Ibanez Mikro Bass

[cynical1]

To preface this, I haven't bought a bass for myself since 1991. I have some mods to do on the current 34" scale bass, but that's another study in procrastination...

I had toyed with the idea of a short scale bass, but the EBO in any flavor is just a study in liquid mud. I did a little research and found good things about the Ibanez Mikro short scale bass.

I scored one of these for a ridiculously low price on eBay. I kind of felt sorry for the guy selling it. It looks pretty much like this:



And this is about the shortest scale I've seen on a bass. 28.5" That's only 3 " longer then a Strat... The description and e-mails with the seller made it sound clean, so I waited for it to arrive with the UPS man.

I know this is not the place to rave about "I just got it and it glows in the dark and walks the dog, too" type of reviews, but I have to admit to being very surprised when I plugged it in.

For a short scale bass, MSRP of $179.00, this thing is a steal. Not that it's perfect, but it had some interesting details to it.

The neck, while very short, is not wimpy. It's got some wood to it. The rosewood fingerboard is a nice piece of wood with clean fret markers on top and the side. The body is labeled mahogany, but under the black finish, which was pretty clean and level, who knows how many pieces.

The balance is also good on this bass. I doesn't want to dive either way.

The tuners are good enough to keep for a while.

The frets are pretty level with no sharp edges. They're medium frets, but you don't really notice it as an issue.

The nut was cut very well. I'm going to let it stabilize before I change out the strings and do a setup on it...gotta have my flatwounds...but the last guy who owned it did a pretty damn good setup on it.

The bridge is actually pretty sturdy. The saddles are beefy and the baseplate is much thicker then I expected. The adjusting screws are also heavier then I would have expected.

The P Bass pickup isn't bad. I might hang on to it for a while, but I have either a Bill Lawrence or Dimarzio to drop in.

The J Bass pickup was another story. It seemed a bit harsh for my tastes. I wasn't impressed. I probably need a bit more time with it, but I've got a Carvin or DiMarzio to drop in there to swap out the OEM one.

The pots are going to go, along with the knobs...which, in all honesty, are the cheapest friggin' knobs I've ever seen on an instrument.

If I find out new things, good or bad, over the next week or so I'll add to this post.

For right now this little bass has serious mod potential, and isn't bad at all out of the box.

Happy Trails

Cynical One

[andy]

the EBO in any flavor is just a study in liquid mud

Mmmm... Liquid Mud. An EBO with a set of tape-wounds would be fun. For a while.

Sounds like the Mikro Bass is going to be a good instrument by the time you're finished with it. I've found so far that Ibanez basses are generally very nicely set up, but for that price it may well have been as much the previous owner as the factory setup.

I have also found that cheap OEM P-pickups are often near acceptable, while J-pickups tend to sound really plasticky, and take the mid-range focus thing to a bit of an extreme! I wonder if it is a quirk of the two designs that a cheap P-pickup is wont to sound better sooner than a cheap J of the same quality?

[ashcatlt]

I looked at those when I was in the market. Honestly would have probably been happier with that than the 70s Korean whatever mongrel thing I ended up with. Aw, well once I refinish the thing and pot the pickups it's gonna be a unique little monster!

So how do you intend to string it? I've always found it interesting that short scale specific strings generally only come in the lighter gauge sets, when they really need to be heavier to get a decent tension on them. On mine I've actually got the lightest set I could find, but then it's tuned up to A-C.

[cynical1]

I've got a set of .110-.050 flatwound strings coming from Webstrings. I'll probably wind up cutting a third of the string off, but the prospect of spending $40.00 on bass strings no longer appeals to me.

I'll drop tune it, but until I get the strings on I don't know how far I'll be able to drop it. I'd like to get it to C#, but I'll settle for D if that's all I get without it flopping in the breeze.

I was toying with the idea of making a piccolo bass out of it, but that would require me to swap the nut out. I'm happy to re-cut it for the larger string gauge, but I'm not up for a wholesale nut replacement.

Plus, the neck is only 38mm at the nut, so a bit of work on a nut blank would be required.

Once I get everything swapped out I might do some sound samples. Just don't wait by the Sound Samples section for them to appear anytime soon...

HTC1

[4real]

Looks like a great little bass. Picolo sounds interesting, I always like some of what Foley used to do with lead bass with miles...no guitarist required!



And ibanez always seem to come up with some nice bass designs...nice find

[ashcatlt]

Uhhh...does the full diameter of the string fit in the tuning peg slot? I've seen a few short scales and even some full scale which wouldn't. That's how come bass strings are tapered down at the neck end. I spose if anybody knows what he's doing with this, it's c1, but we all have our days.

[reTrEaD]

I had toyed with the idea of a short scale bass, but the EBO in any flavor is just a study in liquid mud.

Tru dat. I think that's in large part because of the sidewinder pickup. It's a one-trick-pony and the trick isn't all that good. The EB-3 was a bit better, but still fairly unremarkable.

I did a little research and found good things about the Ibanez Mikro short scale bass.

The Mikro line is cheap. It's Ibanez's version of Squire. Decent quality and good bang for the buck. But some of the hardware leaves a bit to be desired.

I scored one of these for a ridiculously low price on eBay. I kind of felt sorry for the guy selling it.

Just out of curiosity, how many munnies?

[cynical1]

Jun 26, 2012 23:12:47 GMT -5 reTrEaD said:

I did a little research and found good things about the Ibanez Mikro short scale bass.

The Mikro line is cheap. It's Ibanez's version of Squire. Decent quality and good bang for the buck. But some of the hardware leaves a bit to be desired.

This appears to be true for the most part. The nut, bridge and fretwork was the one genuine surprise in the package. The tuners get a bad rap and based on Ash's point they may be one of the first links in that chain to be replaced. I have to doubt most of the "tuning stability" complaints posted about this bass, as it bounced its way from NY to WI for 4 days and was only out of tune by a cent on all four strings. I thought that was impressive for a bass in this price range.

My guess is the electronics are bottom tier, as almost all of the action takes place between 10 and 7, but they were always going to be going away from the beginning. And the knobs...man...I think the Hanna Montana guitar has better knobs...probably even the Guitar Hero guitar has better knobs...

I scored one of these for a ridiculously low price on eBay. I kind of felt sorry for the guy selling it.

Just out of curiosity, how many munnies?

$67.67 and $25.00 shipping. I looked at it carefully in the light yesterday and there isn't a nick or scratch on it. It could easily pass for new in any shop.

This is why ripping everything out and replacing it isn't an issue, and I'm not sweating the tuner\string gauge issue much. A little filament tape, a ball peen hammer and the anvil on the back of the vice will get me around it in the short term. I haven't measured the headstock to see if a set of old Schaller open tuners will fit yet, but there's not hurry at the moment to find a better set.

I found my old DiMarzio DP123 and I'm probably going to drop the very old Bill Lawrence P-Bass pickup in there as well. the DP123 is a stacked humbucker, so if there's room I may toss in a local series\parallel option on that one. I might need the cavity stretcher for that one...

I'm not sure of the bridge baseplate will handle GraphTech's Ghost saddles, so that may be leaving down the road. It's much heavier then I would have expected and holds the intonation and height adjustment just fine. There is a surprisingly good amount of sustain on this little bass as well.

More to come over the weekend...muahahahahaaaa...

Happy Trails

Cynical One

[sbgodofmetal]

My guess is the electronics are bottom tier,

The oem's on Low end models usually are, most likely korean or chinese. They sound ok but still leaves you wanting more out of them.

[cynical1]

OK, no pictures, sound samples or anything else, but I just gutted this bass and bumped it up a few notches.

I dropped an old (pre-split) Bill Lawrence P-Bass pickup and a Dimarzio Jazz DP123 bridge pickup with a local S\P switch in this bass. A Free Woman Tone switch, new pots and jack along with a set of heavy flatwounds on her.

Holy Crap, Batman, I'm in love! Punchy, growling and more sustain then I ever expected on a short scale bass. It's at standard tuning now, but after the strings stretch I may experiment with some drop tunings.

Give me a few days to post more info in a luthier posting, but I can say that this is an excellent platform to mod up to a respectable sounding bass on the cheap.

Happy Trails

Cynical One