Bass Gear Issue 7 : Page 43BASS LAB Yamaha BB2025x The Yamaha name shows up on all kinds of things, from motorcycles to musical instruments, including drums, brass, woodwinds, pianos and even bass guitars. With a broad spectrum like that, you might expect their products to be fairly generic, and in a way, this electric bass is. Its presentation looks like very “Fenderesque,” with cues from Fender, G&L, and Music Man, but without really being any of those. Yamaha has developed its own subtle style cues over the years, including thicker necks and pegheads, big distinctive inlays, and larger-looking body shapes than those they pay homage to. As such, they strive to set themselves apart from other manufacturers. Under the hood, they are more of the same. This bass does lots of things right. It’s very light for as big as it looks. The sunburst finish is traditional and gorgeous. The passive electronics use Noble pots – a good and unusual choice. The “strings through body” drilling is on a bias from the bottom �d;  "�e; % $# & edge rear corner that slightly reduces the break angle across the saddles. Usually, we like as much break angle as possible over the bridge, but in some string-through basses, the angle is so tight it ends up in string breakage. Yamaha’s unique approach, here, is a nice idea. This pickup configuration has been used in many basses, but the Precision/Jazz pickup combo is historically fraught with problems. They suffer from a mismatch in magnetism and polarity that creates phasing issues and noise through incomplete hum canceling. These issues are present in this system, but significantly reduced. In this bass, these pickups sound decent together, and very “Fender.” The instrument contains a passive electronic system with a selector switch, rather than a blend and master volume (or volume/volume) setup. Opting to forgo a preamp at this price range is a somewhat risky choice. The bridge pickup is very good sounding, although I kept wishing for a bass knob when I was playing with it. The P-bass pickup is average sounding by itself, but with both pickups on, it sounds better than I would expect for a P/J coil mismatch. The nickel/silver nut is an unusual choice. Although it would in theory help make the open notes sound more similar to fretted notes, I have some concerns about its longevity. Bone is a longer-lasting alternative which also sounds quite good. On this bass, the nut was cut unusually low, so setting it up for an aggressive player would require a shim. That might be acceptable on an under $1,000 bass, but not so much at this price point. The bass is well built overall, but might be priced optimistically for the level of manufacture. This is a very competitive price range, and Yamaha faces stiff competition from the likes of the Music Man 5-string, Lakland Skyline 5502, or the Sadowsky Metro. Still, for a company that makes so many different things, this is a pretty solid bass. %&& !$%#  Publication List Using a screen reader? Click Here |
