5 String IBW-550 Bass Solid-Body Electric Guitar, Natural

This is a New, High Quality, beautiful bass guitar. The active preamp is very nice. I did put D'addario ETB92M-5 tape wound strings on it. A few modifications to the bridge and nut to get the medium Gauge strings to fit, but nothing unexpected. A few minor adjustments to string height, checked the truss rod, and within an hour I have it very playable.I'm totally impressed with the price and quality. I recommend this Bass to the musicians that want a great bass for a very affordable price.

Nice bass that plays above its price point. Neck through design with their 18v active pickups give this bass a sound and sustain all its own. No sharp frets, no dead spots, tweak to one saddle and she was ready to thump. The 18v electronics are good quality and the pups sound great stock. The satin finish that looks amazing on the walnut and I could not find one finish flaw on this bass. Battery compartment was the low point, breaking on me on first open, but that is a small, cheap fix. This was a great purchase, grab one while you can.

First off, I’m not currently really a bass player. This is my first bass. But, I’ve got a couple of Bass VI style guitars that I use for sub-octave guitar. I wanted an actual bass with bass string spacing, so this seemed like the best “first bass” for a guitarist.The bass now plays really well, looks good and sounds pretty good!! After a setup, it plays as well as my $800-$1200 instruments! Absolutely worth the under $250 I paid!!Now, all the issues:Truss rod came completely slacked and the saddles were all the way down. The bass was completely unplayable out of the box, basically everything was fretting out like half the fretboard above what I played. I raised the action all the way and still had some problems. So, put some relief in the neck (it was dead straight with the truss rod loose, though!) and brought the action back down to a reasonable height. Now it plays fantastic!!The intonation was surprisingly not bad. I haven’t set it fully yet, because I’m planning on putting on the top five strings of a 6-string set as a 5-string tenor bass (mimicking the bottom five strings of a Bass VI). Haven’t gotten to that yet, but I don’t anticipate any issues. If there are, I’ll update this review. I play a whole step down and I really don’t want that low string. D1 is plenty low enough for me.It was supposed to come with the two 9V batteries for the preamp. It did not. I have some coming tomorrow. I wasn’t about to pay $10 each locally. So, no idea how good the preamp is. But, I expect it to be reasonable. Again, if it’s not, I’ll update this review.The pots aren’t the smoothest, but they’re fine for this price. If I get too annoyed, I can replace them. Not worried. The pickups (in passive mode) are decent. I can get it to sound like a good death metal clanking bass tone, so it does what I want. The actual hardware isn’t bad … it’s not great, but it’s all completely reasonable and will hold up.Lastly, the body’s wings are supposed to be Walnut. And, well, that’s the lightest walnut I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s far from the dark brown of walnut I was expecting. There’s other reviews where they’ve sent them back for this (some times multiple times). And, while it annoys me, it’s not a dealbreaker for me. That said, the wood figuring isn’t awful, so no point in sending it back, especially at this price.Half a star off for aesthetics not really matching what was shown. Half a star off for missing batteries, no setup and so-so electronics. Overall, I’m incredibly pleased sky this bass!! I will absolutely be looking at IYV for more instruments in the future!!

After searching for over a month for a nice practice bass, I was about to by a Chinese made when I found this one, (Vietnam). Came right away but the shipper was the guitar box with some shipping damage, but to my surprise the bass was untouched. I went over it for about an hour and only defect found was a small chip on the wide end of the fret board. This is a $700 knock-off, all made on a CNC- (Ibanez, ESP-LTD, Yamaha, etc.). The bridge is quality modern equipment, the turners are ok, the pickups are CNC wound, 3 band passive; 3 lower controls are low, mid, and hi, 18 volt pre-amp for some enhancement pull volume knob for power "off" and the 5th is a fade between bridge and neck pick up, (knobs are painted) . The bridge is made also for thru body stringing if wanted for possibly better sustain. They glued the fret board and body together and ran it on the CNC, turn and finish it, and then a light sands and some wood stain or oil, put it together and shipped it. It is functional but took 3 hours to set up, and I supper strat it; (polish neck and lower frets and board) adjust the neck, finish sand different areas finish trim the plastic cover and sand finish some wood work, remove some factory grime and splats, wiring looks good. Came with D’Addario med. strings. After striating the neck, it was surprisingly very strait, nice frets on ebony. I lowered the action (low), with slight fret buzz which I fixed and it attenuated nice, 24 fret, narrow neck, solid one piece rigid body, light weight and BEAUTIFUL even with the CNC marks. Oh, and it plays nice! Now for the Price, I would buy them all up if I had the money I would finish them and turn them around for much more than what they cost. This is a very nice project bass guitar; some finishing involved and will need to be set up to play. At some point I will finish sand and detail but now its time to play.

I purchased this bass in hopes it would be as nice as some of the other IYV instruments. Unfortunately I didn’t get that lucky. I had to return the bass guitar due to terrible fret buzz and sharp frets. I may have expected too much from a 250 dollar guitar. Or maybe I just got the bad apple in the bunch? I’d hate to condemn the IYV brand due to one bad experience. I had the guitar for 3 days and tried every adjustment under the sun to try to get it to play. The only way is failed to buzz made the action ridiculously high. No truss or bridge adjustments seemed to help. It would just move the buzz and dead frets around the neck. Very disappointing because other than the tuners being very cheap,the guitar looked and sounded great. Very powerful and loud bass. The craftsmanship in the full body set up was also great. With some quality Grover tuners and some more attention given to the neck,it could have been a great guitar. Hope your experience is better than mine.

When I bought this bass I was pretty skeptical but honestly I am pretty impressed. I have played stringed instruments for 30 years and owned many basses, guitars, mandolins, double bass, cellos, violins, ukuleles... needless to say I know my way around stringed instruments. I bought this bass because I wanted to record some tracks in my home studio during quarantine, so I figured I would get something disposable. Wow was I wrong! It sounds great and plays great. This bass is anything but disposable. It is extremely playable and comfortable. Don’t get me wrong there are some trade offs at this price point, for example, the tuners are not amazing and there are small cosmetic flaws but the tuners get the job done and are solid and as for the cosmetic they are extremely minor and barely noticeable. The only thing I don’t like is the gloss finish on the neck. I much prefer a more matte finish on the neck but it’s nothing a bit of 0000 steel wool can’t solve. Also, the fret ends are just a little sharp but this too can be easily fixed and nothing a $1200 guitar wouldn’t suffer from. I now fully intend on keeping this instrument in my studio. Again, I can’t stress enough how much I am impressed about the quality at this price. I am blown away.

I could not believe my eyes when I unbox the bass. It looked so amazing, look so expensive, it felt so smooth and the finish was so professional design. Active and passive activation, pickup sounds great and I have no plans to replace them, the bridge is solid, the tuner works very well because it stays in tune, the neck is thin which makes the bass very playable and to me it's not heavy at all. I order new strings(SIT) power steel for it, but the strings came with it are not bad it's just my favorite are SIT's. The bass looks, feels, plays and sound like basses that I've owned and played that cost 4 to 5 times the cost of the IYV 550. Guys and Gals please get one before the word gets out, because for just a little over $200 that price now is unreal for a bass with all the different sounds that it gives and to mention a neck thru bass, it's no way you'll find one for that price. I've played bass for over 40 years, and it would have been nice to have had this beautiful thing during the Disco, and Funk during the 80's. One more thing it required no setup, just tuned it right out of the box and went right to thumping.

Bass guitar received was not as described. It was supposed to be solid walnut the back was not walnut. Seemed to be made well though . After a set up it plays great and is a looker. Haven't tried it yet thru my bass rig at church. I was disappointed that it wasn't as advertised and the packaging was single boxed . It arrived with a small crack at the tip of headstock. A little glue and sanding took care of it. That makes 6 IYV guitars and this 1 bass. I have been pretty satisfied with these guitars for a very affordable price. Returning this and trying another. If not as advertised it will go back and I will try something different.***Just received the second one : Another headstock tip broken out. These are not walnut . The second one is lighter colored than the first. I dont get why they are boxing these in single ply cardboard.At least use heavy grade cardboard. Very disappointed they could be a great instrument .**** The third one came today .It was perfect and double boxed. Set up perfectly and solid walnut wings as advertised. Very thankful . I can now change my rating from a 2 star to a 5 star.

Awesome bass. Out of the box and into the rig it holds up to any high end bass I own.Highly recommend.