Review : Squier Bass VI
Hello folks! Over the holiday season I received a question pertaining to the famous (infamous?) Fender Bass VI. While this was never a market leader by any stretch, awareness of the instrument was rekindled in Peter Jackson’s film about the Beatles where John Lennon is seen playing a Bass VI in the studio.
As those in the know are aware, at the time of this writing, Fender does not make a Bass VI, however Fender’s subsidiary Squier does. A huge shout out of thanks to the folks at The Arts Music Store for arranging a short term access to this instrument for the purposes of this review. They are a great shop with awesome people and their online store serves Canadians from coast to coast. You should have a look.
Before jumping into the specifics of the Squier, let’s take a step into the Wayback Machine and learn about the history of the Fender Bass VI that has resulted in the current Squier Bass VI.
Bass VI History
The Fender Bass VI was a six-string electric bass guitar made by Fender. It was originally released in 1961 and used a premise similar to the Danelectro six-string bass released in 1956, having six strings tuned E to E, an octave below our traditional guitars. The Bass VI was closely related to the Fender Jaguar, with which it shared styling and technical details, notably the Fender floating vibrato. Fender called this a tremolo as they have always done, but we know it is really a vibrato. The Bass VI had an offset body similar but not identical to that of the Jazzmaster/Jaguar. In fact, when I first unpacked the Squier, it looked like a bigger sibling to my 60th Anniversary Jaguar. The VI departed from the concept of the market leading Fender Precision Bass in having six strings, a shorter scale and thinner strings, and the vibrato arm. The Bass VI never caught on to the extent that four-string basses did and as a result Fender stopped production in 1975.
From 1995 through 1998, Fender Japan produced a vintage reissue featuring the 1963 model’s Jaguar-style pickups and electronics. The Fender Custom Shop reissued a similar model from 2006 through 2008. In 2013, Fender released a Bass VI model as part of its Pawn Shop series. In line with the series’ purpose to reconfigure classic Fender designs, this version of the Bass VI has a Jazzmaster-type humbucking bridge pickup and a Stratocaster-style five-position pickup selector, as opposed to separate switches. There were three available colors: brown sunburst with a tortoiseshell pickguard, black with a tortoiseshell pickguard, and candy-apple red with a white pickguard and painted headstock. In 2013, Squier released a Bass VI as part of its Vintage Modified series. This model was similar to the traditional Bass VI design with four switches (on/off for each pickup and a “strangle” (low-cut filter) switch) and a Jaguar-style control plate. It featured a synthetic bone nut, rosewood fingerboard until 2018, medium jumbo frets, chrome hardware, alnico custom single-coil Jaguar pickups with the recognizable “claw” base plates, and continued the trend set by the Squier Vintage Modified Jaguars and Jazzmasters of having a non-locking vibrato plate. Original units had a button that would look the vibrato as on original Jazzmasters and Jaguars. It was available in three-color sunburst finish with 4-ply tortoiseshell pickguard, Olympic White with a brown tortoiseshell pickguard, and black with a white three-ply pickguard. In 2019, Squier released its Classic Vibe Bass VI, available in three-color sunburst and black, both with tortoiseshell pickguard. It has a slightly wider width at the nut than the Vintage Modified Bass VI (1.685" vs. 1.65"). The nut was upgraded to bone and the Indian laurel fretboard is equipped with narrow, tall frets. The pickup specs were changed to Fender-designed alnico single-coil pickups while retaining classic Jaguar claw shielding rings and the hardware was switched to nickel. This is the model that I have received for the purposes of the review
First Impressions
I always like to get an instrument out of the box, before a professional tech has gotten to the instrument. The one that I have is black with a faux tortoiseshell pickup. As noted, the first thing I saw was a larger version of my much loved Jaguar. The Jaguar is one of the most comfortable guitars that I own to play, and thus I was not completely surprised to find the Bass VI very comfortable. The paint and gloss clear coat is beautifully done, with no evident flaws at all. The Laurel fretboard is darker than I expected and if one found it did not look enough like rosewood to suit, a few applications of Monty’s Guitars Montepresso would deal with that. As happens with any instrument that spends months at sea in a container, the neck had more relief than I prefer, so a quick tweak brought it flat, which is the way that I like it. The frets are nicely done and in particular there is no fret sprout on the bound neck. I’ve seen many much more expensive guitars that were nowhere near this good. If I were to own it, I would polish the frets, but I do that on everything. To my surprise, the strings were completely clean and sounded decent. Regular readers know that I am no fan of Fender factory strings. For those who want something different, there are alternative string sets available. I first checked my regular source for strings, Curt Mangan, and he makes a set for the Bass VI that are 24-90. StringJoy have a balanced set in the same gauges. D’Addario have a set and La Bella actually has two different sets available for the Bass VI in addition to Fender’s own strings.
The three pickups look like Jaguar pickups and the control plate has four switches. From headstock to bridge order, they turn the pickups on and off and the fourth switch is the strangle switch as found on the Jaguar guitar. There is a single volume and single tone pot with a top mounted output jack.
I really like the weight distribution in offset bodies and as this is a short scale bass, it is not neck heavy, although I confess I was a bit surprised to find a CBS size headstock instead of the traditional Fender headstock. The tuners are pretty decent, with no signs of slipping or lash. The nut is well cut and doesn’t bind. The bridge is a Fender roller saddle type as opposed to the bolt type saddles sometimes found on reissue Jazzmasters and Jaguars. This is a big improvement over the bolt saddles which are, in my opinion, egregiously horrible. The Vibrato system is the same as on a Jaguar or Jazzmaster, a large plate with the springs underneath recessed in the body.
First Playing Session
I was really looking forward to playing this, so I put a strap on the instrument (that’s a given for me, I always use a strap) and plugged it directly into my EBS Microbass 3, feeding a Headrush 12” FRFR powered cabinet. Due to timing of this first play, I could not put it into my larger Fender Bassman or Traynor bass amp for volume reasons. I really like the EBS Microbass 3 box because it can not only feed an FRFR but has options for DI out to go straight into an interface.
I was really surprised by how easy the instrument is to play. It’s like a guitar with wider string spacing and heavier strings. It was in no way painful and after an hour or so, I felt no issues in my fingers or fingertips, even given that the factory strings are round wound, and not exactly superbly finished. You can play lines or chords on the instrument with great ease, although a full chord can be a bit thick sounding. The strings are thinner than a traditional bass string and you can warble them easily, although bends on the higher strings take more work than on a guitar. Just as you would expect.
The three single coils are similar in sound, but their different placement does deliver a variety of tones. The volume taper is really decent and I would call the tone taper decent. The strangle switch does exactly what you expect it to do. I have yet to find a use for this thing on any instrument, but I am confident that others will do so. Note that when the strangle switch is engaged, the tone pot effectively becomes a second volume pot. Despite the pickups being single coils, I did not hear any of the common single coil artefacts like hum or noise.
The sound was rich and clean, and if as a bassist you like to play up the neck, you will love this instrument. I own four, five and six string basses, and there is something comforting for the guitarist that all the fret positions are exactly where you know them to be and chord shapes are identical to on a guitar. I was initially wondering if the low E would be flappy, and I was pleased to find it was not so bad. As the instrument arrived, the action became lower when I adjusted the truss rod, and when I get down to recording, I will raise the low E side of the bridge slightly to eliminate any minor buzzing that I encounter as I think after adjustment the action is a bit too low. I will be using a proper action gauge then and go from there.
The EBS Microbass 3 has a really smooth and subtle compressor built in so I added that to smooth out the peaks and valleys a bit, as I found I was more inclined to play the Bass VI with a pick instead of my fingers. It also has a really quiet effects loop and in that loop I keep original releases of the Diamond Halo Chorus and the large enclosure Memory Lane, which is one of my favourite sounding analog delays. Let’s just say that I had a ton of fun. The EBS Microbass 3 also has a drive channel and while I am not a big user, or even a limited user, of overdriven bass tones, the Bass VI was pretty fun in that mode as well.
I found the instrument so playable, that I sat with it for well over an hour, playing runs, chords and creating riffs. Sometimes an instrument just inspires you to play and try stuff and I am really blown away by how much this instrument does this.
I am aware that there are lots of people who want to throw any instrument made in China under a bus, I suggest that these folks actually try some, as over the last two years, I have experienced superb quality and workmanship, in many cases better than stuff coming out of an American or Mexican factory. Funny that. By the way, here in Canada, MAP is $659.99 which is an incredible value for such a fine instrument.
Getting to Recording
I decided that for the purpose of prepping for recording to start with my Neural plugins. I own both their Darkglass plugin and their Parallax plugin and so I started by plugging direct into a UA Apollo and using those plugins as virtual amplifiers and cabinets, with the sound coming from my studio monitors. It’s pretty glorious sounding. Then I used the Squier Bass VI into my Quad Cortex where I have a number of setups for bass amp/cabs including the expected Ampeg SVT, a Mesa Boogie Subway, and a couple of different MarkBass setups. I used both a Fender 12 inch FRFR for output as well as the DI feed from the Quad Cortex into Logic Pro. Finally I tried my UA Ampeg SVT in Universal Audio’s LUNA DAW. LUNA only runs at this time on macOS, but has been refined since its first release and is a nice and simple, albeit massively efficient DAW. I liked the sounds of the Bass VI in every route, but as my functional setup was into the front of the Apollo and direct to LUNA, I decided that route.
The short clip has five specific segments. The amp / cabinet for all segments is the Bass VI into the Ampeg SVT which is set with all controls at noon and using the 8x10 cabinet sim. I used the following routing for all segments.
The Bass VI went into the Hi Z input on the front of a UA Apollo Twin X. Loaded in the UNISON slot is a Neve 1084 preamp. The signal then goes into the Ampeg SVT. The signal next goes through a Studer A800 Tape Deck because I like the warmth that a little bit of over saturation delivers on bass. Finally, the signal goes into a UA 1176 LN Compressor. I have placed images below so you can see the actual settings used.
As you can see, I am using the mic side of the 1084 to control the input level. You can also see that I have left the EQ settings at the factory default for this preamp.
Next we go into the Ampeg SVT.
This is the UAD plugin using the excellent Brainworx IR for the 8x10 cabinet. The input levels are all at noon and I am plugged into the Normal channel with both the Ultra Hi and Ultra Lo switches turned on. Why? Because I like the sound! I chose the Ampeg SVT because these were very common and very popular stage amplifiers when the original Bass VI was in production, although at the time in a studio, there were also Ampeg B15 bass amplifiers in use.
The final piece of the committed input channel is the Universal Audio 1176 LN. While I own multiple iterations of 1176 plugins, I personally prefer the 1176 LN with bass instruments. You can choose whichever or no compression for yourself, but I find some gentle compression very useful. As you can see in the image, I am using a very light 4:1 compression with a slow attack, so I still get a bit of a spike when the string is struck and a longer release to hold the note until it gets muted or changed. There is a preset that I like called Bass Squeeze that does what I like and so I used that one.
The first segment is the Bass VI played with an open D Major chord with all three pickups active. One of the really wonderful things that I like about the Bass VI is the it can be used as a one octave lower support for the guitar. Indeed if you have a guitar player playing a chord sequence and mix in a Bass VI player playing the same sequence you get a really nice underlayment that widens out the track. You can do the same thing for riffs and runs. The Beatles did both to great effect.
The next three segments are simply the same D Major chord, played with the individual pickups. The sequence goes Neck, Middle, Bridge. You can really hear and feel the difference of the lighter strings of a Bass VI when using only the bridge pickup compared to a traditional bass bridge pickup. Enterprising musicians can fine a use for all three sounds, although the difference between neck and middle is subtle in this take. That’s on me, not the instrument.
For the final segment which is just a bit of noodling in A Minor, I used all three pickups turned on, strangle switch off (because I have yet to find a use for it) and the same input channel.
However to add some breadth and depth I created two separate busses to use with this segment. The use of busses means that I can set the effects to full wet and use the buss send control to determine how much of the original signal gets to the buss and thereby control the level of contribution that the buss makes to the overall mix down. The image at right shows the input levels for each buss. The buss outputs are to the final mix channel.
The first buss that gets a signal is the one labelled chorus. On this I use the UA Brigade Chorus which is an original BOSS CE-1 design, renamed as part of the agreement between UA and BOSS. It is a lovely gentle chorus effect and can be used with great subtlety and I like its contribution to a bass run, or even bass chords if the mix is done to taste. In this recording I am using the Brigade in Dual Chorus mode. It also has a Vibrato mode for those who like that sound. In this case, I did not run the Brigade full wet, because it sounded perfect to me, right at the default setting.
The second buss is called Reverb and Delay although the effects are applied Delay first, then reverb. For the delay I used the UA Galaxy Tape Echo. This was originally called the Roland Space Echo, but a request from Roland resulted in the name change. For anyone who has ever used the superb Space Echo, this plugin is immediately understood and delivers the same wonderful delay options. The image below shows that I am using the Galaxy in a three head delay configuration and in Wet Solo mode. I am not using any of the reverb capability in the Galaxy. The Galaxy also has three tape age settings, I tend to default to the Used setting and it works for me in this recording as well.
The final effect on the Reverb and Delay buss is my favourite studio reverb of all time and that is the EMT 140 plate reverb. This completely analog reverb is magical to me, and you can hear it on a multitude of recordings. Plate reverbs are, in my opinion, best served with subtlety and grace as too much is very overpowering. The EMT 140 has multiple transducers and the one chosen has impact on the general feel and then a set of controls for how much of the effected signal is passed back. I have chosen Plate B and slightly increased the amount of reverb depth for it using the + button on the panel. I have not used any modulation on the reverb, the internal EQ is defeated, and for this recording I used no pre-delay. As you can see in the image, the reverb is set to full Wet so the only signal coming back is the wet signal.
The Sample
I have deliberately put a lot of content here on the recording process and the tools because learning to record, and mix using gear in your own home is a great joy and will make you a more cognizant musician. For those who are not interested, I hope that this very short introduction may encourage you to get a bit interested.
Just for Fun
After I had done all the real work, I had a day or so before the Bass VI was due to be returned, so I decided to record some noodling in LUNA with only a bass amp, no fancy stuff, just an EMT-140 A plate to provide some simple room reverb. The following short track has four different amps in the following sequence that gives you an idea of how flexible the Bass VI can be with different amps. I used each amp in the UNISON slot in LUNA and left their settings to their default. As I said really just hacking about. Enjoy the track if you wish. The amps in order are;
Ampeg B15 1964 Config
Eden WT800 World Tour
Gallien Kruger GK 800RB
Ampeg SVT Pro 3
Wrapping It Up
Despite the amount of discourse on recording, that’s not why any guitarist or bassist should give the Squier Bass VI a try. The reason is how incredibly easy it is to play, the fabulous build quality, the awesome sound, and how much it can extend your sound, whether live or on a recording. Its shorter scale makes it a breeze for a guitarist to pick up, and bassists will find it ideal for faster and more complex bass runs. The three pickups give you lots of options, and with an adjustment of the factory set spring tension on the vibrato, you can even use it to deliver a neat approximation of a fretless bass, a sound that I personally love and why I play my fretless as much as my fretted basses.
I am well aware that there are lots of people who say that Squiers are just cheap Chinese instruments. They are made in China, and they are very inexpensive comparatively speaking. However, the build quality is excellent and the out of the box instrument that I used for this review was as good as any US or Mexico made instrument that I have played, and better than many. Don’t let the opinion of some random numbskull get in the way of your playing joy. The Squier Bass VI is a superb instrument and if you try one and like what you can do with it, you cannot go wrong. By the way, just for yucks as I wrapped up my limited time with the instrument, I played it through my tiny Spark GO. Awesome!
Do I recommend the Squier Bass VI? If it delivers something that you need / want, I say yes, 100%
Thank you as always for reading. Subscribe to be notified of new articles and new podcast episodes. Send in a comment or post a question, I read and respond to all. Again, a big thanks to the fine people at The Arts Music Store for making this review possible. If you live in Canada, you should check out their online store. Until next time, I wish you peace and health.
