1995 Dean Bass |
This is a review of my 1995 4 string passive bass, made by Dean. I bought this in 1995 after having worked as a cleaner for the school summer holidays. The thought that I would be investing my hard earned exploitative wage on a shiny bass somehow distracted me from the fact that I was spending my days inhaling concrete dust and pick other people's short curly hairs and second hand prophylactics out of encrusted greasy carpets.
This is a pretty basic instrument, aimed at beginners and intermediates, which I was when I bought it. I remember paying £265 for it in 1995.
Materials and construction
The body is made up of some sort of laminate material. You can see this if you open up the cavity in the back to inspect the wiring. This is not one big solid lump of wood, but you would not really expect that in this price range. However, I would have expected at least solid pieces of wood, rather than some non descript laminate material.
The neck and headstock is made up of three pieces of what is probably maple. These are glues together longitudinally and go all the way up through the headstock. Again, a single piece of wood would be better, but this is acceptable. There is a knot on the reverse of the headstock which is clearly visible. I think this is rather sloppy, and unacceptable on an instrument of any price range. Wood selection is obviously not a strong point on this instrument. The headstock is veneered with some other kind of dark wood, which is actually the nicest piece of wood on the whole instrument. It has a nicely defined close grain going in a dead straight parallel lines, and is rather nice.
Showing arm contour |
Body shape
The body shape is a slightly exaggerated elongated strat type shape, with a long top horn which provides good balance when using a strap. The reverse of the body has a good deep ribcage contour and on the front of the body there is an unusually shapped contour for the right arm. This is rather odd, because if you rest your right arm in the groove, you find yourself in a position where you would be using a pick, and using it on the strings very near the bridge. The design does not seem to anticipate that bassists often want to pick in different places along the string’s length, and sometimes even use their fingers! Although I noticed this when I first bought the instrument, I didn’t care because I wanted it to play heavy metal on, which largely means using a pick, and using it on the strings near the bridge, so that was fine. Over time as I improved my playing, I began to realise that more classic right arm contour that would slop away the top of the body would be much better than this rather gimmicky design element.
Heel, and neck joint |
Heel and neck joint
The heel is nice and smooth for a bolt on neck, and the deep cutaway means easy access up to the 22nd fret. The 23rd and 24th frets are slightly harder to reach, but still usable.
The neck is joined to the body using 4 screw, but no metal screw plate. This looks nice, but I have always worried that the neck and body join was not as solid as it could be on this guitar. I have noticed a couple of creaks when I picked the guitar up by the neck and the tone suggests that something is amiss with this joint. A screw plate would have helped. The position of the screws suggest that the tang on the neck goes quite a long way down into the body.
Dean Bass headstock. |
Headstock and neck
The neck is pretty thin and fast, and finished in a pleasing satin which never feels sticky. The finger board is rosewood, or something similar, and has cool Dean logos as fret markers. I remember being particularly impressed with these when I first bough the instrument. They are not quite as delicate and refined as PRS style birds, but they are a bit different, and make a change from plastic dots.
The heel is nice and smooth for a bolt on neck, and the deep cutaway means easy access up to the 22nd fret. The 23rd and 24th frets are slightly harder to reach, but still usable.
The frets are well finished. It's always good to see the grooves that the flange of the fret wire sit in that are not to deep, and then patched up with filler, as you see on many budget guitars. The fret board has a very approachable radius and nut width. There is nothing special about it, it's just a good playable neck.
1995 Dean Bass hardware |
Hardware
The hardware is all pretty much what you’d expect. The tuning machines are the closed back type, which seem to have leaked a little grease over the last 10 years, but they are ok. They need to be tightened every now and again to take the slack out of them. There is one staggered humbucker style pickup and one single coil.
The pickup selector switch works fine, as do the volume and tone pots. The tone pots are surprisingly effective, taking the tone from a clanky trebly sound though to a warm and woody bass tone.
The only problem I have had with the electrics is the input jack. This has always been a bit moody, and didn’t work at all with some types of cables. Sometimes I had to spend a long time twiddling the cable to make it work. This was occasionally embarrassing in rehearsals, though thankfully it never let me down in a gig. Unusually, the cable socket point upwards towards the ceiling, rather than down towards the floor. This seems to be so that it is easier to plug the guitar in, but also it means that the cable comes out of the guitar in such a way that it is easy to loop around the strap. This is useful because if you or anyone else treads on your cable while you playing, it stops it form being pulled out of your guitar.
Sounds
The two pickups sound very different. The bridge pickup is gives a more defined, sharper tone, that on it’s when played solo can sound thin, but when playing in a loud rock band cuts though the other noise quite well. Using the tone control, you can go from a not very useful thin metallic twang, through to a quacky, honky tone. The neck pickup sounds more powerful, and gives you the big fat full bass tones, most suited to more bluesy and jazzy styles.
The balance across the strings is not great on this guitar. The low E string seems to lack a lot of definition, and seems very muddy and mushy. The other strings are noticeably much brighter and cleaner. This makes it quite hard to EQ the tone.
Summary
This is a half decent bass. It’s fairly cheaply made, but is reasonably sturdy, and has served me well over ten years. If it were to be stolen or broken, I don’t think I’d try to replace it however. For less money, you could get a Squire P bass, which is probably better than this. I suspect the poor choice of wood and slightly dodgy electrics is down the where and when it was made. It was made in Korea 10 years ago, and the quality of construction at that time in the far east was a long way off the excellent standards they achieve today. I suspect this bass was made a by fairly non descript Korean manufacturer, and then badged as a Dean. It certainly does not achieve the very high standards the American built Deans achieve. Having said that, I rehearsed and gigged this bass for several years and it has seen some abuse. I once loaned it to a friend, and when it came back, all the strings has been tuned up about 7 steps. The neck was like a bow and arrow. Ouch! (I have never loaned any of my guitars to anyone since then.) It has also survived being sat on for an hour by a fat metal head in the dressing room of a gig I played, with no ill effects. It has had numerous pints spilt on it, and has been used a riot shield to keep audience members off stage during a show. These days it gets a quiet life. It is not used for gigging any more, as I have switched to guitar as a my main instrument, and it only gets used for some home recording, which it is perfectly adequate for.
Tom du Pré. 21st September 2005. www.masht.com
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