Post by JAC on Dec 5, 2018 13:18:33 GMT
Luck would have it that the same day as my son was born last week, I was also delivered an HB B-650 bass.
I have been wanting a 6 string for a while, since I tried and fell in love with a Cort Artisan, but I have been holding off thinking that it was probably a passing bout of GAS. As I have been working on looping a lot lately (no need to fit in with band mates ) the urge for the 6 string has been growing. I came across a great deal on an Ibanez that I like on Black Friday but I managed to be sensible and not click order. I decided that I would try living with a 6er for a while before dropping a bunch of cash on one (so far I had only really played with them in stores) and the HB b-650 seemed like a great candidate at just over 150€.
First let me say that I am obviously happy with HB basses (I now have 5) but I didn't really expect much from a 6 string bass that costs less than what I would have lost on resale if I didn't like the Ibanez.
However, I have been pleasantly suprised!
I managed to drop the bass getting it out of the box, which has added a little ding to the back (I planned on refinishing it anyway) but other than that, the bass has no noticeable flaws in the finish or build etc. THere are a couple of sharp fret ends which I plan on addressing as soon as I get chance (not a diffficult job) but to be honest, they are only noticeable when running your hand along the frets, they are not noticeable at all while playing, maybe this is due to the different hand position on such a wide neck.
Wearing its stock strings (I haven't had chance to change them yet), the bass has arrived pretty well set up and intonated, it seems that it was actuall checked properly before it was shipped.
The bass is active/passive, with a push/pull pot to change between them.
In active mode, I find the high C to be a little anemic sounding, especially in the higher registers, but I haven't really played around with EQ yet, only to make sure it works.
In passive mode, the bass has a lovely balanced and smooth tone across all strings. One thing that suprised me was that the Bass EQ pot (in acive mode) becomes a passive tone control when in passive mode, this is something that many active/passive basses don't have and I certainly didn't expect it on a 150€ 6 string bass.
One of the down sides of this bass is that the body sits too far to the right (I am right handed) when seated, which makes reaching the lower frets easier but is far more uncomfortable when playing on higher frets. The botom cutout also makes it difficult to reach the 22-24 frets due to the (lack of) space. This doesn't really bother me as much as the body being too far to the right, but I may modify the shape at some point to fix these.
I thought I would have issues with the 16mm string spacing as I prefer a wider (18 or 19mm) spacing on 4 and 5 strings, but in fact it is very comfortable and makes muting strings easier.
Here are a couple of crappy phone pics I have: