I ordered this bass because I was looking for versatile, quality instrument that I could use in almost any situation.
Since the launch of this line I had heard that quality control issues were quite common, so I was prepared for this to be the case but was hoping I would get lucky.
Not so, unfortunately: I found that the mid sweep control, when set low, cuts the volume almost entirely. Thomann has said that this requires a replacement of the entire electronics, so they're arranging to have me sent a new preamp (a return and repair in-house would take 1-2 months).
Defects out of the way, my impressions of the instrument itself:
The look, feel, and weight are all excellent. No noticeable neck dive and even when sitting the small lower horn didn't pose any issues (although that might not be the case for all). Action and intonation out of the box were near perfect.
The bridge pickup, as you would expect, sounds like a Stingray, and you can get a nice variety of tones using the preamp settings (aforementioned issue aside). The pickups can also be run passively, which still gets you a surprisingly useful tone, if not as versatile.
The jazz pickup sounds good enough, if at a lower output than the humbucker.
The blend knob is a little useless, to be honest, though, and functions more like a 2-way switch, there's a noticeable "step" when the humbucker turns off and the jazz gets activated. Not the end of the world, they're not pickups that really need to mix with each other, but greater tone variety would have been nice.
One final note is that the plastic controls are very cheap feeling and the stacked knobs stick to each other (I ended up ordering items 339886 and 284069 to replace them).
So, in short. If the electronics had been working properly and the controls not been skimped on, I would happily give 4.5 to 5 stars for this price point.
