Dean Guitars Playmate Edge 10a

The best feature of this bass it it's price vs it's quality, and sound. It has 4 strings, surprisingly solid bridge, very smooth solid tuners, two soapbar looking humbucking pickups, pick up pan pot, seperate active bass and treble controls, volume, runs on 9 volts. My bass is painted black and is very glossy. Hardware is also all black. Neck is maple with satin finish. Fret board is rosewood, nice thickness. Frets are jumbo size, 22 of them. Position markers are white perloid dots off set between E and A strings at the usual 3,5,7,9,12 etc frets. Nut is black, could be graphite, probably just plastic, works well. My rating takes into account the price. This isn't a high end bass, so let's compare to other $150 basses.

Again, for $150 wow, I actually love it! No, it doesn't sound like a high end bass, but it sounds better than some much more expensive basses. I think it sounds pretty warm, and the unbelievable thing is how articulate it is. There are NO dead spots, it plays in tune, with the pan pot you can give it a little extra neck pick up and it sounds similar to a P bass. (Not as ballsy) If you pan towards the bridge it does a fairly good impression of a Jazz bass.

The fit and finish with this bass much better than expected. I have seen many foreign made basses, and they are often good to look at, but usually it's the fret job that reveals the lack of hand finishing. I can not find one problem with the fret job on this bass! I've had custom basses hand built that had more fret job problems than this one. This bass is fairly light and yet it still has a solid feel. The bolt on neck fits the pocket without any excess gaps. Everything on this bass has exceeded my expectations. If I were to find any flaw it would be in the set up. Again, I don't care if I spend thousands of dollars on a bass, I always end up doing my own set up anyway. I fine tuned the harmonics at the 12th fret after I corrected the tension on the truss rod to my liking, then set the string height. I have it playing at a medium height.

Yes, I could use it on a gig without a backup. If taken care of, I don't see why it wouldn't last quite a long time. I can't say how the finish will hold up, but I'm not too concerned about that, as much as playability. Since I did my initial setup on the bass it has been stable. So far, nothing has come loose, or been a problem of any kind. Just don't forget to bring a spare 9V battery.

This bass comes with a 5 year warranty! If the bass only lasted until the warranty ran out, that works out to $30 a year. That's less than I'd spend on strings for it. As for the customer service; don't know, I haven't had a reason to get in touch with them.

I bought this bass as a loaner, for when drunk strangers want to show off to their friends at my gig. This way I don't have to hand over my sweet G&L or whatever I'm playing that night.
So I have been playing bass for over 40 years. This isn't the kind of bass I normally would buy for myself. Even my students have had more expensive basses than this one. But If I had had this bass when I began playing, it would have been so much better than the piece of crap I started on. This would make a GREAT first bass, or even a decent back up for a pro, or maybe a teacher.
So it's not a hi fi sounding bass. If you're looking for that bright slap tone, this bass will sound really good, but you'll need to get that 5-8 KHZ from your amp. If you play finger style, you'll find it well suited for that. Sorry I can't comment on the use of a pick.