Ibanez GSR 200 Review

I picked up this bass guitar two years ago as my first bass. I attended a music school at the time and they needed a bass player for a couple of songs so I bought a bass and learned the songs. It should be noted that I only use the bass for practicing and recording. I don't play shows so it wouldn't know how it cuts through the live mix or anything of that nature. The bass is as heavy as my Charvette by Charvel so I would say around five to six pounds. It's not the heaviest bass I've played and since it weighs about the same as my Charvel, my shoulders don't hurt after and hour or two of playing. The bass has a cherry red finish which I like a lot and is quite striking. The neck is a maple with a rosewood fretboard and it's remarkably thinner than other bass necks. At the point in time when I bought bass I had been playing guitar for three years, mainly on my Charvel and my Epiphone SG 400. The transition was effortless in that respect. It felt like I was playing one of my guitars, just with thicker strings and a slightly longer neck width wise. I believe it's the curve of the neck that's smaller, making it easier to play that a chunkier neck that could be found on a Fender Jazz bass.

This bass is also my first instrument that required a 9 Volt battery. I tried to stay away from using instruments that required batteries at the time because I just felt they were another hassle or hindrance for me, but having an active bass provided to be useful when I needed to use its "bass booster" feature and onboard EQ. It has the master volume, bass booster, treble, and bass knobs for the EQ so it is easy to adjust your tone on the go. Since I was new to onboard EQ's, this blew my damn mind when I really started tinkering with it. The split coil and single pickup sounds alright. Seeing as how it's a budget bass, I wasn't expecting a lot in terms of the pickups. The way the pickups are placed, it lets you rest your thumb at the neck and bridge pickup. Since I believe they are ceramic pickups, the tone isn't great... but I hope at $200 you weren't expecting a Geddy Lee tone. I've plugged this into my Digitech RP255 guitar pedal and put it on a clean setting so I could record straight into my laptop for backing tracks. It sounds decently good, but nothing stellar.

The bass as a whole is a pretty good and it is fantastic like beginners so that they can test the waters and see if they really want to stick with it. The neck is smaller than most basses so it isn't a hassle, the pickups could be better, but are good for the price, the EQ is fun to mess around with to get a few different tones, the finish is stunning. I'd rate the bass a 7/10. If the pickups were a little bit better, I'd personally deem it a fantastic instrument. Regardless, I use this bass a lot and it has never caused me any issues in the two full years I have owned it.