Here comes a personal bass of mine, as you can probably tell that I’m a fan of this man’s instrument. I’m lucky enough to have one of the finest he can possibly offer.
Background:
This was made in 2007, one of the very early build while Jimmy Coppolo was still in NYC. And his work was already top notch. This bass features the smaller NYC body, a 3 tone sunburst in nitro lacquer shot by the Professor, has a slightly thinner neck, but other than that it’s a perfect representation to a classic 60s jazz bass, with a great low B string, in a playable condition. This guy surely did not disappoint.
Specs:
- Alder body
- Maple neck
- Brazilian rosewood fingerboard
- Professor shot Nitro in 3TS
- AC pickups
- AC preamps
- controls are: Vol / Vol / Tone / Hi boos / Lo boost , active/passive switch
- Hipshot tuners
- AC bridge
Playability:
The neck is straight, fretwork is top notch . action can get very low buzz free, all 5 strings are well balanced, currently strung with Fodera nickle light. Wood is stable and this is an instrument I can hang on to all day long.
Sound:
this is my reference bass, whenever I got lost with my bass pallets .. this is the one to goto for a reset .. in passive, or active mode or whatsoever.
Brazlian rosewood is mid rich rather than bass heavy. Alder body in nitro also sings. I switched from the fiesta orange LG5 with Indian rosewood, and for a very long time I was really missing the pillow like bottom end that often wraps around the player and that’s where I’ve called it home for some time. Which does caused me issues in live situation a several times, especially in a small tight stage where frequency spectrum gets busy and trapped within the small space and eventually things went out of control.
The mid rich fingerboard somehow sits better and takes up less spaces in others way with minimum to no tweaking on EQ .. and often bandmates wanted me to turn up in volume as they wanted to hear more bass .. that means something ..
This is a great example of how a 60s jazz bass should sounded like, not particularly exciting, but that’s just how bass sounded like in modern music. Sound varies between different build even with the same specs, someone call their LG5 better than the others which is true sometimes, but to this point, it’s really the player that matters more.
Thoughts:
Well .. there are many Fender inspired instruments from many brands in all price levels, but noone archive it the same as Jimmy when it comes to jazz basses. There are someone who can archive similar results on precision bass now. Throughout the years, I'm lucky enough to meet the man myself, and also live close to other bass lovers and had the privilege to try out many of them and still get impressed regularly.
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