B-500 acoustic bass w/piezo ?

I played a Guild acoustic bass guitar last night which I thought was fairly cool. I think the label said B-500, but I haven't found any hits on that name, so maybe I'm not remembering it correctly. It's got a cutaway, kind of a medium depth body for an ABG, oval soundhole, and built in pickup with knobs for volume and active EQ freq/cut and boost protruding from the wood near the neck on the bass side (there's no rectangular cutout, the 2 pots are each mounted over 1/4" holes in the wood and have plastic knobs). It has the big headstock, open geared tuners, and a combination output jack and strap button on the bottom.

Is anyone here familiar with this model ? I liked the neck, it had a lot of relief but it played fine, not the greatest acoustic sound though. I was playing it through an amp with a bunch of little speakers; the basic tone was good but the response was uneven, dropping off considerably when you crossed from below the d string to above it, I wasn't sure if that was the fault of the bass, preamp, or amp. I was curious whether these are considered cool enough that I should try it again through another amp. It's in good shape and while I wasn't specifically in the market for an ABG, I could get it for 750 which seemed like it might be a deal. I could use it as a recording instrument and maybe for low key gigs.

$750 sounds like a good deal to me!

Here's mine,



I forget what I paid for it. I use it a lot for practice un-plugged.

Of course it's even cooler when you have the macthing guitar!

Thanks GoG. The one I saw looks a bit different but fairly close. I'm going to check it out again.

Telesavalasharmonium,

Krush has posted a B-500 for $749 at Guitar Center in sinful Cincinnati.
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=14422&p=150719#p150719

Those are very rare, and one of the few ABG's with maple b&s. In the last 5-10 years, this only the third I've seen.

Since the body volume on these is only about half that of a B-50 about the same as a B-4, I imagine they all sound a bit puny acoustically, but that doesn't matter if you're always going to plug it in.

Pilzer had one about 5-10 years ago, and I thought with the maple b&s it looked better than the B-50 or B-30. What color was the one you saw?

hf

hf, it's maple. The look of it, is all good. Nice neck too. I wish it sounded better acoustically. Seems like it would only work for recording or for very small gigs, it doesn't do much without an amp and conversely at a gig with average to high stage volume it would feed back. Now I would not at all mind recording with it, but I happen to have just bought a fretted upright bass from eastern Europe called a berde, all solid wood with a beautiful spruce top (or maybe something in the pine family), any acoustic bass guitar sounds like a joke next to this thing.