NS Design - US Series
Reviewer: Chris Astier
Amplifier Used: SWR Super Redhead
- Vintage: 2002
- Number of Strings: 5
- Bowable: Yes
- Position Markers: Yes
- Playable Seated: Yes
- Balance While Playing:
(8/10)
I started out playing fretted electric bass, played in the orchestra in my senior year in high school which led to my getting a fretless. I had stopped playing bass for about 10 years and decided to get back into it. I decided that what I heard in my head could only be accomplished with an EUB. Having looked around, and remembering a review of this bass in a popular bass-related periodical when it first came out, I decided to buy an NS Designs US-Series 5 string.
Now that the history that led to my aquiring this bass is through, let me tell you about the bass!
It is a wonderful instrument that can produce a wide range of very pleasing sounds. With it's magnetic and piezo pickups, I blend mainly piezo with enough magnetic pickup to get a warm vibrato. It is an "acoustic" sound, but I simply use it as a good basic pizz sound that sounds like a MONSTER when I hit it with the bow!
Other sounds I easily coax from it go more towards electric sounds. I didn't buy this bass as a "fake acoustic bass", but rather because the style in which I play, seems to call for a more physical demand on me. Though it's obviously a more physical instrument than a regular electric, it far from hard to play.
I enjoy the loooooooooooooong lasting sustain on this bass. I can hit a double stop, hold it, then slide it up or down. Over the course of a few bars, it's volume slowly decreases. The nuances of vibrato are so easily heard I really am flabbergasted by it!
I could probably make the review longer, but would rather just say, "The bass is great!". I invite people to e-mail me and ask further questions if they have them if it is related to anything the manufacturer can't answer (I figure they're not going to knock their own product, I certainly won't, but for all the nuts-and-bolts kind of things, it would be better to ask them).
Text copyright © Chris Astier.
