Ibanez SRH500F-NNF

nothing to complain about it, feels good, play nice, sound great, and is very light. just what I wanted and double bass sound on a very portable size!

the only thing you have to take in mind is that it sound more like an acoustic bass than electric bass, so the sound is very open and you notice a lot the attack of the fingers. is not a fretless that sounds like and acoustic.

is you want the fretless bass sound this might be not the bass for you.

I haven't owned a fretless for 15 years. The genres I work with these days don't normally use fretless. I'm really more of a vintage P-bass guy.

This bass will be my "guilty pleasure" bass. I didn't want to spend too much for something that will propably only be used at home, maybe the occasional recording.

But I was very pleasantly surprised. The craftsmanship is much better than I had expected at this price. Ok, so the wood is a bit too much "dragged in by the tide" for me but that's just personal taste. Lots of people like this kind of exotic wood look. It certainly gives the bass a bit of a "boutique" coffee table vibe. The wood certainly looks to be excellent quality and the finish is flawless.

The neck is absolutely wonderful. Maybe a bit slim for my personal taste but it's very, very nice.

The hardware is typical Ibanez SR. Good quality.

The electronics are pretty basic but works great. Tone+volume knobs, no magnetic pickup, only piezo. I'm usually not a big fan of piezos but this one actually sounds great. Individual volume adjustment for each string is a nice touch.

The factory setup was amazing! Very low action, no buzzing or any kind of problems anywhere. Excellent string to string balance. Perfect! Really impressive! The setup makes anything I've seen from Fender lately seem like a bad joke. Fender could certainly learn a lot from Ibanez about setup, quality control and manufacturing quality instruments without serious flaws.

The only thing I'm not happy with are the strings. I believe they're D'Addario Chromes. They certainly have that cheap, metallic D'Addario sound. They will of course mellow out over time but unlike most other flatwounds Chromes doesn't get better with age in my experience. They just die. I love flatwound strings but the ONE exception is D'Addario Chromes. I will probably get some Thomastik Jazz Flats instead. Having said that, the Chromes don't sound quite as bad on this piezo equipped fretless as they do on a regular fretted bass with magnetic pickups. The nasty D'Addario upper mid clank is a bit subdued with this bass.

The bass is made in Indonesia so I wouldn't be surprised if it's manufactured at the Cort factory where companies like Fender, Gibson, etc. makes their cheaper series. But this Ibanez doesn't have the cheap mass manufactured feel of a Squier/Epiphone. It feels like a unique product of surprisingly good quality.

Highly recommended for anyone looking for a reasonably priced fretless. If you can live with the coffee table look it's a really good instrument for the price.