Yamaha TRB5 Electric Bass

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Introducing the Yamaha TRB5II.

Two words describe this guitar. HOLY PANTS. This guitar is what jazz is all about. Sporting the hefty yet relatively peanuts £869 RRP price tag, this guitar is THE best bass guitar I have EVER gotten my little mittens on.

Enough laying down the absolute praise, let's get down to business.

I bought this guitar for about £850 from my local guitar shop. It came ...
...a thru-neck design, with dual Yamaha humbucker pickups to really blast past the rest of the band if need be, giving you more growl and less noise. The guitar has an amazing 6 knobs!! Now, I have never been one to know what all these knobs do, so I am going to say that there is a volume control, a tone control and "the 4 other ones", which control the mix. You can really experiment with these controls, and the black studio-style knobs supplied ... more

Thank you for reading this review. If you are a serious bass player with a little spare cash to spend, please read this review carefully, because I can almost guarantee you that you will never play another guitar quite like this one.

Introducing the Yamaha TRB5II.

Two words describe this guitar. HOLY PANTS. This guitar is what jazz is all about. Sporting the hefty yet relatively peanuts £869 RRP price tag, this guitar is THE best bass guitar I have EVER gotten my little mittens on.

Enough laying down the absolute praise, let's get down to business.

I bought this guitar for about £850 from my local guitar shop. It came with all the usual Yamaha stuff, including warrantee and a cable. Let me just say one thing - after trying it for 5 minutes under the impression that it cost £1,350 (wrong price tag), I was ready to buy it on the spot. And no, I am not rich, I work in a music shop pulling £6.50 per hour and I simply love my bass playing. I barely had that amount in my account and I fell in love the with bass within 5 minutes of trying it. Imagine the wonderful feeling I got when the manager told me it was £849!

I will start with the disadvantages of this bass. First, it is quite heavy. I see this as an advantage (adds a lot of quality to the guitar in my opinion) but I just have the feeling that some people may not be able to handle this bass. However, the bass player is usually the biggest member of any band, so dudes, be a man and battle this baby on stage! Secondly, the finish on this guitar is a mirror image, with no exaggeration. You could pluck your eyebrows facing this thing. So if you drop it - god forbid - you are going to hate yourself for it.

Right! That out of the way, let's get down to business with why this is the best 5 string money can buy. First of all there is the price. At £869 it's hardly a bag of crisps but compared to other basses on the market it is severely underpriced. The nearest bass I have found which comes close to the quality of this bass is the MusicMan Stingray 5 which, cashing in at £1,525, is nearly twice the price of the TRB. This guitar is perfection for the jazz or funk rock bassist who has built himself up for the ultimate purchase.

The guitar has 24 frets and a thru-neck design, with dual Yamaha humbucker pickups to really blast past the rest of the band if need be, giving you more growl and less noise. The guitar has an amazing 6 knobs!! Now, I have never been one to know what all these knobs do, so I am going to say that there is a volume control, a tone control and "the 4 other ones", which control the mix. You can really experiment with these controls, and the black studio-style knobs supplied make the guitar look the part and represent what it really is - no-nonsense recording and performance machine.

There are 3 finishes available, I believe. They are Maple, Bujbinga, or Ovankol top. I have no idea what the last 2 mean, which is why I chose the maple finish. It is a flamed veneer in an amber stain, with dual laminates running the length of the guitar, making it look gorgeous. All hardware is gold and utter quality.

The sound produced by this guitar is one of the warmest, most colourful sounds I have ever heard. The guitar is expensive and it really holds up its weight in the performance department. The neck is low action and the contours of this guitar are absolutely supreme.

Make no mistake about it, this guitar is expensive and is among the most Elite ranks of bass guitars available. It was not designed for beginners and any beginner who buys this guitar, in my opinion, has too much money and needs to pay his or her dues on a slightly less Elitist guitar (see my review on the RBX 460 if you are itching to spend your hoards of money on your first bass). This guitar was made for experts and, in my opinion, may be too much to handle for an inexperienced player.

At the end of the day, it's all about people saying "DUDE! Look at that guy's bass!", and this guitar is the best on the market for that. But you get it in a studio or concert hall, and this guitar not only surpasses the quality and performance of basses twice its price, it smashes past the common suggestion that the best basses are ugly. Yamaha has always been the best bass company in my eyes, and with this guitar as their flagship model, I expect them to be a huge success in the future.  

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