CB Basses S-Bass

2004
24 fret
Full face curly bubinga top
volume,volume,treble,mids,bass,(Aguilar 3-band)
with a push pull for active passive.
coil taps for single and dual coil operation.
Nordstrand Fat stacks.

It suits my style just great, I think it would work well for most styles(very flexible tone).
My set-up is an Eden 4x10 cabinet and an Eden head. Not too into "effects".
Only the "normal" noise when I have it on single coil setting.
Since I chose to have coil taps I can get quite a variety of sounds.
I have not had it in the studio yet, but I love it on stage.

All I had to do is unpack it and tune it.
No flaws, very impressive and a great feeling finish!

This bass is very well built.
The craftsmanship is beyond any instrument I have played in the past.
I believe Cliff Bordwell is one of the great luthiers of our time.

While having my bass made, I spoke to Cliff several times and he was always helpful and answered any of my questions.
It came with a lifetime warranty.

I have been playing 14 years and have owned vintage Fenders and high end Foderas. This bass mixes the great tone of the old and the craftsmanship of a great luthier.

I bought this bass used off Ebay 4 months ago, it is a 5-string(BEADG) with 3/4 spacing at the bridge(Hipshot). It has a wenge/padauk 5 piece neck with a ebony fingerboard. The top and back are mesquite burl and the core is alder. The pickups are Bartolini's and it has a 3-band Bartolini preamp(active/passive) with a mid freq. switch.
I really like the options that are on this bass and the mesquite burl is beautiful.

The sound of this bass is rich, clear, and growling. I run it through a SWR head and cabinet(6 x 10's), with new strings the top end is a bit bright for me so I roll off the horn of the cabinet until the strings settle in. The low end is clear and punchy and the B-string is tight and articulate.
You can get alot of good tones with the Bart preamp, but I generally don't mess with it, I just change the EQ on my amp if I want to adjust something.

The condition of the bass was exactly as described on Ebay.
I have no complaints other than the gig bag was a little beat up, I can't blame CB for that. I really like the feel of the finish on this bass, somewhat similar to the feel of a Fodera finish.

Other than replacing the battery twice now, and the strings I have not had to anything to the bass. The Hipshot bridge and tunning machines will probably last forever. This is the bass I always play out, I don't bring a back up, just an extra battery.

Cliff has been very helpful, I contacted him after I bought the bass and he sent me a sheet that listed all the options and woods. He also sent the in progress pictures he took while he was making the bass. Which was much more than I expected.

The overall rating?
I just ordered a single-cut 5-string fretless, That should say how I feel about CB Basses.
All the 10's are well deserved!

This bass was hand made by Cliff Bordwell, you can look him up at www.cbbasses.com. Originally I had planned to build a custom bass, but when I saw this in the For Sale section I couldn't resist. For specific features, my bass is listed in the Featured Basses section. It has a 2 peice ash body, beautiful maple burl top, and 5 peice wenge maple laminate neck. The pickups are Bartolini Classic Series passives and sound awesome. The electronics are simple yet effect; volume, blend, and tone. It doesn't exactly have tons of features per se, but it has what I need.

Great sounding bass, easilly rivals many more expensive models. Easilly blows my Carvin out of the water tone wise. Smooth and full on the neck and dry on the bridge. Blended together, the bass yields and extreme, overly bassy sound with great overtones from the bridge. I put it in the middle for playing with a pickup and move it to the right or left as necessary. With fingers it tends to be muddy with both pickups on full, so I'll tend to either go for bridge or neck alone.

I run this bass into a Tech 21 Sansamp RBI preamp which goes into my QSC PLX 1202 poweramp and into a pair of Acme Low B-2s. With the blend knob on my preamp up, the bass has a very thick creamy sound. When I turn the knob all the way down it has a very Weezer - Only In Dreams type of tone with the right settings. Because of the relatively simple electronics on both my preamp and on the bass, I can dial in a number of different tones very quickly and easilly.

The bass sounded great right out of the box after I tuned it up. The truss rod required some slight adjusting but the neck is PERFECTLY straight. There were no flaws to speak of. The bass has a pretty good feel on the neck; the flattened D shape fits me well. I can't exactly get up to the 22nd with ease, but it's a bass after all.

This bass feels extremely solid, much more so than any bass I've ever played. I would definetely gig without a backup. It's a bit heavier than I expected it to be, but I really like it. It's a solid built bass, as opposed to my more flimsy Carvin.

It's pretty much a 1 man operation. Nevertheless, Cliff usually responds to emails quickly. Overall, I've had much better luck with Cliff than anyone else. It's great being able to talk to the actual builder than to get the run around at a place like Carvin, or to talk to people who have no idea what they're selling :cough: musiciansfriend.com :cough:

I've yet to encounter any problems with this bass. I'm really starting to appreciate the smaller companies out there; they produce a better product for less. Tech 21, CB basses, Acmebass, etc...

Overall, I give this bass a 10. For the price I paid, it's definetely the best value around. However, if I were to have ordered it as a custom it'd be significantly more expensive, so I graded it as such. There are minor changes I would make to it... the B, while better than most is still floppy. To remedy that I would get a 36 or 38" scale in the future. I also wish it had been a neck through. In all likelyhood I'll be going back to Cliff for my next bass as he's flexible on options and doesn't charge a whole lot. There are a lot of great luthiers out there, but most of them tend to be a bit rigid on the wood selection. With Cliff, you can pretty much get anything you want at a very reasonable price. That's the advantage of going to a smaller business.