If you know what you are purchasing this is a tremendous bass for the cost of admission! I must preface my review as I come from a Fender bass guitar background; therefore, it is biased as I have no experience with Ibanez designs. So here goes: Gary Willis describes his GWB design as a user interface. I believe this is an apt description since it offers considerable features in a simple package. This bass includes an ash body with a bolt-on neck and one pickup with ultra-simple controls. The specially designed machine head tuners assist with easy and accurate tuning. The pickup and its placement is somewhere between the traditional neck jazz position and the Music Man humbucker position. This giving a rich thick and crisp tone with the active preamp when played through my Aguilar 350 amp and SL 112 cabinet. The neck for me has the lowest action I have previously played allowing for a light left hand touch up and down the neck. While some may not be prepared for the 16.5mm close string spacing it offered me the advantage for playing quick melodic passages. I understand Jaco could do it with a standard jazz bass but being a mere mortal, I must take every advantage I can! Now the drawbacks for me. Gary previously states in product videos that his design typically has a lightweight body and my example is 9 lbs. 15 ounces! I understand that this isn't heavy for many five stringers but having spoken to other GWB205 owners' theirs weighs in around the 8lbs. range. Additionally, I know that GWB205 models used to ship with a hard-shell case compared to the thinner gig bag. Please note, neither of my issues affect playability and I still would highly recommend this bass guitar to any player willing to put the time into this fretless system.

Alex

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