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Squier Paranormal Rascal Bass HH SWG

7

Electric Bass Guitar

  • Paranormal Series
  • Body: Poplar
  • Bolt-on neck: Maple
  • Fingerboard: Laurel
  • Offset Pearloid dots fingerboard inlays
  • Neck profile: C
  • Scale: 762 mm (30")
  • Fretboard radius: 241 mm (9.5")
  • Nut width: 38 mm (1.5")
  • Synthetic bone nut
  • 21 Narrow tall frets
  • Pickups: 2 Fender-designed Wide-Range bass humbuckers
  • 1 Master volume and 1 master tone control
  • 3-Way toggle switch
  • Three-ply Mint Green pickguard
  • 4-Saddle Mustang bridge with string guide through the body
  • Vintage-style tuners
  • Chrome hardware
  • Colour: Sherwood Green
Available since June 2023
Item number 568089
Sales Unit 1 piece(s)
Colour Green
Body Poplar
Neck Maple
Fretboard Laurel
Frets 21
Pickup System HH
Elektronic Passive
Incl. Case No
Incl. Gigbag No
444 €
Free shipping incl. VAT
In stock
In stock

This product is in stock and can be shipped immediately.

Standard Delivery Times
Dispatch expected by Friday, 13.12.
1

7 Customer ratings

4.4 / 5

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7 Reviews

T
I had expected more in this price range
TERD 10.06.2024
After reading lots of great reviews I decided to give this VERY cool looking bass a chance.

Out of the box it looked amazing! The finish was flawless, the fretboard looked great (if a little dry) and the combination of Sherwood Green with a mint pickguard looked really cool. On closer inspection the pickguard had a couple of minor flaws along the edge but apart from that it looked great. The neck pocket was really tight.

Then I started playing it, and even unplugged I realized something was wrong. The notes sounded weirdly disharmonic and kinda "thuddy". The intonation turned out to be WAY off. The saddles had to be moved almost 1 cm back. That's absolutely shocking! This should never have passed inspection, it was utterly useless out of the box.

It didn't exactly help that this type of bridge installed so far away from the edge of the body made it impossible to adjust the intonation with a normal screwdriver. I had to use a small, thin electrical screwdriver. With such a small screwdriver I had to be EXTREMELY careful not to strip the screw heads. Very poor design!

After roughly sorting out the intonation it was time to look at the rest of the setup.

The relief was almost spot on, I just had to loosen the truss rod a tiny bit. This is to be expected after transporting a bass from China.

The action was far too high though, mainly because the saddles were too high, but also because some of the nut slots were too high. The nut slot for the G-string was WAY too high. I lowered the saddles, filed the nut slots and made the final adjustments to the intonation.

The included hex wrench for the saddles was very poor quality and couldn't be used. It looked like it was actually the right size, but it wouldn't grab the saddle screws. When using a different 1.5 mm hex wrench everything worked fine. I guess the included hex wrench was just very poor quality.

After lowering the action to what I would call a "medium" setup, the bass played nicely. When I tried to adjust the action slightly lower, to my preferred setup, I got fret buzz due to a slightly high fret at the 11 fret. I guess the fretwork was "ok" but it can clearly benefit from leveling+crowning the frets, which I will definitely need to do when I find the time.

The fret ends were nice though, no complaints there.

The stock strings sounded surprisingly poor. I generally like Fender nickel plated steel roundwounds, but for some reason these ones didn't sound right. I decided to install Roto 66s instead. This also gave me a chance to oil the fretboard, which looks absolutely stunning now, every bit as beautiful as rosewood.

When removing the stock strings, three of the string ferrules fell out of the bass. Not very impressive.

With the strings removed it was also time to remove the protective plastic from the pickguard. This means loosening the pickup selector switch, jack socket and knobs/pots. The hex wrench size needed to loosen the knobs was not included.

After changing to Rotos the setup had to be tweaked slightly of course. The bass feels much better now, but it still has a kinda "cheap" feel to it. The unplugged tone is very poor. It's kinda dull and "hollow" sounding, with very poor sustain. There are very pronounced dead spots and generally a rather uneven response along the neck. But of course, an electric bass should be judged by it's electric tone.

Things sounded much better with the bass plugged in, although the sustain was still rather poor, and the attack of the notes came across as a bit "thuddy". It almost felt slightly muted. After testing the bass both through an amp and recording a couple of clips (straight to DI) I felt slightly underwhelmed. I'm not a huge fan of blending pickups or bridge pickups in general so for me it was all about the tone of the neck pickup. The neck pickup was a bit on the dark side for my taste. It can certainly provide a great rock tone when playing with a pick, but when playing fingerstyle I found it slightly too dark/muffled sounding and lacking articulation. It wasn't horrible, but I don't think I will be using this bass much for fingerstyle. I have yet to try it in a dense mix, or with a full band, but from what I've heard so far I have a feeling it won't "sit" in the mix the way I want it to when playing fingerstyle.

The tuners weren't the best either. It was difficult to tune the E-string precisely.

On the positive side I absolutely love the neck profile. It's very comfortable, but this will of course depend on personal taste.

Overall I have to say I'm slightly disappointed. It's not a bad instrument, but there are far better basses to be found in this price range, and the factory setup was laughable. It's a shame that big online dealer like Thomann just ship out the boxes without inspecting the instruments and giving them a decent setup. I hope this bass will grow on me now that I've sorted out most of the flaws.

To sum it up: Fenders and Squiers tend to be a bit overpriced in my opinion, and this model is no exception. If the factory setup hadn't been so abysmal I guess I would have felt better about it. To be fair, it DID get considerably better after a proper setup and a fresh set of strings, but many bass players don't have the skills to file the nut slots or level the frets. Out of the box it was a total mess.

It looks amazing though!
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A
Satisfied.
Avamua 04.06.2024
Sound:
Bridge pickup is quite punchy and doesn't lose lots of low end. Neck pickup is dark but not muddy. "Woolly" is good adjective to describe it. Overall sound is somewhat "vintage" i guess. It takes fuzz and overdrive well. Probably not best sound for slap though.

Ergonomics:
It's big (about as big as jazz bass i think) and somewhat heavy, especially for a short scale. Sitting down it has neck dive but body shape is comfortable. With a strap it was balanced better and i didn't experience neck dive. For me neck is comfortable and short scale makes it easy to play.

Quality:
Build quality is decent. Electronics work. It holds tuning well. Nut was carved OK (not best ever but decent enough). There was small imperfection on finish and small finish crack in neck pocket (only on one side, about 3-4 mm long). It's not noticeable so it doesn't bother me too much and overall finish looks really nice.

It needed some setup, mainly intonation and string height. Neck was setup decently. One pickup was bit louder so i lowered it...

In conclusion i'm happy with it. It's affordable unique looking bass with unique sound. If you like it, get one.
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S
Paranormal ? - auf jeden Fall Phänomenal was den Sound angeht...
Saxobeat 10.06.2024
Diesen Shortscale-Bass habe ich jetzt schon mehrfach in verschiedenen Besetzungen gespielt und finde, dass man den Klang immer so anpassen kann, wie man ihn haben will. Bei mir ist das ein gut hör- bzw. spürbarer Basston, der nicht zu aufdringlich oder dominant ist. Zudem gibt der der Bass durch die Humbucker keine (Stör)geräusche von sich und die Humbucker sind keine "Mudbucker". Nach dem Auspacken musste ich erst die Saitenlage und Intonation einstellen. Ansonsten ist die Verarbeitung für diese Preisklasse tadellos.
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T
Decent vintage-ish short scale
Tomekoid 01.07.2024
Worth the price; but it's not spectacular.
Finish is fine, i haven't noticed any bigger flaws in this regard; pickguard has few rough edges that could be polished and i needed to tighten vol/tone knobs a bit after some time. Sherwood green truly looks amazing.

Soundwise it nails this vintage vibe, both humbuckers sound great. From punchy bridge, to mellow neck tones. Potential buyer should be aware that there is quite significant difference of output between neck and bridge position.

Out of the box setup wasn't great, but after setting saddle height and neck tension i managed to set string action on nice low level.
Neck/bridge placement is correct, no issues with strings being closer to upper or lower edge of fretboard (issue that i had with some other guitars in this price range)

About the flaws:
- Electronics tend to crackle when pickguard is hit a bit harder - for me -when i'm trying to slap. This doesn't happen when playing with pick or fingers (even when digging deeper into strings), but its still bit irritating having to fix it yourself.
- Fretwork isn't perfect. After my initial setup string action was ok, but i wanted it to be even lower. I had to sand down a bit second fret as it was blocking sound from first fret - issue that ideally should've been solved by proper luthier.

Given the price range, said issues weren't big deal for me - i kinda expected having to set up stuff by myself, yet they can be irritating and should be pointed out.
Even with mentioned flaws im really happy with purchase and enjoy playing on this guitar.
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