pjmuck wrote:
Ash vs. alder? Or were all of these made from ash?
All this talk about ATKs had me digging mine out last night for a spin. Mine weighs a ton, but man, what a bass. I dare say, I think I like these better than Stingrays. 'Rays may have a slight edge in the tone dept., but it's close, and these are more versatile with the switch and the playability is better, IMO, especially for slapping.
I just put mine on the bathroom scale. 11lbs, give or take.
Speaking of visual differences, Carmine, is it just your picture or do your two have different pickguard screws? They look more pronounced in the top one and/or black in the second one. Also note that Danos has 8 pickguard screws and not 7 like ours.
Holy crap Batman- 11 lbs? Amazing that you can have over 2 lbs of variation in the weight of a guitar sized hunk of the same wood- but then we've all seen enough old Fenders to know it's not unheard of. We need a few more weigh-ins for the sample group, but maybe I've got 2 of the lighter ones at 8.8 and 9.8 lbs. Now I'm REALLY tickled to have picked up this 8.8 pounder! As far as I know, all the originals were made from Ash and both mine look to be Ash although the lighter one is less grainy. I don't know if the reissues are Ash or not.
On my first one yes it has black pickguard screws in it- do you like that look? As far as Dano's 8 screws, it looks like one was added on the top side and I'm not surprized because these pickguards had a tendency to warp pretty easily so it's probably helping to hold it down. My first one has a small bit of a warp in that same area.
I'm with you, all this talk about our ATKs has gotten me re-invigorated about them in general- but wow, these things are really awesome tone machines, and so balanced and comfortable to play. I don't know why my first one had fallen out of the rotation at some point, because I played the hell out of it for quite awhile when I first got it. I know a lot has been made about the "poor man’s Stingray" thing that Ibanez was supposedly going for, but at the risk of offending some purist somewhere I have to say IMO the ATK300 kicks the Stingray’s ass! Yes I have my Stingray, and it is a higher quality instrument than the ATK300. But I kinda struggle to find my sound in it, and there’s really only one sound that I like from it… whereas the ATK300 just GIVES you sounds and more sounds- it’s way more versatile and you don’t have to go searching to get what you want. In fact if I had to live with only one bass to cover every situation, the ATK300 would be on my short list.