Steinberger XZ-5 5-String Fretless

Steinberger 5 string fretless. Standard 34 inch scale length. This bass is made of Ash with a honeyburst finish(the only finish option for these fretless basses). It has a four piece ash body. Four piece seems to be kind of odd for a guitar body and I am sure that it was done this way to lower costs. Anyone looking for electric guitar wood will know that the more pieces of the main tone wood that are glued, the cheaper the cost. Most guitars are two piece glued. The bass has two EMG passive pickups that are pretty quite for the most part so shielding seems to OK. It has the conventional jazz bass controls of two volume and one tone control. All pots are the 500k Ohm type. Of course the steinberger has the classic headless design with the turners at the bridge. The body style is the more conventional style and not the 'boat-oar' type but still realitivly small bodied. The necks on this body style are maple bolt-on. I would like to see more wood laminates for the neck. It looks like only a one piece neck laminate. (I guess they used up all the glue and extra wood on the 4 piece body.) The fingerboard is said to be 'rosewood'. Rosewood can kind of be a generic word for several dark colored woods so I don't know what type of rosewood it would be. If it is a true rosewood then I don't know if that is a great wood to use as a fretless fingerboard as rosewood is generally soft and can ware against roundwound strings. We'll see. The fingerboard is really dark (almost ebony dark) so I am almost guessing that it was uniformly stained this color which is a common pratice. The bass also came with a gig bag that is just alright nothing great. I also bought the string adapter so I would not have to hunt down double ball end strings.

Well, no one bass can fit every style you want to play, especially the difference between fretted and fretless. I already have fretted and a fretless four strings. Both of these basses are killer. Fretless is for the more jazzy, more melodic styles. However, I had case of 'string envy' and longed for extended low notes. The tone of this bass is good. The EMG HB pickups have a dark sound that at times can be kind of muddy in a live situation. Soloed, this bass has a very pleasing tone across the board. For a 34 in scale bass, I think the B sting feels fairly tight and doesn't feel as flabby as some that I have tried but when amplified the B string is a little thin sounding.

The bass with setup strangly. The bridge intonation was set almost all the way forward. More on this problem later.

The honeyburst finish is nice however some of the finish had rubbed onto the natural maple neck at the neck joint. Speaking of neck joint, the neck joint seems to be pretty good. It is held in place by four counter-sunk screws with a counter-sink washer on each. No threaded screw insert are anywhere to be found on this bass. The pickups are held in place in the wood by four very short screws. With no threaded screw inserts, this could be a problem later on. The same is true of the control cavity.

I was more impressed with the looks of this bass than I thought I would be.

I guess this would be the section to tell you of my major compliants about this bass in the reliability department. Durability seems to be very good with the neck joint, tuners, and input jack, etc.

First of all I want to say that having bought the string adapter because I didn't want to have to hunt for special strings and also wanted the option to try different guages. The B string hole on the adapter was too small to place the big-hoggin' D'Addario B string through the hole. I had to ream it out and make it larger with my power drill. (Shouldn't have to do these sort of things, people.) The string adapter is a little weird anyway because it doesn't actually attach to the bass when you use it and make me wonder if it could ever be knocked off if you accedentally hit something real hard. That would mean that you would lose ALL your strings, AHHH!!! Better have a backup bass or be very careful.

My biggest compliant about this bass is the intonation and placement of the side marker dot inlays. I have been playing fretless for a long time and feel that I have pretty good sense of intonation. All the notes are there and in tune on a fretless bass, you just have to know where to find them. Anyone who plays fretless knows that 1.) if your bass is a de-fretted bass(like Jaco), then you play a given note with your finger on the back side of where the fret was, or 2.) if you are playing a normally fretless bass, the side dot markers are moved up to the fret position and you play the note just behind the side dots. On a normal 34 inch scale bass, the first fret from the nut is just about at the 2 inch mark and so the first side dot should go there on a fretless bass. However on this bass, the first side dot is at about an 1 3/4's inch from the nut (actually this bass has no nut) which means that in order to play in tune you have to play in front of the side dot markers. This is consistant all the way up the fingerboard. This just messes me the heck up especially in the note space between two dots where there is no dot. I figured that they just made the fretless necks on the same machine that they do the fretted necks. I did a little investigating on a fret position calculator found on the internet and found that if the first side dot from the nut was to go at the 1 3/4 inch position that the bass would be scaled at around a 32 inch scale length. This would be no good, because if you some how modified the bass to 32 inch scale then there is no possible way you could ever (even if you wanted to) use the double ball string as they would be too long. I think I am going to look into getting the neck re-inlayed at the correct positions. As said before this bass doesn't have a true nut but instead the strings lay on the fingerboard at the nut position. This may be a problem especially if the fingerboard is a soft rosewood. The string may ground out too soon causing your scale length to be even shorter. And, I think that all this is why my bridge intonation was set from the factory so close to the end of the bridge.

Again, all the notes are there, you just have to know where to find them. Because of this intonation/finger position problem, I can not in good conscience recommend this bass for fretless newbees!

So why did I buy this little cheap bass when may fretless four string royally kicks it's butt? I will tell you below.

Music Yo has been good about email and their web site has serveral good tips on how to do things. I don't really know about their CS.

I have been playing bass for about 15 years, give or take. Again, because of this intonation/finger position problem, I can not recommend this bass for new students of the fretless bass. Check out the fretted. The price is great! The look and finish were better than I expected and also the sound of the passive pickups were a whole lot better than I expected. I have kind developed the mind set over the years of playing that passive means noise. I am begining to change that conviction somewhat.

Here is a little trick to save some money: if you are buying from Music Yo from the Nasville TN area don't pay for any fancy shipping. From what I have heard, Gibson sets up the guitars here in town and chances are that it will be delivered to you in a day or two anyway.

Now the real reason that I bought this bass: I have very good four string basses: Spector NS2 fretted with EMG's, Ibenz Musician Fretless with Barolini's, and an old Fender Jazz bass. I wanted a B string in my arsenal. I have always liked small body basses. I also wanted a project bass. For it's great price, I feel I can totally 'hotrod' this bass quite alot and not feel like I am out of much if I totally mess it up. We're talking active electronics, epoxy fretboard finish, and maybe a totally new exotic wood body design. Maybe someday this bass could be in the same sonic league as my others.

I got get that intonation thing fixed first...