Product: Johnson JAB-100E
Price Paid: EUR 100 USED
Submitted
05/21/2009
at
08:13am
by
Noah
Features
:
7
Made in Korea, presumably between 2000 and 2006.
Long scale, 22 frets, mahogany neck with bound rosewood fingeboard and rosewood veneer on headstock, laminated mahogany (or nato?) body with laminated spruce top, rosewood bridge with rosewood pins. No cutaway. Quite nifty looking with multiple bindings and nice rosette. El cheapo plastic nut and saddle. Unbranded sealed tuners.
Belcat 7545 piezo PU and preamp with volume, treble, middle, bass and presence controls plus a battery check button. 9v battery accessible throug extra lid in preamp housing. Came with sloppily mounted bronze strings, no idea if they were original but I tend to think so as previous owner stated hie did'nt play the bass much.
Sound
:
8
Original strings were crap. Lacked volume and definition epecially, but not limited to, the E string. Put D'Addarion Half rounds on it and it made a heck of a difference. Now acoustic sound is very nice and balanced on all strings and over the whole fingerboard and reasonably loud. Also has a nice brigt edge to it. I intended to try flatwounds on this one and might still do, but for now I'm fine. I'm also thinking about a decent saddle and nut.
As this is a laminated acoustic bass guitar with a not-too big body there still is a small amount of boxiness to the tone, but all in all it's pleasant.
I use this bass for small living room jams, a lot of the time acoustically and it holds it's own against one ore two fingerpicked guitars. To compete with heavy strumming you need an amp.
Electric tone is quite true to the acoustic tone and can be customized widely with the built-in EQ.
Didn't play loud enough to experience feedback problems yet. Given that this is an all laminated construction I'd expect relatively few problems here.
Rating is for decent strings, with those factory strings it' a 4 or 5.
Action, Fit, & Finish
:
6
Don't know if I got the factory setup (see above), but out of the box the neck was dead straight, too straight for my taste. I loosened the truss rud 1/4 turn and had to re-tighten it 3/4 turns when I put the halfrounds on. Action could be lowered a hair without buzzing, I suspect, but I didn't bother. Plays great. Of course, as with most acoustic basses, you have no PU as a thumb rest and have to work around that.
Finish was generally ok (satin finish on neck and body, with the exception of two rough spots on the back of the neck (fingerprints in fresh paint?) that I got rid of with grit 600 sandpaper. As stated above, from a distance this bass looks very nice, close up you do notice that it's a budget instrument.
Reliability/Durability
:
8
Don't know why this bass shouldn't last. Woodwork is fine, electronics work, so if you care to bring a replacement battery just in case you should be OK.
Tuners hold tuning well despite being nameless (then again, I almost never had problems with unstable tuning even on cheap instruments, must be lucky.)
Customer Support
:
No Opinion
Never tried, never will, don't expect anything.
Overall Rating
:
7
I play guitar on ans off for 25 years and bass seriously for about two. Lots of styles around blues / rock / folk / alt country stuff. For what I need, this bass works surprisingly well. If I lost it I'd hunt for a similar opportunity.
I like the fact there is no cutaway (somehow I rarely like the looks of cutaway guitars), but I hate the cheapo nut and saddle (but that's an easy fix).
My rating is implying you buy it new. For the price I got it for it's a 9.
