ESP makes high quality instruments, both their very high end and their midrange instruments are good. They tempt me every time I go to the district their workshop is in.
Ibanez are generally really solid too but out of those you listed, unless cash was the primary deciding factor, I’d check out the ESP for sure.
For reference that ESP is closer to $700 new and has some very nice features - the 5-piece neck, the neck-through design, 35" scale (very nice for alternate tunings), etc. It looks like a very nice bass to me.
Look at it this way. You already have a bass. You don’t need to get just any other bass.
What does this mean exactly? I recently saw some tabs for Duality by Slipknot and it says that Paul Grey has his bass tuned to
Gb
Db
Ab
B
In an interview he said they “tune a half step down and then drop the E down to a B”.
From my limited understanding of how musical notes work, I would imagine that this would have a pretty significant change to the way the instrument sounds (not to mention changing the location of what notes are on which frets/strings). Is this why many professional musicians have multiple instruments they use for a single show?
Are there any considerations to be made for how it changes the difficulty in playing when you use different tunings? What I mean is that I would think that dropping an E to a B would make the string quite lose, and cause a lot of fret noise, meaning it is harder to play and sound good. Is this accurate? And would there be alternate tuning methods that do the reverse (making it easier to play some things)?
Sorry for always asking so many questions, I am just really getting into this bass thing a LOT more than I thought I would, and when I enjoy something, I want to absorb as much about it as I can!
Okay everybody, it’s intervention time. @brandoncmurphy Has contracted GAS!
It will be okay. You’re among friends now. GAS affects all of us and you’re not alone.
Hi. My name is Eric and I have… Gear Acquisition Syndrome.
[Group] Hi Eric.
Thanks… thanks. I uh… obsess over gear. Not just some gear. All of the gear. And uh (chokes up) I want two copies of everything. So, I can take one apart.
[Group] Oh, that’s hard. Yeah, rough place to find yourself. Stay strong, brother.
I joke but there is a lot of truth in that joking.
Deal 1 - Beautiful but for that amount of money I would have to be positive it’s what I wanted.
Deal 2 - This actually looks like a pretty good deal. The Boss DS-1 is a guitar distortion pedal but you could resell it for $30. The Boss CEB-3 would be fun but you could sell it for $70. So that leaves you with a $50 for a bass you can experiment on and not feel bad if you completely destroy it.
Deal 3 - I’m pretty sure the Washburn is an XB100. They sell used for $125. The Vox amp sells for $50+ and I can’t tell what the Ibanez is. This seems like the worst deal to me. There is a huge amount of cheap gear on the used market and spending $315 for this seems unnecessary when you could probably buy it piecemeal.
If you have a guitar store near you, I highly recommend going there and playing everything you can get your hands on. If playing in a guitar store makes you nervous, check out this thread. WHAT TO “PLAY” IN A GUITAR STORE?
Everything sounds good till you have a chance to play it yourself.
Yeah that’s true. I would also see if they would come down in price a little bit - never hurts to ask.
There’s a lot (a lot) of amazing basses in that price range though. So be sure that’s the one you want.
That said if it is truly what you want and it turns out to be as clean as it looks, out of the options you presented it’s the one I personally would go for. YMMV.
So as it turns out, I don’t think they actually make the ESP LTD F4E in this finish any longer. The models they currently make do not have the Ebony top on the body, but are instead the single mahogany through the entire body. So you don’t get that really cool two tone effect.
Unfortunately , the seller is not responding to any messages, so I am not sure what I should think. Originally I asked him if he could be a little flexible on price, which I can tell he saw, but got no response. Then I sent him another last night just asking if it was still for sale and letting him know I was really interested and he has not even viewed the message. So this might be slipping through my fingers!! Wish me luck!
I keep meaning to make a topic about the used market for musical gear but for now just trust me: this is not your last amazing guitar buying opportunity, there will be more
That’s what my wife said as well. Patience is not a strong point for me; especially when I make a decision that I want to do something.
I am weird in that I will procrastinate until the last minute if I can, but once I make a decision that things need to happen, I want it done yesterday. And unfortunately, I have convinced myself that the ESP LTD F4E-NS (that’s the model with the ebony top on the body) is my holy grail of basses.
Unless anyone knows of something else I might like!
Well, you could try and hold off for a little while longer (risking, of course, that the ESP is gone by then), and see what kind of Black Friday deals are going to pop up!
on the passive and old-school side, you have all the current Squier range : what you get for the price is amazing. but I agree with @howard : Yamaha and ESP/LTD make great instruments too, no doubt about it.
it would be interesting for you to test various basses from different brands, as they tend to have a certain type of neck. for example a ESP/LTD will have a very thin and fast neck, a Fender/Squier will have a deeper and rounder neck … there’s no rule here, it depends, we all have our very personnal preferences.
When I bought my first one, I picked up a few Squiers and held them and plucked a few strings (I had even less of an idea on how to “play” than now) and I didn’t care for the neck much. I liked the Ibanez neck on my 370E better, but I couldn’t really say why. Where do Ibanez instruments fall inline on that spectrum? (Squire being deep and round and ESP being thin)
that’s perfectly fine I like heavy round necks (think PB). note that my ol’Yam SBV neck is pretty narrow but very round and not that thin. somewhat JB-like.
again it’s very personnal, we don’t have the same hands, we don’t play the same way. no rule.
It’s pretty difficult to decide which bass to buy based solely on reviews. One person’s idea of a “slim” neck may not agree with someone else’s, etc. You really have to try it out in person. If you can’t try the actual bass you want, at least try to play one as closely as possible to the model you are considering.
The problem is further complicated in that it’s tough to make a final decision based upon playing any guitar for just a few minutes, either.
