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Hohner B2A - $850
http://leftybassist.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=10866		 Page 1 of 1
Author:  bpa11 [ April 20th, 2021, 7:36 pm ]
Post subject:  Hohner B2A - $850
Looks cool. Never touched one before.

https://losangeles.craigslist.org/wst/m ... 62184.html

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Author:  Jeroen [ April 21st, 2021, 12:12 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Hohner B2A - $850
They're incredibly cool! I've never owned or even touched a real Steinberger, so I can't compare. I did however own one of these B2A's for a few months, and had a ton of fun with it. They're solid maple (3-piece neck through, and maple body wings) with a comfortably narrow but fairly thick neck. They're lightweight, very comfortable, and mine sounded great in active mode but the passive Select by EMG humbuckers sounded very dull when played passive.

These basses have a few quirks that will not be for everybody:
- The ergonomics are WEIRD!
  • The upper strap button is behind the 21st fret, so hanging from a strap, the nut is pretty far away from your body and fretting the 1st fret requires quite a stretch;
  • Seated, there's a little folding leg rest on the bottom of the body that works a treat. Again though, the 1st fret is still pretty far away;
  • The string spacing at the bridge is 17-18mm, slightly narrower than most 4-strings.
- The bass only takes double ball-end strings. Though there are mods available that you can anchor behind the headpiece in which you can clamp regular strings with an allen nut;
- The bridge saddles are only held in place by the downward force of the strings and a small lockscrew that clamps them together from the side. Adjusting action and intonation requires some finesse if you don't want to mess up the intonation of the other 3 strings in the process. What's worse: on lefty instruments, the lockscrew is blocked by the bridge volume pot!

If all of that doesn't bother you, these are great basses that play and sound great, and the compact size means it's even shorter than a Strat guitar so you can easily carry it anywhere. I had mine fitted with Status Hotwire .040-.100 strings, and it almost played itself. I have to say the one above is pretty expensive though. I paid €350 for mine without a gigbag, and sold it for €400 with a quality Rockbag.
Author:  superheavydeathmetal [ April 21st, 2021, 5:50 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Hohner B2A - $850
Yep! I had a B2AV and it was an awesome bass! I sold it in favor of a B2A, and it is also excellent!

I found the trick to adjusting the action and intonation to be to start with the string farthest away from the locking screw and work your way towards it. So, it would be:

1) Start with the string farthest away from the lock screw that you want to adjust and slacken the string.
2) Unlock the bridge saddles
3) Adjust the action and intonation. As Jeroen said, the other saddles will not move due to the downward force applied onto them by the strings.
4) Lock the bridge saddles
5) Re-tune the string
6) Check the action and intonation.
7) Repeat steps 1 through 6 as necessary.
8) Move to the next-farthest string from the lock screw and repeat.

It may sound like a lot of steps, but it is actually quite simple and goes quickly. I never could decide of the bridge design is for its simplicity, or chintzy. :lol: But, I have no complaints.

I would recommend just getting double-ball strings. Headlessusa.com sells string adapters and they are great to do business with, but I have found that to get them to work properly with bass strings, you need to pull off the windings of the E and A strings, maybe even the D, so that the adapter screw can clamp onto the core of the string because the core can actually slide out of the winding when tension is applied.

And yeah, standing with these is really awkward unless you are like Blablas and can whip up some creative little modification off the top of your head.

All in all, these do have their quirks (I have always loved the tight string spacing, personally) but I love them!
Author:  fivebass52 [ April 21st, 2021, 7:39 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Hohner B2A - $850
I currently have a Hohner B2A, 5-string, in Red.... the last time I played it at a rehearsal (couple of months ago) the guys in the band were very impressed with how "big" the sound, and tone was... as Jeroen says, it takes some getting used to because the nut is so far away from the fretting hand... I've always meant to source a lighter-gauge string set for it; as the current strings are very taught, which makes for more pressure to press them down... still, it's a great travel bass, and looks very cool...

I've got to say, $850 is a rather high asking price - I don't recall them being that expensive when they were new.. more like $450-600 at the time...
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