I played the PDN at church today and she sounded great! Very versatile. For the first half of worship, on more of our upbeat songs, I played without the piezo on but for the second half of worship, for our slower songs, I rolled the pizo on full board to give it that real acoustic sound. Sounded amazing too.
I was stoked when I got the bass delivered Wednesday but I teach on Wednesday nights at my church so I only had about an hour to play with her before I had to get ready and then leave for church. Unfortunately, when I got home, I started coming down with a fever, aches and chills and they have not let up since Wednesday night. As a result, I have had very little play time on this bass. I mustard up the strength to go to practice yesterday and then played this morning for service but that is all I have had the opportunity to play because all of my other times has involved me in bed sleeping and trying to get better.
In the little that I have played the bass, I have noticed some subtly differences on it from my other Bongo's. The first two things are on the piezo on this bass as opposed to my candy apple red one that is a 4 Hp, is when I use the piezo on this bass, I don't lose any volume on the sound. On the 4 Hp, if I go from no piezo to blending to full piezo, my volume gets slightly quieter. Maybe by only 10% or so but it is noticeable. On this bass, the volume stays the same throughout regardless of if they piezo in on, blended or off.
The second thing I noticed on this bass that is different from my other ones is the feel of the fret board. With the Pau Ferro fret board, I can actually feel the grain on it. With my Bongo 4 HH Dargies Delight II and my Bongo 4 H BFR Roasted Neck, both of them have Ebony fret boards which are super smooth. On my Bongo 4 Hp, it has the traditional fret board the Bongo's come with, Rosewood but it also feels real smooth in that the wood grain cannot be felt. On this bass, it's not a bad thing just noticeable.
With the HHp configuration, if you like lots of versatility, this is the way to go. The eq options are really quite amazing. I have a pan between both pickups or I can blend them. The you have your low, high, mid high's, mid lows and your piezo blend. Needless to say, it will be a very long time before I get done experimenting with all of the tone options available on this bass. I have had my 4 Hp for about 6 or 7 months now and I'm still playing with it. This one has even more.
Last, once again, I am left shaking my head at how awesome of a job Music Man has done with building this bass. The wood that was selected for this bass is absolutely top notch! The roasted neck birds eye maple has tons of birds eye in it. This was something I was hoping the bass would have as I love the looks of birds eye maple. This is now my 3 Music Man bass to have it with the Breast Cancer Awareness bass being the first and the BFR Roasted Neck being the second. Out of all of them, this one has the most in it. Next is the African Mahogany used for the body. Again, the people at Music Man did an excellent job of selecting the best of the woods for these builds and coming up with an awesome finish to complement it too. It's hard to describe but with the honey burst finish, it really makes the African Mahogany wood pop.
Up next will be a a review between all four basses I have as far as the tones they make that are the same and different due to the four different pick up configurations.
Jay