Resolites. It may be difficult to find replacements that drop in but that said, they seem pretty robust, operate smoothly and seem to hold their tuning. They can’t be heavy either, which must contribute to the reasonably good balance on a strap.

 

The body is an interesting shape. A bit like an extended, offset Tele. It has the weirdest shaped scratchplate but it grows on you and does fit the vibe of the bass, which is a bit 60s throwback. It is quite a big body, which also contributes to the balance. I haven’t weighed it but the website claims the average weight is 3.75kg, which seems about right. It’s not as light as say a Nordstrand Acinonyx but not a boat anchor. I don’t think it would cause much discomfort on a long gig and unlike a lot of shorter scale basses, it has decent body contours for both belly and forearm. On the back the neck is retained by 4 individual screws (a bit more upmarket than the standard 4 screw plate) and the lower edge is cut away a bit to give better access to the upper frets.  The Precision bass style pickup is set quite close to the neck (more about the sound anon) and has simple P style controls of vol and tone. The jack socket is mounted on an oval plate on the side of the lower bout, like a Tele, or 51 Precision bass. The bridge is BBOT style but is more substantial than some I have seen on cheap offerings. It has rudimentary grooves in the baseplate to keep the saddles pointing in the right direction. Spacing is 20mm.

 

I took the Satellite to a blues jam the evening it arrived (but after fixing the nut, neck relief and intonation). It seemed to sound pretty precision like through the house rig (Ashdown ABM 600 EVO head and a custom made 2 x 10 cab). At home I played it through my FRFR rig of Markbass LMIII and LFSys Monza, which really gives you a pretty uncoloured reproduction of the sound of the bass. I found it a little disappointing with EQ set at equality. A bit too clanky and low mid focused and a little lacking in outright lows on the E string. This seemed counterintuitive given the placement of the pickup up but at least it wasn’t muddy and indistinct. This was probably largely due to the OEM strings which are pretty horrible. Very rough feeling and incidentally 45-100, not 40-95 as claimed in the spec. It was also very noisy with hands off the strings.

 

I always expect to change the strings on cheap basses and normally change the pickup and electrics as well. I also prefer the look of higher mass bridges (even if the jury is out on how it changes tone). Consequently I set about putting a Tone Rider Duke in it with CTS pots and a Pure Tone jack socket. It was harder to find a cheap drop in replacement bridge because of the two front, two back retaining screw pattern. I eventually found something for about £14 which is a bit beefier and had the 4 retaining screw pattern. It would have been much easier if Hartwood had used the ubiquitous 5 hole Fender pattern. On opening the thing up I discovered why it was so noisy: no shielding at all, apart from a bit of tin foil under the pots (see photo). This is pretty much what I have found with the Squier Jaguar, Ibanez Talman etc. Graphite paint would obviously break the budget! Anyway easily cured with copper tape. It’s now as quiet as a church mouse. The control cavity is massive, so no problem fitting in full sized CTS pots (unlike the Squier Jag that barely takes mini-pots). In fact you could easily fit an active pre-amp and battery in, should you want to. Pot spacing seems to be pretty standard Precision bass pattern, so you could use a pre-wired harness, if you don’t want to solder yourself but you will need to have a long wire run to the jack and be prepared to solder that yourself (because of the placement).

 

An indication of the speed of assembly came when I changed the bridge. The original retaining screws had been forced in at an angle. Obviously not pre-drilled because the finish was chipped off around the holes. I had to fill the holes and drill them straight to get the replacement bridge to align properly. These things are made to a price and I guess a lot of the budget had gone into the quality of the neck and body.

 

Now that I have done these mods the bass sounds really good. It’s like a Precision with a bit more bottom and top. It has plenty of punch and definition. TBH I reckon I could have got a lot of this just from changing the strings to something decent. I have put D’Addario nickel rounds 45-100 on it but I think it would work really well with some chrome flats as well. I don’t regret changing the pickups, even though it wasn’t strictly necessary. The OEMs look pretty cheap: bar magnets fixed along the bottom, instead of  magnetised pole pieces. Tone Rider Dukes (or SP1 Classic) are only £35 and punch well above their price point, so almost a no-brainier upgrade for cheap Precision style basses.

 

Conclusion after all this waffle: a very nice playable and good value addition to the medium scale market. The neck could be off a much more expensive instrument and the body shape is interesting. It balances pretty well and it’s not too heavy. Change the strings for something decent and it sounds pretty good OEM. Spend £35 on a Tone Rider pickup and it sounds excellent. 
 

Incidentally, G4M do a Hartwood full size gig bag for £30, which the Satellite fits into pretty well. The body is quite long, so there isn’t a huge amount of bag flopping around above the headstock and it has a neck retainer pad and strap, plus pretty thick padding. 
 

 

 

 

Finished article with replacement chunkier bridge.

Edited 8 hours ago by Obrienp

[uk_lefty]

I really like the look of these!