I originally posted this on another forum yesterday, but they are too busy chucking their collective muck over the Flea sig Jazz bass and everything Maruszcyzk to take any notice. Either that or I piss them off too frequently. Given that this forum doesn't seem to have such a boner for every
terminally boring P, J and PJ permutation of basses available I might have better luck here. Right?
I've always had a soft spot for the TAB-66, and I found one retailer left with them in stock, and only in wine red... and it looks like I got the last one!
I quickly strung up the bass with NOS 30+ year old Chromes. The E from that set is especially oldschool sounding, with that weird detuned 'boing' that immediately says 'Ronnie Lane' to me. The 'plonk' tone from this bass is really solid, but maybe too oldschool for me. The bass is back on the stock roundwounds. I always think semi-hollow basses should run on flats, so maybe some groundwound or pressurewound strings are in the future for this one?
I've had the bass a week now, and my thoughts are....
The good:
It is a long-scale (34'') bass! It doesn't feel a million miles away from my P bass in terms of string tension.
The neck pickup sounds great. With the tone control you can go from Rickenbacker to Rivoli. I've been playing along to The Animals!
The bridge pickup does a good Andy Fraser tone; that stubby, percussive sound.
The finish is amazing and flawlessly executed. It feels like a luxury bass. Hard to say, but some Poly finishes feel cheaper somehow.
The nut was cut brilliantly, only the E slot was too high, and even then only slightly.
Balance seems good on a strap; no neck dive.
In general it has quite a grindy, aggressive tone, whereas most hollow-bodies accentuate a pillowy, undefined, slightly fragile '60s bass tone, which is cool but can be hard to EQ or work in a band setting.
The neutral:
The pickups themselves are slightly odd. They are slightly noisy depending on the angle of the bass, and I've checked the magnetic pull and there is only a single 'blade' of pull down the middle of the pickup. Are they really humbuckers, or side-winders like old Firebird pickups? The good news is that the routes are big enough to fit full-size guitar humbuckers, so various other pickups could be employed in the future.
There isn't a blend control for the pickups. I've had to lower the neck pickup a bit, and in the 'middle' position there is a slightly odd, nasally tone. I'm guessing I cannot flip the phase of either pickup as the end of the coil(s) is connected to ground, which incorporates the grounding of the pickup cover.
The output jack! I'm not a fan of having the output jack mounted directly to the wood through a wee hole. I've seen a lot of SGs with finish damage around the jack. As such I've already fitted a Strat output jack. It doesn't look too out of place, and it gets the cable away from the top of the bass. I don't like cutting the top so much, but it is easier than patching up finish or structural damage down the line.
The stock strings were hard to remove. The ball-ends were jammed hard into the stoptail.
The stock strap buttons were a bit too small. Not good as the strap buttons are both along the center line so the bass hangs forwards slightly, and so the strap could jump off the neck heel button.
The bad:
The bridge pickup wasn't fully picking up the E string. The tune-o-matic is very slightly off-centre, so the strings are slightly over to the bass side of the neck. It barely matters and is hard to see by eye. However these pickups have very little magnetic pull beyond the width of the strings, so by default the bridge pickup wasn't capturing the full excursion of the E string. The trick was to plug the four holes for the bridge pickup mounting ring and shift everything a few millimeters across to the bass side. Re-drill four holes and screw back into place. The trick works, but it is slightly unusual to see a bass kitted out with Firebird pickups. I don't think Violin bass-style pickups would work as they probably have a narrower field.
Rattles! The fretwork seemed fine, though benefited from polishing. However the neck came with too-little relief to begin with (a first!) so I had to back the rod off. Even with the fret rattling cut down, the switch tip rattles (I'm replacing it) and for every G played the pickguard also vibrates. The pickguard is kept off the mounting bracket with a felt washer, but the pickguard is slightly flexible and can therefore vibrate off the rest of the bracket. I removed the spacer, and it has cut it down slightly. The pickguard sits a couple of millimeters off the face of the bass, so can also vibrate. There was some rattling coming from inside the bass, I think from the pickup cables. The neck pickup was also rattling slightly. I will replace the springs with surgical tubing at some point.
Final bug/issue/thought: Basschat forum member 'hairyhaw' noticed the bridge bushings were uprooting on his TAB bass in a thread here:
http://basschat.co.uk/topic/238450-arai-tab-66/When my bass arrived I had the exact same issue. I removed the strings and assessed the deal. In short, the bushings were loose and had come out of their holes slightly. The problem is exacerbated slightly because of the length of the bushings and because the holes are drilled vertically rather than off the vertical to accommodate the contours of the top of the bass. I fixed the issue by taking shorter bushings for the stoptail and gluing them into the bass using epoxy. I epoxied the bushing for the tune-o-matic on the bass side, but didn't glue the treble bushing as the ground wire runs into the drill hole here. This cable may need repaired or replaced, so I didn't fancy having to hack away at an epoxied part in the future. You can still see a wee bit of the ribbed/machined section of the bushing that is meant to be invisible, but it isn't as bad as when the bass arrived.
If you made it this far, have a flying boat.
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