Yamaha TRB-6 John Patitucci Signature Bass

Made in Japan. 26 fret, Ebony fretboard, sandwiched alder, maple,and ash body. Active electronics-9vt. Stacked Coil humcanceling jazz style pickups. Two trussrods, brass bridge, gold plated hardware with pearl and gold tuners. Vol, Bal, Bass, Mid, Treb, controls.
35 inch scale six string.

The last poster must be out of his mind! This bass is pure playing perfection! The sound is very hi-Fi, clear, and powerful.
The pickups are jazzy sounding. Uhh, what type of music does John Patitucci play? How could anyone knock these pups. They are better than the ones on the 1006 models and those are damn good!

Again, perfect! Minimal adjustments needed. Two trussrods ensure better stability than one! Again the last poster is nuts!

This bass is built like a tank and very beautifully at that!
The ebony fretboard and finish work on the body are elegant.
The pearl and gold tuners are accurate and add a nice touch.
Gold plated brass bridge adds to looks and tone.
Iv'e played this baby once and I dream of owning it one day.
Yes I love my TRB 1006, but this is the Flagship!

Yamaha is very quick to help you!

The last poster must be a spoiled rich kid or a millionare or something to down a bass of this caliber! I know players that drool at this instrument, even guitar players! It would take me two years to save up for this bass and dagnabbit im gonna do it!
How could you not appreciate this beatiful bass?
To the last poster, GO SCRATCH!
This is one of the best basses you can own!
If it's good enough for John, it's good enough for me and thousands of others!

This is a bit of a yarn as much as a review, but I hope someone finds it entertaining or uesful.
I have two Yamaha 6-sring basses. After buying a TRB-6P, I decided to remove the frets and see what happened. It made an excellent fretless bass, partly by virtue of the neck-through-body design and also by the rather lifeless Yamaha "soap-bar" pickups. Mixing the dull magnetics carefully with the piezzos gave it a lovely, textured sound with great sustain and few, if any, flat-spots.
Next I spotted a JP signature. This, maybe like the instrument one of the other reviewers described as it sported some "custom" stickers on the "Made In Japan" machine head covers, suggesting it was somehow at least partially interfered with in California. According to the salesperson (who after all could have glorified it's origin), said that the guitars are ALL made in Japan, and the stickers just meant that the importers of record at the time in CA had simply spot-checked a few of them. This is all hearsay of course.
Anyway, Fascinated by the bolt-on neck design as opposed to the neck-through of the TRB-6P, and dismayed at the sight of the old sopa-bars, I got the pickups replaced with Bartolini bars (no structural mods. required) and accompanying electronics. What a difference! I play it through an Ampeg SVT4-PRO with twin PR410-HLFs and it has been a fantastic experience.
By the way, I don't know how anyone can play this size and weight of instrument without getting it regularly set-up and maintained by an expert. After a few gigs, even after re-stringing I would not care to mess with the dual truss-rods, and in my opinion the electronics and other internals should be checked out from time to time by someone who does it all the time. Just my humble opinion.
I rate it a "6" because I paid a lot of money to make it a "10"!

Sounds great with Bartolinis.

Action fit and finish great.

Has lasted 8 years including regular but not intense gigging... I would just recommend professional check-ups.

Never needed it.

Very good bass is now top-shelf.

Yamaha JP signature six string bass
24 frets
Transparent Amber finish on flamed maple
Maple/Ash/Alder body
3pc maple neck Ebony fretboard
Active pickups with 3 Eq presets
34" scale

Sounds excellent very clean round sound. Leans a little on the brighter side with the maple and ebony. Articulate might be a better word. Soloing is very defined no muddiness top to bottom. Can cover every style. Although I probably wouldn't go play a metal show with it. But in a studio you can get metal from it. It's to heavy to head bang with. I don't have the hissing problem with mine refered to by the first submission. I play mine through a Hartke head and 4.5XL cab. I used to have a Hartke 2X15 cab underneath. Talk about pumping out the BASS. The active EQ on this thing is awesome very powerful. I have played mine live and in the studio works great in both situations. only downside is after live show you will need a back adjustment.
I just recently purchased a digitech GNX4 and the JP sounds great through it.

I too bought mine after it hung in the music store for awhile. But the action and finish were perfect. Very low action with no buzzing. Intonation was prefect. The maple top, back and headstock are very nice. No blemishes.

The bass is a monster and made to last. I've had mine for 8 years. The only thing that has needed to be replaced is the input jack do to alot of use. And that's a minot issue. The gold finish has not worn at all anywhere on the bass. Even with my sweaty palms. No scratchy volume/selector nothing. The battery lasts for ever in this thing also. Have played live for years no problems with anything except jack. Love it.

Never had to deal with them. Haven't had a problem to call about.

Overall it is an awesome bass. Love having it. Love it more when I play sitting down, but still love it. Mammoth neck but does get smaller with familiarity. This is not a bass for the faint at heart it will make a man out of you. I would buy it again in a heart beat but would hope they made a lighter version by now.

This particular TRB-6 Patitucci Signature bass must be one of the first production models, as the tiny golden stickers on the back of the headstock state that it was made at the Yamaha Custom Shop in Hollywood California. This is really possible, as I had been seeing it hanging on the walls of a local dealer for many years without ever been touched, so it is not a new production instrument. You know, six strings basses are not appealling to everybody, and besides that this is a particularly expensive example, so it is a logicall thing for it to be waiting for so long for the right victim!!!
I still don't know which is the year of manufacturing because I haven't found the right contact at the Hollywood custom shop office. The links you can get are sort of evassive about the custom shop, as if they don't want contact with common customers, just with artists. If this is the case, I may have been very lucky with my JP bass, because this is an american Patitucci Yamaha, not a japanese one! Anyway, I've seen a beautiful example on auction at ebay and I own a japanese Yamaha Martin Taylor, and only have praises for its build quality and sound.
This beautiful monster came in a deluxe black hardshell case, also made in the USA. The enclosed literature is poorly generic about any Yamaha bass, so it has no use at all with this particular instrument.
The Patitucci is a 34 inch scale 6 strings bass with a body consisting of a sandwich configuration of ash and alder topped on the front and back with beautiful AAA grade flamed maple. Mine is expertly painted in charcoal gray and comes with a matching headstock, which will prevent me to repaint it in natural (I'd love to see more of the great maple top it has underneath this dark color).
The neck, in this particular example, is composed by 3 piece lightly flamed maple, and topped with a one piece wide ebony fretboard, adorned with a luthiery grade inlaying work using authentic mother of pearl in some sort of moon or C forms. It has 24 very tidy crowned frets, and is reinforced with not one but two nuts that you can regulate at the body joint. This fingerboard has the normal string separation, so it is very wide, giving the bass an intimidating look at first. Anyway, when you put your hands on it it is so comfortable that you forget about it. Mine stands for a very low action without buzzing at all, it's feel is incredible, and the slap cut near the lower bout of the body seems to work out fine for the right hand.
The bass is active (so you have to run on 9v batteries) and it comes with two custom Yamaha single coils pickups. The control layout looks complex at first, but it's got everything you should ever need to get any sound out of this machine. A master volume, a blend control, bass and treble pots (both for cut or boost) and the tricky middle control, wich has 3 presetable positions that you can customize with some very tiny sliders inside the backplate. It is great to instantly call a mid cut (great for slapping) and a mid boost (perfect for jazz soloing). The 1st. position is, obviously, the normal sound.
The hardware is gold, feels very solid, and works perfect for preserving the bass tuned.
A very clever item on this bass is the position of the input jack, which goes at the side of the body but in the right direction for you to engage the cable with your strap. It is difficult to find if you are in a hurry, but once you are plucked, nothing can put it off. Very good, I like it.

This bass is not only for playing fusion or jazz. You can call any sound you want, from funky to growling, and feels very at home in any style. I love its sound, feels very solid. I'm not using lots of effects with it, just a Carl Martin compressor with my Trace Elliot 350 watts head and 2 cabinets. Monster setup!!!
The only downside in the sound departmente is noise, hi end hiss. I don't know if other active basses hiss so much, but I feel an important difference between my silent passive Roscoe Beck Fender and this one. A pitty. Otherwise it is perfect! So it will receive a 9.
I haven't used it onstage yet, but I suspect that my back will ache a lot. Anyway, what can you expect with a six string bass???
The presetting capability in the middle frequency dept. is very handy. I love it. It is a headache to preset it, but once you have them the way it suits you, it is a very handy item to have, probably one of the facts that made me buy the damn thing, apart from the feel of the neck, the looks, the sixth string in C (much easier and friendlier than I thought scalewise!!!) and the sound in general.

I'll give it a 10 in this dept. Besides the awkwardness of the six string karma, it is a joy to play. The setup was perfect, I didn't touch it at all!! Just changed the strings for a new set and everything came to life as expected (the factory strings were completely dead!!
The finish is flawless, no complaints, but I'm not sure how much the gold plating will last...
Is it heavy? of course it IS heavy, very heavy. I haven't found any flaw to comment.

This bass feels very dependable, everything looks solid and durable. It is a very profesional piece of luthiery. Smells custom shop!! And it is!!! I would gig it without a backup.

Hmmmmm...I cannot say much about this, but it's been quite difficult to contact the Hollywood custom shop. Quite a headache. Besides, there is not much info about this bass on the web. People at Yamaha didn't help much through mail...I'd rather depend on some friendly local luthier if I ever come to need help on the instrument. Anyway, it looks really trusty. Reminds me of Alembic in terms of quality. The finish is beautiful, and the flame maple looks gorgeous, though if I could choose, I'd love to have a natural color to enjoy more of the flame on the top and back. Very good wood work. The lacker finish is solid. Mine had a couple of dents here and there, but it's to the shop misstreat through many years hanging on the wall. I'll have to live with it!!

I think that this may be the best six string you can buy for its price. If you start considering an eventual reselling price, I cannot say whether the Yamaha logo will help or not, but if you are investing to play the damn thing, you will certainly be very happy with it.
Compared to my Fender 5 string Roscoe Beck sunburst, it feels quite different, not just for the additional string. Trying to be helpful, I'd say that the Fender feels more like an old school Jazz Bass (both in sound and feel) and the Yamaha feels easier to play and more hi tech in overall terms. Got it? The Fender also has the normal string separation, but the neck feels more heavy, like you have to punish it a lit bit more to get what you want. Both basses are great, but if you consider the Yamaha's downside of having an extra string, it wins hands down in the playing comfort department.
The presetable middle control is great for live playing: you touch it and you are instantly on slapaton heaven. Great for me, since I hate to mess with ecualizers and to do the tap show with pedals live.
This bass is a great piece of work and feels like it had a lot of work at the design table with mister Patitucci. Congratulations at Yamaha for the design, but PLEASE!!!, solve the hiss problem in the circuit...