Johnson/AXL AP-315 5-string bass review

[Gruuve]

Hey folks:

 

I picked this up with the intention of donating it to my church (bass only). It's a Stingray copy, 5-string, passive pickup with active preamp, volume, bass, and treble controls...brand new, still had the plastic covering on the pickups and pickguard. The amp is a little Johnson AXL B3J 30 watt practice amp. AXL is apparently made by Johnson. I recall playing a Johnson bass or two in stores...they were OK for the budget price, so that's why I decide to pull the trigger on this one.

 

http://www.ipass.net/davesisk/music/pics/JohnsonAXL_AP315.jpg

 

Best I could determine beforehand, the bass has a street price of about $250, the amp's street price is about $100. I picked up both (plus a gig bag and stand) for around $100.

 

Fedex dropped it off tonight. As I expected, the bass itself plays pretty darned nice for such a budget bass, and it sounds good unplugged. The neck is very straight, the action was set very VERY low, and essentially no fret buzz even with it set so low. Cool on that front. Looks good (it's black so you know it's loud). A few sharp corners on the frets, but that's no biggie. A loose strap button...gimme the screwdriver...done.

 

Also potentially anticipated, the onboard electronics seem to really stink. Best I could tell through headphones (it's late here), it doesn't sound bad in and of itself, but there doesn't seem to be any headroom. Digging into the strings gives you distortion rather than growl or punch. I've dropped the pickup about as low as I can get it, and also raised the action a little, but it still distorts when played with conviction. The disortion goes away if you turn the volume control down, so I think that narrows it down to the onboard preamp. (If my analysis sounds wrong, someone please brick me up side the head! ) This might be acceptable, since it does seem like the output is quite high, but it's hard to tell for sure through headphones. I'll know a little better tommorrow when I can make some noise with it. (Just to note, it is possible that it's high output is causing distortion somewhere else in the signal chain...I'll check that tommorrow when I don't have to be quiet...but my first impression is that the distortion is coming from the onboard preamp.)

 

Anyway, I'm thinking I could fairly easily replace the stock preamp with an EMG-BTS, Bartolini NTBT, Aguilar OBP-2 if I can find any of these fairly cheap (looks like the best price is $75 on the EMG-BTS). I've got to hear it through my rig tommorrow though to assess if this is truly necessary. Adding a after-market preamp still puts it under the apparent new street price.

 

In terms of sound, it doesn't sound at all like an MM of course (didn't expect it to), but it certainly doesn't sound bad. Seems to have a reasonable balance of lows, mids, and highs. Of course, it is a bit hard to truly tell with the onboard preamp distorting!

 

I haven't tried out the little 30watt 10" practice amp yet. I seriously doubt it's anything impressive, but it is quite heavy so I might be pleasantly surprised. I don't need it for bass, but I'm thinking it might actually work nicely as a small guitar amp if I put a pedal in front of it. I'll assess that tommorrow also.

 

I figured it was worth posting a review just in case someone is considering one of these in the future.

 

Dave

[carpedebass]

Well, how's it sound through your rig?

[Gruuve]

I played this guy through my rig this morning for a bit. I tried it through my modeler pedal into the amp, and just straight into the amp. It has a nice sound to it for a budget bass...lots of presence, a fairly tight sounding bottom, and sufficient highs to have a modern sound. As I said before, seems to be a fairly balanced sound. I'll reiterate that this inexpensive bass plays really well...it's surprising how low you can get the action with no fret buzz. I'd say it has an excellent neck.

 

The onboard electronics still distort with any aggressive playing at all. It's not quite as obvious through a rig as it is with headphones, but you can still hear it if you listen closely. Even with the volume turned way down, I can still hear a little bit of distortion. Now, I don't think pickups themselves can overload (can they? someone correct me if I'm wrong here), so I'm still thinking it's got to be the onboard preamp/EQ. I took the cavity cover off to see if there's a trim pot...no dice. I couldn't find any mfg name on the preamp, which is just a small board with one of the pots physically attached to it (it then mounts to the metal cavity cover on the front using that one mounted pot, similar to EMG's aftermarket preamps).

 

The pickups are supposedly passive, so I'm wondering if I can jumper some wires to bypass the preamp and see how the pickups by themselves sound (they are supposedly passive, but this may or may not work, depending on how much output they have).

 

When I took the cavity off (which is held on my 6 wood screws), I saw that the wood was split where one of the screws is. This would be an indication to me that they didn't pre-drill the screw holes when they assembled it, and just ran the screws straight in. I guess you have to cut costs somewhere in the mfg process for a budget bass. I can glue this and it'll be fine...just wouldn't want the screw to actually fall out since it doesn't seat tightly in the split area. At least they seem to have put a lot of attention to detail in the neck, which is the most crucial part of a budget bass.

 

It's a shame that the electronics are fairly crappy...unplugged this bass sounds surprisingly nice (which is why I'm even considering switching out the preamp).

 

I also tried out the AXL B3J amp this morning. It has a pretty good sound as long as you leave the volume no higher than about half...above that and it starts to distort, and the expanded metal grill on the front starts to rattle (I can probably fix the rattle though). The EQ on it seems fairly musical...the presence knob in particular does what it should. The driver didn't seem to rattle even with the lows cranked all the way up (but, it was hard to tell for sure with the metal grill rattling). It has a headphone out jack, but no RCA-input (for a CD player, etc.) So, for bass, it would do as a cheap bedroom self-practice amp...it's tone was fairly good considering the price. However, you can't crank it very much, and even if you could, it's only 30 watts (supposedly)...it would probably keep up with a loud but unamplified acoustic guitar, but I doubt it would keep up with a piano played loudly...definitely not with acoustic drums.

 

So, I tried it as a guitar amp...put an old guitar multiFX pedal in front of it. Now that works pretty well...30 watts is a lot for guitar unless you really crank the lows. It would go quite loud, and sounded pretty good. It seemed to have lots of higher-midrange presence. So, I may actually keep it just to occasionally use for guitar.

 

So, what I have to decide is do I go ahead and donate this to my church as is, do I replace the preamp then re-assess, or do I just sell it and find something else that plays as well but also sounds better. Would I play this bass myself (if I didn't have any others) as is? Probably not, and that tells me that it wouldn't be right for me to donate it to church as is either. I'd either replace the preamp or sell it and get something else. So, I'll probably set up a onboard preamp search on Ebay and see if I get any hits over the next couple days, then re-assess from there.

 

Dave

[groover]

Dave, I do believe your asssesment is correct that the distortion is coming from the on board preamp. I used to have an ESP LTD B-205 with EMG Hz Pickups and an EMG active circuit. Not long after I purchased it I realized that it had the the same problem your experiencing with the Johnson. Agressive playing on the E and B string = distortion. After doing a little research on EMG's web site, I discovered that all of their circuits can handle up to 27 volts (Three 9 Volt batteries in series), though they recommend 18 volts for best performance.

 

So I wired another battery clip in series and tested the bass at 18 volts. This gave the added headroom that was needed. I could play as agressively as I wanted with no distortion.

 

I don't know if the circuit in that bass could handle 18 volts, it could be a repackaged EMG. I know that the circuit in my ESP was a cheaper version of the after market stuff EMG sells. I don't believe it would hurt anything to wire another battery in there and test it, but I don't want to recommend it either. If you decide that your definately going to replace the preamp, try the added battery first. If you fry the circuit then well you were going to replace it any way. If it works, then you just saved yourself the $75+ of replacing it.

[Gruuve]

I knew there was a reason I posted this here. The extra battery is a great idea...don't know why I didn't think of that.

 

In all fairness, I probably shouldn't actually say the onboard preamp stinks. It's very difficult to be objective with things like this (good/bad vs. personal like/dislike). There may be folks who actually like getting a little distortion out of the onboard preamp. In fact, who knows...perhaps the mfg designed it that way as a budget means of trying to simulate the Musicman growl (it IS a Stingray copy, after all). So, what I really should say is that it doesn't fit my tastes, not necessarily that it's just objectively bad!

 

Dave

[Gruuve]

OK, one more update. I tried to find the right wires to jumper the passive pickups straight to the output jack...no dice there. But, I have found that if I turn the volume control only about 1/3 of the way on, I don't seem to get any distortion even with reasonably aggressive playing. So maybe that's the simple answer (the output is ridiculously hot with the volume full on). Or even better, there's wires that go to the volume pot from the preamp and back (I would have expected the output of the preamp to go to the volume pot, then the jack, but that doesn't seem to be how it's wired), so perhaps I could simply wire a resister or a trim pot between the preamp and the volume pot as a level-limiting adjustment?

 

Dave