Hi folks. While I love reviewing gear for you, sometimes I hit on something really awesome that has a limited availability windows and that is true about the Kiesel Vader bass in this article. While the article covers Vader model basses from Kiesel, the one that I am writing about is available as I write this, at The Arts Music Store in their Used Instruments section. It is listed at $1899 CAD. When it’s gone, it’s gone, you know the deal.

Prologue

Kiesel Guitars are not sold in stores. You order up your specific build from Kiesel, they build it and they ship it to you. For Canadians this is particularly onerous due to exchange rates, duties and taxes plus the usual holdups in shipping. so finding any Kiesel product used already inside Canada is scarce enough.

I want to attack all the grumpy people who dislike these styles of instruments right up front, because I find their arguments silly, and because it’s my channel and I can do what I want. Here’s what I hear as alleged issues’

• It’s active not passive and needs batteries

• It is a short scale

• It has tuners in the body

• There is no headstock

• It doesn’t feel like a “real bass”

• The frets are small

If you stand in the pool with these folks, you could rightly say that every complaint is true. Here’s my counter.

• Find a bass of this quality level that isn’t trying to be something from over seventy years ago and you will find that uses active pickups. This is not new, not acronistic or rare. It’s the standard these days. Plus so long as you can remember to unplug the bass, there is no problem

• What if you don’t have long arms, or long spidery fingers? What if you are of a smaller stature? What if you are ok with not having neck and shoulder pain after four sets at a gig, or after jamming with your friends for a few hours. Short scale is light, has easy reach, lower string tension, is easier to fret and weighs less

• That the Vader has no headstock is a design decision. Like the original basses from Ned Steinberger, like a .strandberg and even like some contemporary Ibanez basses, this is a headstock less design and that puts the tuners at the base of the body, you know, where your hand easily reaches. There’s also no neck dive because there is no massive headstock and tuner weight hanging off the end. If you like moving around while playing, you are less likely to spear your bandmates or break the headstock off on a wall or doorway

• If by real bass, the complainant means heavy with a long neck and longer headstock, absolutely so. But don’t playability, sound and fun count for anything? Beauty is certainly in the eye of the beholder. but it’s 2024 and nothing says everything has to look like the early 1950s

• The frets are actually medium jumbos and while I find that whole nomenclature mostly idiotic, actual measurement, you know, like with tools, reveals a medium width fret of mid height with a small area of string contact. Definitely easier to fret than tall frets, and easier to intonate than wide frets with a larger string contact area

My point is that you should choose any instrument on what works for you, not what works for the masses and perhaps the Vader is ideal for you. I’m a relatively large person but have short sausage fingers as well as some arthritis in my hands and wrists and I can play this instrument for a long time without fatigue because it is comfortable and it sounds great.

The Kiesel Vader 4 String Bass Specifications

The body of this bass is made of Alder with a neck through design, so the maple neck is the full length of the instrument (38.25 inches long) with the sides made of Alder. This example is finished in what Kiesel calls Blood Red where the top is solid coloured and the sides and back are slightly transparent.

• Body - Alder

• Construction - Neckthrough

• Neck - Tung-Oiled Maple With Two High-Strength Carbon-Fiber Reinforcing Rods And Fully-Adjustable Dual Action Truss Rod

• Fingerboard - Ebony with 14” Radius

• Inlays - White Pearl Dots With Standard Black-Ring Luminlay Super Blue Side Dots

• Frets - Stainless Steel 0.103” wide by 0.048 “ tall

• Pickups - Kiesel Radium KRH Humbuckers

• Electronics - 18V Active/Passive Electronics, Master Volume With Push-Pull Active/Passive Switch, Pickup Blend, Mid Cut Or Boost With Sweep Control, Stacked Concentric Bass/Treble Cut Or Boost

• Bridge - Hipshot A Style 19mm string spacing

• Hardware - Black

• Scale Length - 30 inches

• Weight - 8 pounds

My Impressions

The instrument in question came from an estate. It is in what I would assess as excellent condition and includes a Kiesel hard gig case that is formed to the instrument but still lightweight with carry handle and a backpack arrangement. It uses a pair of 9V batteries to deliver the total requirement of 18V of power. The batteries feature tool-less access, something other active instruments could really stand to figure out. The caveat as with any powered instrument is to unplug it when you are done, as the power is activated by the presence of a cord in the jack, not unlike many effects pedals.

I do not know what strings are on it but I would guess that they are medium lights. With the short scale, you have less string tension, so even as I advocate lighter strings in general, they do not get floppy. All players will find a lighter gauge string easier to fret and the not so tall frets mean you make contact and can stop pressing too hard. This reduces finger and hand fatigue.

There is one strap button at the neck and a choice of buttons on either the upper or lower rear bouts. I attached a strap to the neck and upper rear bout buttons and found that the bass hung in a nice neutral position and was not headstock heavy at all. The strap buttons are a mushroom type with a slightly larger head. A strap should never come off easily. I used an inexpensive D’Addario web strap with no padding and no anti slip and had no issues at all. As I tend to hold instruments headstock high, it was comfortable standing and in a sitting postion, I rested the rear cutaway in the inside of my right thigh, as I do my .strandbergs and it is perfectly comfortable.

The jack is on the outside edge of the lower bout and while it can take a straight plug, I would always recommend a 90 degree plug on any instrument with a jack on the side. I only ever use a straight plug on Stratocasters or other instruments with a slot cut in the top for the cable like the PRS Silver Sky or many Ibanez instruments.

The humbucking pickups sound great to me. I like the mid cut / boost control with the sweep capability so you can adjust to room sound as needed. The bass and treble controls being in one concentric control is handy, and all the controls have a readily felt centre notch that is obvious but not grabby. I had actually played the bass for about an hour before I discovered that the master volume was a push pull switching between active and passive. My first plays and first recordings were all made with the switch in the normal in position.

Playing

I get a great deal of enjoyment and freedom with a bass and own 4, 5 and 6 string variants as well as a fretless and a long loved short scale. There was no sense of work involved in playing the Kiesel. I’m very pleasantly surprised with the Vader. As the bass came from another player, I did not care for the slight bow set in the neck and so I adjusted it via the truss rod socket at the top of the neck. The truss rod adjusted smoothly and using my neck gauge, I quickly got it to where I wanted it. This adjustment resulted in some string buzz, but a quick slight action raise with a 0.050 screwdriver in each of the individual saddles had everything right as rain and matching the neck radius in short order.

The tone stack allows a lot of tonal variance without ever getting flubby. I played it most the first evening through my MarkBass CMD102, but also through the big Traynor with the 15” speaker as well as through my Ampeg CL100 and 2x10 cabinet. When I did my first set of recordings, I used the Darkglass Ultra VUD preamp plugin from Neural blending the clean and drive sides, and then through two UA plugins, the Ampeg B15N 1964, and a David Eden World Tour 800. Examples are found below and I think that this bass sounds great in all scenarios.

I keep my action fairly low because while I can slap and pop, it’s not really my thing. If I did that regularly, I would simply raise the action a bit which is very easy. I really like the tuners in the Hipshot bridge and it is definitely solid which has been an issue with other bridges in the past. I am also very impressed with the potentiometers. They feel very positive but are butter smooth. There is also no sense of dead that happens when you roll the treble off.

Audio Examples

#1 - Vader into Neural Darkglass Ultra VDU with 2x12 Cabinet, Shure SM57 and Royer 121 microphones on the grill and on axis, blend halfway, drive at 2 o’clock

#2 - Vader into UA Ampeg B15N with Ampeg 1x15 IR, 1964 Bias, 1964 Channel 1 bass and treble at noon

#3 - Vader into David Eden WT800 into 4x10 and 1x15 Ampeg cabs, tones at noon, compressor at noon, enhancer at 1pm

Wrap Up

While a beginner could play this bass for the rest of their lives with enjoyment, I think that an intermediate or professional player would really get the most out of it quickly because it is so darn versatile. As a new Vader starts at $1899 USD when you start your build, this particular one is an awesome value. The bass looks great, but more importantly to me, and likely to you, is how great it plays, and how versatile its capabilities are. If you are a person of smaller stature without longer arms, this scale length is going to be a joy, and if you tend to play in a more modern style where minor bends and trills are more common to you, this instrument excels. Invariably someone will ask me, “would you buy it?” My situation prevents additional instruments at this time, but were I in the position to do so, this article would not exist, because I would own this bass. If you want to buy it, click this link, but don’t wait too long as I expect it to sell quickly.

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