bassoutcast

One guitar to rule them all. I've had my mustang since new, bought it in 2012. It did grunge, metal and rock, and lived exclusively on the beefy bridge humbucker. When I moved to playing pop, blues and indie, the soft neck pickup provided a wonderful companion, and produced a spectacular clean tone, no "twang" or "chime" like on other Fender guitars. My personal guitar has a few upgrades - jumbo frets as opposed to the stock vintage frets, which helps with sustain. The volume and tone knobs were changed to a 72' Tele style for comfort, and I've painted it in the desert sand finish that one would find on old Duo Sonics, with a black pickguard. If you can only have one guitar, I highly suggest this one. Short scale guitars have a unique quirkiness to them, it's a love-it or hate-it thing.

For the money, it's not half bad. It's loud enough to be a good practice amp, be it alone in the bedroom or with a band. The clean channel is great. The distortion is alright when the volume is low, but once you crank it halfway up, it gets muddy. The amp does handle pedals fine, so if you are gonna use it in a band or small gigs, i highly suggest getting an overdrive/distortion pedal and running it on the clean channel.

I've had this bass for over a decade now. It really does anything, any music genre you want it to do. The pickups are great, especially when they're both on, and create a very punchy rock/funk/metal tone, and the active boost takes it to 11. The neck is slim and very fast. The bass itself is very lightweight, comfortable for long playing, be it sitting down or standing up. I've had no issues playing 2-3 hours on it standing up, you can hardly feel it's weight. I haven't found a more balanced bass guitar. I even sold my 62 reissue fender jazz bass because I was playing the ibanez 95% of the time. If you can only have one bass, and you're on a budget - look no further!