Intro:
Being a lucky one that owns pretty much all of Jimmy’s 5 string product lines, and pretty much owning most of the sounds I want in the electric bass category, I was asking myself .. what’s next ..
Maybe an old Fender Jazz? And soon I gave up the idea, there’s no way I’m going to spend a fortune on something over the internet unseen, so I went went for the next best thing I can think of.
Background:
Alleva Coppolo made its name back in the early 2000 by making vintage sounding Fender style basses with active electronic and a solid low B string. Throughout the past 2 decades, they’ve became the holy grail of Fender style basses .. Because of the success of the 5 string models, there are less 4 strings basses available in the market.
The Classic Supreme line remains the best of its class, where Jimmy uses the right materials and right recipe plus a little personality. With the nitro finish done by the ‘Professor’ . There’s really not much more I can ask for ..
Specs:
- Alder body
- Maple neck
- Brazilian rosewood fingerboard, 21 frets
- Professor shot Nitro in 3TS
- AC pickups
- AC preamps
- controls are: Vol / Vol / Tone / Hi boos / Lo boost , active/passive switch
- Gotoh tuners
- AC bridge
Playability:
The neck is straight, and the usual top notch fretwork . The action came a bit too low to my liking .. soon I changed the string from the stock Labella (45-105) to Fodera nickel (40-100) …. Took me another 2-3 days to playground with the setup to my liking . It’s currently at medium-low action with a little more relief on the neck.
Sound:
This is a bold sounding bass compare to my other LG5 .. big round passive sound right out of the package … very delicate sounding, but doesn’t sounded as ‘old’ as my NYC era LG5s .. can be the new string, or when things are still fresh … it’s overall bottom tight/round sounding while while the mid range is rich sounding. The pickups are a tad hotter than most of my other Coppolos
Thoughts:
This bass is a great example of Jimmy’s capability .. a new instrument that can be put against anything vintage …. Plus that 1 extra fret that was extended on the fingerboard, and the very open sounding active electronic …. Professor’s 3TS on this one is a tad less red-ish compare to my other 3TS …. It’ll be interested to find out how things age with time ..
Things I observed on this Alabama build bass is that Gotoh vintage style tuners were being used. Also very interested to see that Jimmy extended the fingerboard to archive the 21st fret .
Gallery:
Video: