Damn. That sounds pretty cool.
I have this crazy sneaky suspicion that one day we’re going to hear that HB suddenly went belly-up, for selling $400 instruments for less than $200 or so.
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It is Thomann’s house brand.
I am sure they are using this to get their name out worldwide and almost as ‘loss leaders’.
Their customer service is amazing, and their shipping is stupid cheap.
They are looking to go big and take over the world.
Buy first cheapo instrument with them, love them, upgrade with them, yadda yadda sorry no candy.
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That I didn’t know. I know they used Thomann for distribution, but I didn’t know it was a house brand.
“Loss leaders” is right, man. I don’t know how they do it. Every review of every HB I’ve ever watched/read/whatever is very positive.
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I have only had one in my hands and it was way way better quality than the price.
Was it perfect?
Nope.
Was it a good deal?
Yup.
Puts their brand in every hand possible.
A few people have purchased their bass saxophone.
Saxophones are a hot mess when done cheaply.
Bass saxophones are a HUGE hot mess when not done correctly.
Good ones go for over $20K
Cheap, crappy ones go for $9K
Thomann’s is under $3K with all 5 star reviews.
Playable and fully set up well out of the box.
Considering most people use a bass sax only once in a while this is the deal of the century, and it ships from Germany to NY for $144! I couldn’t get anyone to ship it next door for that much.
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Thanks for the insight @John_E I’ve been looking at the curve soprano saxophone. They are not as easy to find as I thought. I wonder how hard they are to play. I’m hoping one of my 3 kids would play that.
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Answer - damn hard.
No one should ever start on soprano.
Most of them have horrible intonation and it takes experience and ear to play them in tune. They are not user friendly and take a lot of lip muscles and patience to play.
And yes, they are $$$. I had a el cheapo chinese one from Eastman Music that was fine, not great, not bad. Great for the price of $399 delivered from China in 2 days. But mechanically it wouldn’t hold up over time. It was more of a placeholder. Sold it for what I paid for it (win).
Kids start on alto for a reason. Soprano is usually held for high schoolers or college.
It’s a beast.
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As referenced in the GAS thread, I’ve grown dissatisfied with the sound of my other basses (active dual humbucker, passive j-bass) and after some due diligence came to the decision I needed a p-bass. I did some research and settled on the Schecter P-4. From the GAS thread:
It is an absolutely gorgeous instrument; the pics don’t do it justice. The more Schecter instruments I see, the more I am impressed with their stylings and craftsmanship. They’re definitely not, like, Kiesel levels of craftsmanship, but I’d put them up against any equivalent Fender or Ibanez.
It’s an alder body with a 3-tone sunburst finish. The body is thinner, lighter, and more defined than a Fender P. The neck is maple on maple, with a perfectly smooth satin finish on the back and a gloss finish on the fretboard. They call it a thin “C” neck, but it is not as thin as that on my Stiletto Custom which also says it has a thin “C” neck. It’s also not as… um… narrow (I suppose? There’s more height on the fretboard from under the G string to over the E string) as is the Stiletto Custom. The neck is really amazing, playing it is a dream.
Bridge and tuners are fairly generic. Schecter branded, I’d assume.
The pickup is a Schecter USA MonsterTone-P. It is booming. Very loud pickup. I had to lower it a great deal from how it was delivered, but once I got it to the correct height it sounds great.
My only complaints about this bass are that right near the base of the neck, where it contours into the neck mount, that… “line” is a little rough on the satin finish. And the shielding left a bit to be desired. The former is not bad enough I can’t live with it, and I’ve already fixed the latter.
Well. There it is.
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A little Scotch brite over the rough area will fix that right up. Schecter punches way above their price point and gives the bigger boys a run for their money. I would rate build quality on par with Yamaha, and that ain’t too shabby. Congratulations and play it like the beast it is.
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It looks to have great bones. I bet you could mod the hell out of it and make it play as good as or better than any FSO on the market. I think Schecter and the G&L Tribute line are some of the best intermediate priced basses on the market. But you know I now hate you. You are making me GAS hard for a Schecter or G&L Pbass. I like how you play into my addictions. Please stop.
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Yeah, I’m already considering a pickup replacement. Not for sound reasons, but for form factor. Here’s a close up of the pickups:
It’s kind of hard to tell, but they aren’t a solid block like most split-coil pickups. They’re like a… table, I guess, where the center is narrower than the top. As I use the pickup for my thumb a lot, it’s resting on just that corner of the… “tabletop”, which gets a little uncomfortable. Granted, it’s helping me to learn “floating thumb”.
Also, they’re a noisy pickup. If I get my thumb close to the poles, or even brush against/touch them, I can hear it.
But yeah, it’s a solid, solid foundation of a P-bass. I’m very happy with it. Super easy to open up and mess with.
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Damn, this is beautiful. If it sounds half as good as it looks you’ve got yourself a real winner.
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Looks awesome. Btw pickguard.
Tort tort tort tort.
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Ugh, tort, nothankyou. 
I really like the flat black.
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My experience with HB was quite different. I got a cheap pbass that was unplayable out of the box. Most of the problems were with the bridge, the saddles were set way high and could not be adjusted for all the tension on the strings, which were about an inch over the fretboard. I couldn’t simply take the strings off because they such an acute upward angle to the saddle I couldn’t pull them out, I had to cut them off. And then I changed the bridge.
When I pulled the pickguard off when changing the pup, come to find the whiles for the screws were so badly drilled there were several of the holes that partially opened into the cavity, that’s how close to the edge they were drilled. With splinters hanging off and all.
Maybe it’s an outlier, but it is the worst experience with a manufacturer I have had to date.
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That’s a grounding issue.
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I thought that, but I tested all the grounds and they’re good. I’m wondering if it’s the pickup itself or summat.
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I just got my 2-string alive bass back that went in for warranty noise issue and I learned a ton about grounding and various pickup designs. The luthier commented that it was a weird one and he had to do some thinking. Also, pickups have polarity and if wired wrong, noise too, depending.
The saga and solve is here:
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I have this on my 2019 Squier Stratocaster … an easy fix but yeah, it’s not very classy.
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@JustTim I think your split p pickups are just missing the covers.
Also available in Black.
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If that’s the case, Schecter is deciding not to include them as a design thing; the close up shot I posted above was from the P-4’s page on Schecter’s site.
On a related note, those pickups are effing BOOMING. This bass, at the same volume and gain, is almost twice as loud as my others, including an active dual humbucker bass. I’ve decided to replace the pickups, I have a Seymour Duncan ordered. Should be here soon, and then I’ll give the electronics cavity a full re-paint and re-validate all the grounds.
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