Getting back to Bass-ics

Advantages: Good quality budget guitar
Disadvantages: none really

...I have been hankering for a Bass guitar to fiddle with as a project and when I earned a few extra quid for a private job I started to browse eBay for a likely candidate. I found a Yamaha RBX170 4 string bass on a pick up only deal in Ringwood, a place that I pass through regularly. This bass retails between £120 - £150, putting it in the higher end of the beginners' market. When I collected it, along with the 30 Watt amplifier which I got with it for a very reasonable £73, it was a bit grubby and looked as though it had been used for serving pizza. There were several torn and grubby stickers on it and I feared that I had bought a pup. I got it home and plugged it in. The first thing I noticed was the weight, for a full scale bass guitar it is very light, I can hold it out at arm's length with ease. The range of tones is...

JeffFromPoole 14.02.2009 · Read review
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Review of Yamaha RBX170 Bass Guitar

TRB5PII - Yamaha gives experts some excellence

Advantages: Warm, Beautiful, Impressive
Disadvantages: Afraid to drop it!

...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...

phatman5000 22.04.2004 (24.04.2004) · Read review
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Review of Yamaha TRB5 Electric Bass

My favourite bass yet...

Advantages: Well built, great sound, WONDERFUL for playing slap bass
Disadvantages: the 3 nobs may as well be 'on/off' switches

...sure what model they are but they are made by Yamaha. Unlike on many basses, there is a distinct difference in tone between the two pickups. Each pickup has a separate volume control nob - and the third nob is meant to be a tone control. There is a noticeable difference between '0' and '10' on each nob, but nothing noticeable in between - my only criticism on this bass. One of the most impressive things about the guitar is the tone of it when playing slap. It sounds absolutely amazingly good, and the ease of playing is great. Compared to other basses I have tried, such as many more highly-priced guitars such as Fenders, the Yamaha wins in virtually every aspect. Nicer feel, better-weighted, more comfortable to play, nicer tone (to my taste at least) etc. For a mid-priced bass guitar, I would most definitely reccomend this! If i had...

richardnorth 25.10.2003 · Read review
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Review of Yamaha BBN4 Electric Bass

Yamaha RBX 460 - mid-priced heaven!

Advantages: Excellent tone, attractive, inexpensive
Disadvantages: Customer support quite tedious

...I have been playing bass for approximately 8 years, and recently bought a Yamaha RBX 460 in a grain red as a rock bass. I expected it to be warm, colourful and high quality, and boy did Yamaha deliver! The RBX 460 is a guitar which will quite willingly be whatever you want it to be. It has the impact and shape to make it a serious rock bass, and has the style and sound quality to contend with the Jazz giants. Yamaha are a company who excel at excelling. It seems that anything they do, they do it well. The alder body is beautifully crafted and finished with a flamed maple veneer. The maple neck is of typical Yamaha quality. Its gold hardware makes it stylish and the guitar looks 3 times as expensive as it actually is. The RBX 460 has 24 frets, and a rosewood fretboard. The hardware lineup Includes passive P and J-style pickups...

phatman5000 21.04.2004 · Read review
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Review of Yamaha RBX460 Electric Bass

The Yamaha Blaster - The small contender

Advantages: Lightweight, powerful 200cc two-stroke motor, proven over time
Disadvantages: Wheel base and width cause instability in some situations.

...The Yamaha Blaster is a legend in its own right. It has been in production for many a year now and has sold in large numbers worldwide. Its success has mainly been down to the large spread of potential buyers that it caters for. Although its main target is the rookie rider, it has sufficient power to thrill most users while providing good value for money and great reliability. I have had my Blaster now for 7 years and had very few mechanical issues with her. Of course i have had to change tyres and top up fuel and oil levels when needed. I do as a matter of good maintenance, keep the chain and other moving parts oiled and greased, but this level of maintenance is expected on all such machines. I have recently rebuilt the top-end of my blaster engine and was very pleased to see that the condition of most of the internal waer parts was...

01ict587 16.12.2006 (01.09.2009) · Read review
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Review of Yamaha Blaster

Yamaha Stage Custom Drumkit

Advantages: GREAT DRUM KIT 4 OUTSTANDING PRICE!
Disadvantages: NONE?

...This Drum kit is amazing. If your a beginer or even really good this drum kit will suit you this kit is awsome if your looking for a reasonibly priced drum kit this is for you. I bought this kit about 2 years ago ive only made 3 adjustments like putting remo pinstripe skins on it and buying anew cymbal pack and buyong a mapex double bass pedal but thats what ive done this is a great kit and i would recomend this product to nearly anyone. The most affordable all-birch Yamaha drumset ever! An incredible value, the legendary tone of an all-birch Yamaha drumset is now available in the Stage Custom series. The low fundamental and warm tone of Yamaha's birch drums have been the top choice of drummers for over 30 years. The Stage Custom Birch series is great for the beginner or the working professional. The staggered diagonal seam allows us to...

ReviewDude12345 04.01.2009 · Read review
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Review of Yamaha Stage Custom Drumkit

It's a Double Bass daddio!

Advantages: They're beautiful.
Disadvantages: You'll cry if you have to sell it.

...It's difficult to buy a double bass in the simple way you might buy a good quality electric guitar or electric bass . For a guitar you can sort of decide if you're Fender, Gibson, Gretsch etc type of person by seeing what you're favourite players use on the telly and then trying them out in any good guitar store. But for the double bass we're in different territory all together and different rules apply. If you try out the bass in a store or room that is stuffed with other double basses or even other wooden acoustic instruments its going to resonate a little in each of those instruments and lead you into believing you have a lovely sounding bass when you probably haven't. Some spaces can make an unamplified double bass sound great. I like to play mine on the lower landing of my stairwell - always sounded beautiful there. If you...

padfoot100 17.10.2009 · Read review
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Review of Double Bass

The Double Bass. A very very big instrument!

Advantages: Great fun
Disadvantages: Very large to store and transport

...My family are all rather musical and we have acquired quite a collection of instruments over the years. For a significant anniversary I decided to buy a double bass. In his younger days my partner had played the electric bass in various bands and had always said one day he would like to have a double bass. Well now he has. ♫ ♫ What is a double bass? ♫ ♫ Well I suppose the short answer is that it looks like a giant violin, although it?s actually descended from an instrument called the viol. It dates as far back as the 16th century and is the largest and lowest sounding instrument in the string family of instruments. The other instruments in this family are the viola, the violin and the cello. No one seems quite certain where the name comes from but one theory suggests it is because the double bass...

perfectlypolished 09.05.2007 · Read review
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Review of Double Bass

Yamaha CP300 Stage PIano

Advantages: reasonable price, reasonable sound, portable, built-in amplification & speakers, USB port
Disadvantages: no music rest supplied, a few dodgy-sounding notes around D4

...Other than from an economic angle, I was never a fan of Yamaha acoustic pianos. So back in the 1980s it came as no surprise when their digital instruments failed to impress me. In my opinion Yamaha pianos sounded too 'wooden' at the top end. They had none of the 'singing' tones common to European pianos like Blüthner, Bösendorfer or Bechstein. However, after moving into an apartment in 1996 I was obliged to get a piano that took cans and chose a Technics PR900, which in my view was the nearest thing to an acoustic piano. It sounded like some of the best German pianos I had played. Early incarnations of this model had a very annoying background 'static', only noticeable when the piano was silent. By 1998 this static had been fixed by Technics. But in 1996 it was driving me so crazy that I sent the PR900 back to the store and got...

jasonford 31.12.2008 (09.04.2009) · Read review
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Review of Yamaha CP300

A warm sounding, satisfying tone.

Advantages: Beautiful sound, but powerful all the same. Fret marks help guide the fingers
Disadvantages: Passive, and requires a battery. Battery case too big but easily solved.

...I had been playing a bog-standard 4 string squier p-bass for 3 years when I thought it was time for an upgrade. Listening to the likes of Jaco Pastorius I was inspired by the sound of the fretless bass. It was then I started my search for a fretless with my budget being under £600 (a replica Jaco bass being over £1000). I was advised by a session bass player to buy a bass with a large fret board as I had quite long fingers. He told me yamaha have high quality fretless basses at my budget. I searched on the internet for the ideal bass and I came across the Yamaha TRB1005F, made with quality maple woods and a great tone. I went to many bass shops in London to find something similar. They didn\'t have any yamaha basses but wide fret ones that sounded good. I decided then to purchase the yamaha over the internet. Although it take several...

01chlam 26.05.2007 · Read review
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Review of Yamaha TRB5 Electric Bass