Therefore, I had Ron at Anchak Audio bass speaker builders build it for me.  They came out really well I thought.

I had the top hats put in too so I could use for a small PA.

Currently I am liking how they sound with my old Demeter bass pre-amp and QSC power amp.

Video clips coming soon!

I was looking for a bass with a thinner neck and a fat thick sound.  I was also considering having the bass set up to B-E-A-D tuning so I didn’t have to play a five-string bass.  So I picked the Geddy Lee bass to cover those wants and it did a good job.

(This is my video bass review of the Geddy Lee Jazz bass below.)

Overall, I really like this bass.  I think it is one of the better ones Fender is making right now.  While this bass is made in Japan along with the Jaguar bass, I feel it is better put together than several USA made Fenders I have played.

The components are solid.  The neck is maple in a C shape with a urethane finish.  The fret board is maple with black binding and black block inlays.  The fret board is lined with 20 medium-sized jumbo frets.  I like these frets over the smaller thinner frets even though I do make more fret noise with them if I am not placing my fingers in the right spots.  The body is Alder.  The tuners are Fender vintage ‘70s stamped open gear tuners.  The stock bridge is a Leo Quan Badass 2.  There are 2 vintage jazz bass single coils pickups.  Controls are the standard neck volume, bridge volume, and master tone control.


This is a very easy bass to play.  The neck is fast and once set up by a local guitar shop, the action can make them play like butter.  The bass feels balanced and comfortable when it is strapped on.

The quality of the construction is good.  I only have a few points I do not care for:

I think the black block inlays and the black binding are somewhat cheap.  They just do not seem quite right.  It’s not a deal breaker by any means but they just seem a little cheesy to me.  If you compared the inlays and binding of a Lakland Duck Dunn Skyline bass, the level of quality is easy to see.  Now the Lakland is a little more money too but not much.  I’d like to see Fender come up with a better binding and better blocks.  The extra money to pay for that little touch would be worth it.

I am not a fan of the BassAss bass bridges.  In addition, that is not so much directly from me but from my bass tech.  He told me the BassAss bridges are not all that people think they are.  The quality of metal is not good in these bridges and they actually suck some of the sound and sustain out of the guitar.  My bass tech is a very experienced bass player and I trust him on this.  Having worked on guitars and basses for years, he is knowledgeable.  His feeling is that much of the Fender jazz and p-bass sound comes from the simplistic bridge design.  The wood bass bodies resonant through these older styles bridges much better.  On my Geddy Lee bass, I have a Wilkenson vintage looking bridge.  It is better metal than the original jazz bass bridges and sustain very well.

My strap buttons did not want to stay in the alder wood body.  After tightening them several times the screws holes got too big and the buttons would not stay in.  I had to use filler glue and some toothpicks to fill the holes up.  I then drilled a small hole through the glue and toothpicks and now the buttons are not going anywhere.  Alder wood is known as a soft-hardwood so this may be the issue.  Alder is lighter weight and said to be good for lows and highs.  However, it creates less mids than basswood.  So the range of sounds is the trade-off compared to a harder wood the strap buttons would stay screwed into.  This again was not a big deal to me.

When I have played these basses in stores like Guitar Center, the action has always been too high.  So be prepared to take it to someone and have it properly set up.  I am often shocked at how many Fender basses are badly set up and released by the factory.  I never see this with Ernie Ball Musicman or Lakland basses whether they are USA made of overseas.

I do not have a problem with the Fender stock bass tuners that come on this model.  However, some people trade them out for Hipshot gear tuners.  I have those as well but I did not put them on the bass.  I think the stock tuners are fine.

The pickups are vintage jazz bass single coils and I think they are fine too.  I could have just left them one but I thought I wanted a little more growl and punch.  I tried Seymore Duncan ¼ pound pickups and then EMG bass pickups but didn’t like either of them.  I ended with Dimarzio Model J™ pickups and I like them a lot.  However, I think the stock pickups are fine.

As you can hear in the video, the bass is punchy and full sounding.  It sounded that way with the stock pickups too.  I did not need the Dimarzios but I got it in my head that they did sound fuller.  I have heard guys with the stock pickups sound great though.

I prefer to run the front pickup on a jazz bass on full and the bridge pickup about ¾ up.  The bridge pickup is too harsh sounding to my ear when it is solo or turned up a lot.  Some guys like that sound but to me it is not a warm tone.

In conclusion, I highly recommend this bass.  It has many good things going for it and I am sure if you buy one you will not be disappointed.

Last night I did a gig at the House of Blues in Anaheim, California.  For their bass backline they have an SVT CL bass rig that included the SVT 8×10 bass cabinet.  It sounded amazing and was the perfect blend of warmth and grit.  It was excellent at cutting through the two guitar and keyboards mix and it takes a fraction of a second to get a good sound from.

What I miss about the Ampeg bass head is that warmth you get from those tubes.  The tone is fat and juicy and I get that rock and roll grit that is harder to get with a solid-state amp.  I’m using a Markbass Mini Mark II mostly nowadays and have gotten close to that sound but it still just doesn’t have the juicy, wet and authoritative sound you get from the Ampeg.  Some guys like the transparent transistor-like sound you get from an SWR or Eden bass amp.  I can’t stand that sound because I’m not a slap player and I like to sit and drive growly bass notes.  The Ampeg rules in this.

With two rock guitars and a keyboard player it can get hard for a bass player to find a place in the mix.  You end up battling for frequencies in the low-end.  With the Ampeg Classic I found my spot in the mix quickly.  I was able to support and didn’t have to compete so much.  Again I believe the tubes help to deliver a sweet spot of projection, support and drive that is sometimes harder to get from a solid-state amp.

I’m not a fan of bass amps with many control knobs.  I just don’t have the patience for it because it changes from room to room which frequencies you boost or pull back.  That is what a graphic or parametric EQ helps you do.  I just don’t like working with them.  Getting a good strong tone quickly and easily is all I want to do.  I can remember two of my friends that had SVT rigs before I got mine. The knobs and EQ was ridiculously simple on these amps.  No matter where I saw these guys play, their sound was always killing.  And that was with an Ampeg 8×10 or Ampeg 410 cabinet.  It didn’t matter if it was a club with carpet on the walls or a hockey rink.  They sounded monstrous and they never had to do much knob twittering.  This is the brilliance of the Ampeg SVT bass rig.  A couple twists of a few knobs and you are done.  Same thing happened for me at the House of Blues in Anaheim last night.  I spent 30 seconds dialing in a sound and didn’t touch my amp again for the rest of the night.  I love that!

I still have my Ampeg 6×10 bass cabinet and I still like it better than the Ampeg 810.  The 610 is tighter sounding to my ear but still gritty.  While I did enjoy playing the 810, I’m glad not to be lifting it around.  It is surprisingly more to deal with than the 610 with its extra weight and bulk.

So if you are seeking an awesome sounding bass rig and can handle the heavy lifting, start with the Ampeg SVT Classic bass head.  You will get the warmth, grit, mix cutting sound to die for faster than any other bass rig I’ve ever dealt with.

The SVTCL is heavy at 80 lbs but not nearly as bad as I thought because of the case size.  I’ve been dragging around an amp rack with a Demeter bass preamp, QSC power amp and compressor that actually weighed more and was very awkward to carry.  I don’t know what I was thinking.  Anyway, the SVT is not that hard to carry.  The handles work well and because of the slim profile it feels balanced when I carry it.  Most of the time I carefully cart it in to gigs on a dolly.  I’m careful with it but from looking at the construction it appears to be very solid.  The tubes, which I feared would jar loose, are strapped into their sockets by little springs.  They aren’t going anywhere.  I haven’t had any problems with this Ampeg bass amplifier and it’s been out on roughly 115 gigs this year.

This amp has a big rich warm tone.  It is a not a “hi-fi” sounding amps like my SWR-400 or SWR-750 were.  I hated those amps.  Neither supported the band well or cut the mix in my opinion.  Bass amplifiers like SWR and Eden tend to be lots of lows and crisp highs.  However, I find in live situations these amps just don’t support the band well.   It always made it harder for me to play with that type of tone and sound.  And when I would turn up the mids, it just sounded “honky.”  Not the sound I was looking for.

I prefer bass amps that don’t have a lot of knobs and equalizers.  That stuff just makes things too hard.  I feel it is best to get one good bass sound and leave it at that.  What I love about the Ampeg SVT is that I can just turn a few knobs a little and I get a good big fat bass sound fast.  I run the amp mainly on the number 4-frequency selector because I’m mainly playing rock, disco and dance material.  That setting seems to cut well and be gritty enough.

When I arrive at a gig I gauge if it’s a lively room first.  If there is a lot of glass and concrete I tend to shoot for a cleaner sound.  I’ll run the gain knob on the Ampeg SVT bass amp up to about 9 or 10 o’clock.  I then run the volume to taste and as to what the soundman says I can get away with stage volume wise.  The bass tone knob on the amp I run at between 10 and 12 o’clock.  The mid-range I run about 9 to 10 o’clock.  The treble I run about 2 or 3 o’clock and I leave the Ultra Hi and Ultra Low switches off.  I feel they tend to be a bit much.  My current main bass is a Fender Roscoe Beck 5 string bass that I run full up on tone and volume.  I do the same with a Music Man Stringray bass I sometimes use.  The amp produces a great full rich fat bass sound everyone in the band seems to like.

The bass amp is rated at 300 watts at 4 ohms.  I wasn’t sure this was going to be enough because in the past I’ve always had at least 500 to 1000 watts of solid-state power on hand.  But there appears to be a difference in tube power versus solid state.  A guitar player friend of mine who used to work at Demeter told me that 300 watts of tube power is equal to about 500 – 700 watts of solid-state power.  I now believe him because the SVT Classic has plenty of tube power.  Depending on how big the room is I’m playing in, I run it with a Carvin 2×10 cabinet that I put Eminence Delta 10A speakers into or I run it with an Ampeg 610 cabinet.  I like both those bass cabinets very much.

So if you’ve struggled with getting a good bass sound or have worried about the weight of the SVT, don’t give it another thought.  Go pick one up and you’ll be very happy you did.  It will simplify your life.