I like the Adams Family look of the bass. It also has great upper register access, a perfect fret job and a sleek yet stable neck. I'm no fan of split coils, but here it is put up that close to the neck, it has a nice dark growl. While the EMGs are active, the solitary tone knob works passive and therefore unfussy. Some small user-friendly detail: trc just has one screw, yet is firmly in place. Yup, I bought mine for the amount Dave said, Gene's signature played no role, but at least he has a nice signature and has applied it in a fitting place on the body not just all over (like T.M. Stevens did on the 8 string LP and then upside down to boot!).
At the end of the day it is a well-made Japanese (or Korean) rock bass with an individual styling and state of the art pups and hardware. Something you might expect from, say, ESP. Not really worth more than 2.000 bucks new, but in no way a crappy or lovelessly executed instrument. For some reason, the E string on mine is so dominating and overpowering that I have to slant the upper half of the split coil quite a bit to have the E balance with the other strings. But that is hardly a drawback.
