Ibanez BTB205

Made 2006 in Indonesia. 24 frets, 5 strings.
Controls: Volume, Blend, PHAT. the PHAT-Pot is an adjustable bass-boost circuit.
Ibanez DX5 pickups which seem to be split-coils. The coils are aligned like a 5string-P bass (BEA / DG). Ibanez says this is for more equal string response. We'll get to this later. The bass pot is the only one requiring battery, but there is no active-passive switching.
Body made of Agathis, somewhat like a lighter mahogany they say.. Of course it hasn't got the sonic "body" like real mahogany. The neck is made out 3 pieces of maple, and I tell you: this neck kicks ass. Not only it sounds good, but this is THE most playable 35-inch-scale neck in this price segment. The fretboard is made of rosewood, the frets are medium sized and were polished okay.
The bridge is top-loading only, and is "gunmetal chrome" finished just as the tuners. It serves a good job, although I had to cut the screws and springs to set up the intonation properly with medium strings (I play Eb-Tuning only on this bass).
What are we missing? In this price category: A tone-pot would have been an enormous improvement on sound possibilities.
An active-passive switching-system would be nice, but this is normally unavailable in this price range.
The blend pot blends in like a dream. Very much possibilities here.
I give this bass a 7 for features - a tone pot is a very very important thing IMO when building a bass with so much brilliance and highs.

Neck pickup: This is quite a weirdo. It's somewhere between a Fender P and MM Stingray, but not that balanced. Lots of bass, not much mid-growl, much highs. It is quite hard to play because it picks up very much fret-noise.
Bridge pickup: Another "nice try". Very much high-mids which can get squeaky, the fret-noise-problem is not so bad here because the highs aren't that strong. Nevertheless, harmonics are pronounced well.
These pickups are truly something for slappers. The PHAT-pot is useful when using small amps, but booms heavy when plugged to the PA or a normal stage-sized amp. The mids are really disturbing sometimes.

I found the sound very problematic at first. I tried switching to stainless steel strings which has brought back some of the lowmids as long as the strings stayed fresh. With string wear, the punch was gone, the amount of high freuqencies was still the same. The guys from my band told me it makes a lot of metallic noise and harsh frequencies in comparison to the "oomph".. I was quite frustrated about this for about 6 months (3 string sets), then I moved back to nickelplated strings. I am now using the Ernie Ball slinky set and I will stick with it - the sound is MUCH more balanced, the problem with the high frequencies was done about 2 hours of playing. I currently have the second set of Ernie's on it, I recommend using them prior trying D'Addarios, which are too boomy and too brittle for this bass/pickups.

The blend pot is really working well. There are many useful sounds between 50/50 and 90/10 (bridge/neck). The sound towards the neck PU is, as I said, problematic.

Currently I am waiting for a Bartolini "deep tone" Set with new electronics. I hope this will bring show me the body and the mids. Why I spend 400 Euros upgrade cost on a 330 Euro bass? Because I like this bass.. The neck sounds and feels great, the body shape fits me, bridge is very solid and easy to setup.

The sound is okay, there is no electronic noise or hum. I own this bass for about 18 months, my decision for new PU's was made about 1 month ago.

I'll give this point a 7 out of 10, because the basic sound is very puristic and inspiring, but the missing tone pot is disturbing sometimes.

The factory setup was... buzzfree, but horrible to play and it didn't sound "direct". I purchased the bass because of it's acoustic tone which stood out against the other competitors.
I lowered the action, set the neck straight, tightened all screws (machine heads, neck, bridge) and put some foam rubber under the pickups so they could be adjusted closer to the pickups. That made a HUGE difference in sound.
Everything else which gets more problematic, like a poor-fitting saddle, noisy blend pot, bad nut, FRETS (!) etc - all these things were done very good by Ibanez.

Regarding the finish, this is one tough bastard (I've got the Titanium-Grey-Flat-Finish). It became more glossy where my fingers are most of the time (the "slap skid mark" between neck pu and fretboard and above the bridge pickup "thumbrest"), but this is not seen well on photographs or even with blank eye.

Finish gets a 10, action gets a 7, fit gets a 8. Overall 8 because all of this is very good in this price segment.

The battery compartment lid is opened with a screwdriver. I don't like that anymore, anyway I'm not going to replace it, I'll stick with filling my batteries every pre-gig night. The batteries went dead one time at a rehearsal in 18 months, I played around 30 gigs with it.
The hardware is very good. Tuners are still tight, good looking (I polish em every 6 weeks or so), bridge got a bit blue over the years, but still shiny. The finish, as said, is ROCK stable. No scratches yet, as it turns out it looses its metallic-finished character and gets more glossy which is better than getting scratchy and dull.
This bass withstood abuse BIG time, one time I poured a pint of water over my head, the Ibanez got a mouthful too! I quickly dried it with my shirt and it was no problem.

The only bad point goes to the strap buttons: The one on the upper horn will get loose in less than 12 playing hours. After a year, the screw broke INSIDE the wood, so I had to put the button on back of the bass (explorer-like, not on the neck, but on the upper horn). This is clearly because the wood is not hard enough.

I gigged a lot with this bass without a backup and would do it again. One time the low B string BROKE near the bridge saddle while playing the second song of our set. This sucked, because I didn't have a backup bass and no fitting string with me (I had a full 4-string backup set with me, ironically). As you might think I didn't go out without a backup anymore, but --- irony part two: my backup bass was stolen shortly after that. Since then, I use it without backup, and I'm cool with that. I have a battery, a screwdriver and a full set of strings in the gig bag, and I never ever had problem anymore.

I give this a 9 because of the soft body wood which will cause problems sooner or later. Everything else is as solid as on my other very reliable basses.

I didn't ever call them.

I've been playing around 10 years, guitar and bass, now mostly bass, I play every style you can imagine from rock to techno to hiphop and jazz. I own a Spector NS4-Europe with EMG's, a Peavey Zodiac Dave Ellefson with Seymour Duncans and a Peavey Cirrus BXP 4 which is about to be sold.

I wished it had more solid body.

Why did I choose this bass? The sound of the neck is just great.. everything fits my hands very well (neck radius, string spacing), the blend pot is working and offering some interesting sounds.

I love the weight and playability of it. I hate the pickups. But I kept playing gigs with 'em nearly 18 months, so.. :)

If it would be stolen I would not buy the same one again because I dont play slap that much anymore, I would look for something with better pickups installed. Anyway, the cost/performance ratio on this sound is AMAZING.