Cort Curbow 5

this is a 2008 model bartolini pick up elctronics active but this bass is very small smaller than ibanez sr luthite body ebonol finger board maple neck a slap switch controll bass mid treble control

i play rock metal but this bass is so versatile. im running it with a 8x10 ashdown abm cab tech 21 sansamp rbi preamp and a tech 21 poweramp sonic maximizer and line 6 bass pod live this bass sounds ace running through it and iv had all sorts of bass guitars active to passive ibanez esp fender shecter ect the slap swtch is really good even with a pick it does wat it says wen using fingers slap and pop style but with a pick it gives that korn lacuna coil style sound with my set up any way the 3 band eq is set to full but is very power full

set up was from cort factory as i requested over phone and it was perfect

for the money cant fault it alot better than some bass,s in the ??800 to a ??1000 bracket like spector

i delt with them direct the compony is awsome

iv been playing for 18 years is one of the best iv ownd and i wood by another an i am going to any way

I believe it was made in 2007 or 2008 as it is new, but not sure. Not sure of country of origin (no "Made in China" sticker). It is a luthite body with Bartolini Mk.1 pickup (single) and active circuit. You probably know the specs or could easily get them off the internet. It's the Lake Placid Blue

I'm using it with a Line 6 Lowdown 150 amp. My style is rock and metal though I appreciate all genres. It had a bit of a hiss, but by adjusting the switches on the back, I got that to be less than the Ibanez SR505 I had, to where this is almost zilch. The sound can pretty much be anything you want it to be. It has amazing sustain for not being wood.

Likes? What's not to like?

The action was a bit low for me, I was getting buzz and it was VERY touchy on finger placement. I replaced the stock D'Addario strings, which hurt my fingers, with Ernie Balls and raised the action a hair and no buzz. Bass arrived to me in perfect shape.

It seems pretty solid to me, as solid as anything I've played (which is Ibanez and Traben other than this). I think the finish will be just fine. I would gig it without a backup though I like it so much I bought another for a backup.

Never dealt with Cort though it has a lifetime warranty. Hard to beat that.

I'm pretty new, I played a bit in 2005, gave it up and got back in recently.

I love pretty much everything about it. It just has the "right stuff", looks great, light weight, sound range is awesome, can go active or passive (which is what the "slap switch" is), great pickup in Bartolini (and you don't need two one is great), fast play neck, this is the "ideal" bass to me.

If I had to compare it to the Ibanez (SR505) I'd say that is a great bass too that won't disappoint, I just preferred this one. Same with Traben - that is a great deal for the features you get, but so is this. The lifetime warranty is outstanding as well.

My bass is new probably around 2006, no earlier. Made in Korea, with a two octave neck with extra frets. The Curbow 5 is the five string bass with a body made of Luthite, a man made product,the neck is maple with "Ebonal" finger board also a synthetic material that looks like shiny ebony. This bass controls are volume, treble cut and boost, mid cut and boost, bass cut and boost. It has one soapbar bartolini passive pickup with active electronics. The neck extends all the way down to the pickup.
All hard ware looks pretty heavy duty and has a satin like look without a shine to it. Very attractive bass.

I dont really have any dislikes about this bass but I do wish it had the flexibility to control the tone (bass/treble) in the slap mode. From what I understand this is pretty common with basses that have a feature of this type. The Curbow suites my style just great which is finger style picking and slapping when called for. This bass is basically pretty quite for an active instrument, it's compares as far as sound to my Spector bass. If all the highs are turned up it may be a little hissy but thats with my Spector too which cost hundreds more. The one pickup is very full; can get warm or you can make it growl or sound like a Fender Jazz Bass with the mids up. A great sounding bass.

Action was not very good when I purchased it. I usually do my own set-ups and is still tweeking the truss rod to my liking. I also lowered the strings a bit. The neck is just right for me, not too small or too wide. Fast action neck. I see a small flaw in finish right around the pickup ( I can see an area that was not painted.) Other than that it looks great. I bought this bass for under $300.00 new. I did not like the strings that were on this bass, I will be changing to a more suitable set for my style.

Instrument seems to be pretty strong. Hardware looks good. I really cant tell about the finish standing up. I did see an old one that was pretty beat up. Just take care of your instrument and I think it will last. I dont think I would need a back up for this bass. I actually bought this as a backup 5 string for my NS95 Stuart Spector 5 string because sometimes the battery goes and if I dont have an extra battery I'm up the creek with no paddle. I think the Curbow can stand alone without having a backup.

I did not get any warranty papers with the purchase of my bass. I checked with the store and they just told me there shouldnt be a problem with warranty??? Curbow says it's a lifetime warranty. Customer Support is very good and informative. I e-mailed them and they got back with me within the next day. Cool........

I'm a guitarist and bassist. I've been playing over thirty years, too much gear to mention. If this bass was stolen I would get another one without a second thought. I love the size of it and the weight. My Favorite feature is the slap switch which adds veriety and an extra fullness to the sound. Compared it with Fender Jazz and BC Rich Mockingbird and chose the Curbow. Great Bass guitar. Buy One.

Luthite Body.... no wood.... i NEVER thought such a bass can sound SOOOO good ! damn.... it fuckin rocks....
i has a bartolini mk1 in it (same like the high priced ibanez)
with active electronics (volume, bass, mid, treble and a "slap switch", you can also set up the gain and the extra gain for the switch which turns of the eq and puts on a different mid boost eq)
so you have 2 different eq settings on that bass with just switching of that thing
tuners and bridge are really heavy.. compareable with badassbridge
the body is pretty small and really lite.... i rules for longer practices or gigs -> you dont get problems with your back

it sounds great amped AND acoustic !
ive tried 25 5 strings till 1000$ only 4 had an good B string
this one was the best !
the slap switch also rules

was set up pretty perfect !
just a good bass

it seams to last for ever.... better hope so ;-)

i am gigging it without a backup !

(ive also made some great recordings in the studio with it)

i dont now... didnt need them... but was told its also pretty much ok !
ive emaild them and they worte back in the same week (thats pretty unnormal for other brands)

there is no better bass in that price range !
i would def. buy another.... i have a very strange teacher. he only likes his basses. but he went crazy when he played my new baby !

ive also tried the fender jazz V yamahas ibanez OLP....
the felt like cheap china cracker - had a way to thin fingerboard or where unpractical for livegigs (ibanez was also pretty nice but hast 2 9V batterys on the back closed with SCREWS)

so.... if you want a good bass under 1000$ bugs... thats the way to go ! ( i think its that cheap becase of the luthite body )

i payed 450 $ for it !
it sounds good - plays good - and feels good

mine is from the first year with mighty mite pick up. Beautiful instrument. been described in the other reviews mine is lake placid blue and still lovely after all these years, about 8 or 9 years old now.

sounds wonderful! full sound the active controls are great can push up the mids, lows or highs. Also has slap switch which gives it a different sound. records very well live it's also great

After setting it up, as with any other instrument it plays soooo well! Just got a rogue lx405 pro, it's a lovely and great instrument but the cort plays much better! had no flaws in it at all. you need to use a string set with a tapered 5th string or a 5th string that is smaller than 130

been playing it almost every day for close to 9 years it's just awesome! i live in florida and much of the time only put in in the gig bag to take it to church to play and i've never once had to adjust the neck even! very dependable! wish it had a active/passive switch like the rogue but can't have everything!

haven't dealt with them from all i hear they're good tho

i've owned a rickenbacker 4001 now own 2 rogue basses have owned fenders etc the cort curbow is just an excellent bass. My brother has a pedulla and he likes the cort.

My bass' features are, of cause, the same as the others. So there's nothing to add on previeus posts. Mine is bought in 2005 in a store in Hasselt, Belgium, called J & R.

It's a Chameleon White Bartolini model and looks acually kinda cool. It came in a box wrapped in a protective bag.

The electronics are a bit of a dissapointment. The bass hisses constantly, even with the treble knob in it's zero position.
Great bridge and tuners, though !

I have an Ibanez EDA 905 as my main bass, this is a specific sounding bass, and I needed a light weight, traditional sounding bass on top of it.
Of cause, the special chape of the curbow had everything to do with my choice.
I ordered it without ever hearing how it sounded !

I sounds incredible for such a small body ! The slightest turn on the controls is noticeable. The slapswitch is a bit useless to me, since I don't slap.

It's played into a BOSS GT6-B through a Crest 900 watts poweramp into a Peavey 4 X 10 cabinet. You can never have enough power on stage, I say !

It's a real live bass, because of it's light weight, and I 'd never use it in the studio, because of the anoing hiss it constantly makes.

That's about the thing that I don't like about it. You have this greath Gotoh hardware, a Bartolini pick-up and tone controls, but it hisses like you've got an ocean in your amp.

When the bass arrived in the store, I did a quick check of the finish and found a small, badly done, repair job at the bottom of the neck. I pointed it out to the shop-owner and a telephone later I had another 10 % discount on it !!!

For the rest everything feels fine.

I don't worry about it, it looks and feels as solid as it has to be. The hardware is rock-solid and the Bartolini needs no introduction. The finish is a bit sloppy at some corners, but what do you want for ? 333 ? Thats about $ 350.
The stap buttons looked fine and 'straplock-ready'. But when I bought the straplocks, the buttons seemed 1 millimeter to thick.

I didn't have to adjust the trustrod yet and it seems real sturdy.

I take only the Ibanez and this Cort to a gig. I feel real confedant.

Because of the hissing-problem I had it brought back to the distributer. After a month of absence I got it back with nothing done to it ! 'It sounds the same as the other ones' they said at the repair departement. That's a bummer ....

A big problem is the fact that the controls are soldered onto a printform, together with the slapswitch. So there 's no way some independent guitartech could re-wire everything to get the hiss out.

I did a real good deal on my bass ! Since we' ve only two colours to choose from, the CBS (canon blue satin) and the WHC ( white chameleon) in Europe, the distributer decided to let me have the WHC at the same price as the CBS. That wat about ? 380. After the extra 10 % that became only ? 333, for an originally ? 580 bassguitar, European price.

I don't regret it, but the hissing is a huge disappointment. If it where stolen or lost I'd probably buy another Ibanez EDA 905.

People do complement me everytime about this 'spacy and groovy looking' bass. It gets a lot of attention. If the hissing problem wans't there, it could be an awsome sounding bassguitar for a budgetprice.

maple neck with an obscene amount of frets on its Ebonol fretboard(synth ebony, very nice, very shinny) one bartolini pickup active eq and a slap switch, body molded from luthite (yet another synth material)

awesome sound cant say enough for the perfectly quiet active controls and that slap switch that puts every ounce of hi fi at your thumb and finger tips, bartolini's are just the best pickup for playing any type of music not too hot not too cold.

there is a lot of talk about the shape of the body making it hard to sit and play this is true but if you sit with the bass in classical guitar position it works fine (im use to that position anyway) the neck is a perfect fit for a 4 string player who wants a nice 5 with out hurting his hands, im a guitarist and a slim neck is paramount. this thing is very light EASY on the shoulders however the tuners throw the weight off a bit thats no prob really tho. the only prob i did have was the intonation on the B string, wow it was damn near impossible for me to get the thing to sound good the rest of the strings intonate without incident but i reomved the screw that pushes the saddle so that i could push the saddle far enough back to get the 12 fret sound to be in tune with the open tuning, but now its perfect!

havent had it long but i have had some things fall into it and careless ppl knock it into stuff tell you this luthite will not chip like paint and im sure cracking like wood might never happen. i heard from some guy on here that the body warps but the guy at cort told me that they run tests on this luthite stuff and that has never happened. plus many other companies make luthie basses and there are no complaints about that with their basses so go figure that guy bought a lemon god knows how or why

the ppl at cort are the greatist i had a tough time finding this thing and they kept looking and helping me find a store that had one in stock instead of just telling me of the nearest cort dealer. they even offered to ship it to a guy close to me at a great price but it never would beat the one i found on ebay i just had to play the thing first, trust me youll love it

25+ frets, bartolini active electronics/pickup... Blue Satin finish... 7.75 lbs -- the deciding factor for me! Read other reviews for more on its specs...

Great sounding bass -- one good pickup placed in the right spot with three band eq... what more could you ask for???? Sounds great through any of my amps and direct. Top notch sounding bass for peanuts!

The neck on mine is perfectly straight.. I don't know if they are all like this or if I got lucky. Frets are nicely done and the neck is quite playable. The neck-body joint on mine is quite good -- others seem to complain of a noticeable gap... not the case with mine. Maybe it's a kink they worked out... This bass plays as good as anything.

Only time will tell on the durability... One other reviewer complained that the bodies have a tendency to warp over a couple of years. I will update if that happens... Even if it does, for $399, I'd just buy a new one... It's quite nice to have a bass under 8lbs. when you're playing four sets a night. If I have to spend $400 every two years, then so be it!

That being said, I haven't owned the bass long enough to rate this category.

I have not dealt with Cort, but I have dealt with Curbow via email -- they answered my questions promptly. As for Dr. Cluck -- from whom I purchased this bass -- I'll give him a 10! Very easy transaction with good communication and prompt shipping -- all at a fair price.

I have been a musician most of my life and have performed with several national acts as either guitar, keys, or bass. When not performing with nationals, I work with a cover band several nights each week -- often 4 sets a night.

All of my gear is pro quality and not embarrassing to bring out on stage or at a session. Pro quality doesn't necessarily translate to an inflated price. If you know what you're looking for, you can find pro quality gear at reasonable prices... like the Curbow bass.

If this bass were lost or stolen, I would immediately buy another.

I have compared this bass to so many others -- mostly by reading specs. I knew what I was looking for and was familiar with the Curbow. It meets my needs most completely.

Only downside: the bass is awkward to play sitting down without a strap. However, I have other basses for that... I bought this bass for live performance due to it's light weight and professional specs. Mine is really quite nice. If you have complaints about yours, you probably have a lemon. I'm sure they're out there!

I disassembled the bass and found JUL 1999 in the neck's joint with the body. It's made in Korea. It has 5 strings, 25 frets for the G and D strings, 26 for the A and E strings and 27 for the B string. The body is molded of luthite, a very light composite. It has an active 3 band EQ, volume and the slap switch, which boosts mids and bass for a more punchy sound. It has a single hambucker (mine is the Myghty Mite version). The 34" neck is hard maple and the fretboard is made of ebonol (another composite). So this bass has not more than a couple of punds of wood, the rest is al composite. The body finish is a very decent walnut imitation. The body shape is very modern, with a very deep lower cutaway that allows effortless access to the higher frets. It has a solid alloy bridge with quick change string slots (not so quick as I had a very hard time changing the B string because of the too narrow slot). The tuners are standard Gotoh (they look like Gotohs, but maybe I'm wrong). I bought it used with a hardshell case wich I will have to reform in order to keep the bass from dancing inside it.

This bass is rather versatile (I play from soul to nu-metal). I use it with two setups. One is a Hartke 3500 head with a 4.5XL and a 215BXL cabs and through a Boss GT-6B processor (this is for my nu-metal band). The other consists of an old Peavey TKO-80 and a Zoom 708II pedalboard (this is for working with my soul/funk/reggae/bossa band). The bass isn't noisy at all. The sound is great but has some annoying lo-mid, between 180 and 300 Hz, so you have to cut those frequencies a little bit in the amp. It has a tremendous treble output. In fact I have to leave the treble of the onboard preamp almost all the way down if I use the usual V graphic EQ setting on the amp. The B string is very good. The G string lacks a certin body, so I will probably switch from the current .040 to .045 or even .050 (only the G string, the others are OK) in order to achieve more heavyness on it. I also own a MusicMan StingRay 5 and a Fernandes Gravity 5 and it stands in the middle of both in th versatility departament (the MM being the lowest and the Fernandes the highest). I didn't use it both at the studio nor in live situations but soon I will and let you know. The slap switch has its tricks. I found that no extreme setting of the pots in the back is usable. I configured them so that they add just a little bit of punch and not too much because that would force a complete change in the amp's EQ (which is impossible in live situation). So, don't abuse the "punch boosting" capabilities of this bass.

This bas has glamour. It's perfectly finished. No flaws really. As I bought it used, I don't know the factory settings. I allways setup my instruments when I buy them so this was no exception. I found that I could make a very low setup without fret buzz and that's a nice thing. So I left it very low and as the nech is very very thin, the neck is really fast now (even faster than my MM's). I adjusted the pickup so that the high strings are closer (it has amazing gain on the B string so I left it a little apart from the pickup). Fretwork is astonishing, even comparable with that of my MusicMan. A perfect job for a bass this cheap.

Sincerely, I have all kinds of references about luthite. I don't know what to expect. I believe in luthite mainly because I don't care that much about "the sound of wood" in an electric instrument and prefer modern HI-FI sounds for bass. All the hadrware looks OK and solid so I think I don't have to worry.

I wrote several mails to Curbow Stringed Instruments and they (particularly a guy named Simon) was very responsive and quick to answer my questions. I appreciate this kind of things given that even some major brands (namely Roland/BOSS) don't even care about answering e-mails.

I play since 13 and I'm almost 30 now so this is around 17 years. I love everything about this bass except it's excessive lo-mid, but that is easily solved with EQ (not the onboard, but your amp's, so I wish it had two separate midrange controls -hi-mid and lo-mid-). I would buy another if stolen, of course. The best things it has are the HI-FI sound and the ultra fast neck.
The thing is I needed an affordable but good enough backup both for my Fernandes Gravity V and for my Ernie Ball MusicMan Stingray 5. This is the ideal solution for backing up both of them. A guy I knew was selling it to upgrade and I had a G&L L-1505 for sale (overpriced Fenderish piece of crap) so he liked it, I liked it and he gave me the Curbow Cort and some money and I got rid of the G&L (the most nonsense bass I ever owned -this Cort is my cheapest bass and it still kick's the G&L's ass by far in every category, although it's no merit to beat the attempt of a bass the G&L L-1505 is-). The reason for the high ratings I put in almost all categories consist of simple questions:
1) What bass with more features can you find for less than 400 bucks?
2) What better sounding bass can you find for less than 400 bucks?
3) What better finished bass with better action can you find for less than 400 bucks?
4) What brand that sells you "under the 400$ price range" basses cares about being kind and responsive to you?
Once I asked myself all these questions I found out that no instrument in this price range comes even closer and it can only deserve to compete with most 800-1000$ basses.

Built May, 2001. I know that because the neck is stamped. And I had to reset it.... 24 frets. Was my favorite.
But Luthite is NOT for bass guitars.
Body began a slow warp (bow) process. No truss in body. Since the battery compartment is between the bridge and the neck base, and it is routed out..there is very little Luthite. I first began seeing the problem about 6 months ago, when i had to reset the action.. almost every week... then I ran out of adjustment. Then I shimmed the neck. Now that is not enough. You can see the warp with your eyes. It is over 1/2 inch if you lay it on a flat surface.

Too bad...it was a great bass....

I found a used one in a store last week.... same problem... I see a pattern here....

it has a very good pick-up and pre-amp. of course that does little good now.

Soon will be a pretzel. it is just under 3 years old.

UG...what else can i say...

no response as of yet. been almost a year of asking.

i have played for 30 years.
This was the coolest bass. I may try to build a wooden body to replace this one. neck is still OK. Ebonal or Ebonnel or what ever it is called shows no real signs of wear.... still very fast action and the neck adjust never was a problem...

i did a review of the bass when i got it...i gave it hight marks because it deserved them at the time..... but not now...