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Ernie Ball Music Man Custom Design Experience

Operator Gray/Battleship Bass: The Caprice

bovinehost

bovinehost

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caprice5.jpg

What do you guys think? "The Bismark"?

I've been thinking about a Caprice since they were announced but had to wait ($$) for the right time. Dargin and I talked about it; I of course am always in favor of something gaudy and showy and maybe sparkly but he had some ideas regarding 1940s Jeep Willys paint and, well, he can be very persuasive.

So here we are! I haven't even plugged it in yet - but I sure will in just a bit.

Thanks, Scotty. This thing looks deadly.

More photos in a sec.

Jackie
 
CaseyBall

CaseyBall

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Very cool, Jack!

Spoiler: I'm willing to bet the color is inspired (at least in part) by Haley Strategic's Disruptive Gray. Hmm, now where would Darg have gotten that idea?
 
bovinehost

bovinehost

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CaseyBall said:
Very cool, Jack!

Spoiler: I'm willing to bet the color is inspired (at least in part) by Haley Strategic's Disruptive Gray. Hmm, now where would Darg have gotten that idea?
Click to expand...

There are a few firearms out there in the wild that are "operator gray", too. Makes you wonder.
 
K

kinopah

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Looking Imperial as all get-out!
mofjerr3.jpg

(Just be careful not come out of lightspeed to quickly with it.)
 
bovinehost

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My Quickly Written Review of the Caprice

The Music Man Caprice Review:

The comparisons will be inevitable. Is it a Precision or a Jazz or a P/J? Is it more Stingray or Sterling? How does it compare to a Bongo or – yeah, I get it. We bassists like to have points of reference, something to hang our hats on. “Oh, so it’s a little like this, a little like that.” We all know what those other basses sound like (we think). Truthfully, I don’t think it’s ‘like’ any of those basses, but of course, how different can a bass BE? Back in the old days, I knew a guy who would get frustrated with the endless measurements and preamp replacements and modifications and he’d say, “It’s a bass. It goes ‘boom boom boom’.” This is really not the worst way to think about it.

But yeah, there are some old familiar sort of tones here – but with modern updates, thank the deity of your choice. Does the world need yet another P bass? (Rhetorical question. It does not. Let’s be honest – you can spend five thousand dollars or more on what is essentially a good P bass now. Maybe Fender should just build better ones and price them reasonably….but there would still be a market for the souped up models. You know it, I know it, and Roger Sadowsky knows it too.)

So let’s get the details out of the way. Music Man has built active basses since dirt was new. It’s a big part of the classic MM sound. (I know – there was a passive SUB model a few years ago, but even the company kind of ignored it.) This is a departure. The Caprice (and its stablemate, the Cutlass) is passive, passive, passive, yes, you read it right. For someone like me, who has been playing Music Man basses since the 70s, it’s a surprise that there’s no battery box. Yes, I looked. The bass comes with a split single coil in the neck position and a big, fat single coil pickup in the bridge position. The controls are simple enough even for a lunchbox bassist like yours truly – volume, volume, tone. The knobs are smooth and effective at changing tone on the fly. As is always the case with Music Man, the fit and finish are exemplary. Mine came with a rosewood fingerboard, but maple is available if that’s your thing. The vintage tinted neck is a nice touch. The neck heel is rounded but only Ed Friedland plays that high up and then he gets in trouble with his employers (The Mavericks). I don’t know what notes are up there, but if I ever figure it out, I won’t run into any sharp corners. Nice detail.

Now this is not a Sterling, okay? But if you like the size and feel of the Sterling basses, you won’t be disappointed with the Caprice ergonomics. I’m not much into measurements and don’t even own a slide rule and have only seen calipers on Dudley Gimpel’s desk, but this neck is very much like a Sterling profile. It might even be identical. Peter Dapello of BadAssBassPlayers and I agreed years ago that the Sterling neck was probably the best production neck ever. And we were both Stingray players at the time. The Caprice neck is a beauty. It’s not glossy, either. I have a love/hate relationship with glossy necks. You know what I mean. This is a superbly finished neck.

Okay, pickups. The split single coil is what you always wanted a split single coil to be but often was not. Big, round, deep and punchy, and lazy engineers will love it. We all know those guys, the ones who freak out when you walk in with “NOT A P BASS” because they’re too entrenched in the 60s to work on getting a decent bass sound out of something else. Lazy bitches. You can make them happy with this because they won’t even have to work hard. Blues? Classic rock? 50s doo-wop? This is your pickup. Once I’d played with just that pickup for a bit, I had to put on some classic Joe Jackson and grab a pick and turn the tone up for zing, and – yep. Graham Maby would love this thing. The bridge pickup is sweet, and adds that nasally grunt you want when feeding your inner Jaco. I’m a sucker for that tone and will be using this a lot with coWpilot. So no, it’s not a P bass, it’s not a Jazz bass, but it could easily replace all those spendy boutique Js and Ps you guys can’t get enough of for reasons I’ll never understand.

And, being passive and having those single coils, it’s definitely not a Stingray or a Sterling. (Or a Bongo.) And this is a good thing. Other manufacturers repackage and repaint the same basses and expect us all to drool at NAMM because hey, it’s a new paint job! (I’m guilty.) But this is new ground for Music Man and while some of you will dismiss the idea of a passive bass being ‘new ground’, I have to salute the team in San Luis Obispo for not doing the same thing every year. This is a Music Man bass for those too timid to play blues on a Bongo. You know who you are.

If you know me, you probably realize that I’m a sucker for the odd, gaudy colors. I love green basses, even if ‘they don’t sell’. I may even have a bass with flames on it. This Caprice looks like a battleship or a tactical firearm. Very industrial. You won’t find this on the list of available colors, so at the risk of repeating myself, I’ll tell you what happened. I needed a Caprice because – well, I’m a company man through and through and consider all the Ball family members as friends. (How they see me might be different, but that’s not my story to write.) Sterling has been very, very good to me, to say the least, and I love him unconditionally. But now he’s gone off to new challenges with Big Poppa Smokers; I like to say he’s opened a hot dog stand. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but it’s fun to say and hopefully annoys him properly. Anyway, Scott Ball has assumed the day to day role of running the Music Man instrument company and has done such an awesome job that I’ve almost forgiven him for making off with the very first of the Logan Green Bongos. Scott was interested in 1940s era Jeep Willys paint and convinced me that I might enjoy something along these lines on my Caprice. When I’m in ordering mode, he mostly just puts up with whatever goofy thing I think I want and makes it happen. Twice he has made suggestions about what might be better. The first time, he built my Candy Red Bongo, which is my desert-island bass and has been for over a decade. So he was right about that (and the pickguard). This was the second time, and he was right about this, too. Thank you, Scotty. This bass will be put to very good use, if coWpilot can in any way be considered “good use”.

If you have questions that are not technical, I will try to answer those. If you want to know voltage or measurements or stuff like that, I’m not that guy. I mostly just go ‘boom, boom, boom’.
 
five7

five7

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Nov 24, 2008
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Cool bass, would love to try one out. Color is the same as the ceiling at my gym, goes good with yellow and purple. Will we ever see a 5 string one. Oh, by the way my avatar is one of those passive sub 5's.
 
Eilif

Eilif

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Great review!

More and more, I find myself lusting after a Caprice, but I'd have to give up the Stingray to do it, and I don't think I want to go there.
 
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