Reviews by darwin-bass

I had a set in my fretless J bass. These pickups have bumped-up lower midrange and subdued highs making them somewhat dark and "beefy" sounding. Probably great for a meat & potatoes sound on a fretted instrument but I found the neck PU to be too dark for good fretless usage. The fretless really benefits from clarity in the upper midrange region which this neck pickup suppresses. The bridge PU works well though, because of the naturally sound of the bass at that position is less lows and more mids & highs.

Build quality is great on these. I loved the adjustable pole pieces. The pickups were very quiet and gave good output levels. They are a bit tall so fitting them into the standard depth pickup route might be tricky. My routes were 3/4" deep (iirc) and they just fit with only a minimal amount of foam under them.

I eventually swapped Area Js into my fretless and it sounded better.

I've had the amp for about 6 months. I use it for home practice and for occasional small gigs; usually with just acoustic gtr and voice, sometimes with a full band (drummer behind sound shield) with full PA support.

The amp has plenty of power for either of these situations. Tone is rich and warm, not overly deep though. Rather than giving a flat full range response this amp colors the tone enough that all basses sound somewhat the same played through the amp. Fortunately it is a good sound, but still.

Unfortunately the DI out is only post vol, post EQ so getting a clean uncolored signal for the FOH is not possible. Drat.

Great amp for solo practice, rehearsals and as a stage monitor for gigs where you have PA support. Not ideal if you really want to monitor yourself for tone as it pretty much give 100 variations of "warm".