Bass Gear Review

Reviewer	M. Thorn
Experience	25
Review date	March 07 2002
Manufacturer	Phantom Guitar Works
Model	Phantom BW Teardrop Hollow Body
Price	$439
Item owned for	Less than 1 month

Bass type	4 string fretted
Neck join	Bolt-On
Neck construction	maple
Fingerboard	rosewood, med-scale
Body	hollow, semi-acoustic
Finish	black w/creme binding and pickguard
Pickups	two mini blade humbuckers, mfg. unknown
Hardware	cheap
Electronics	passive

What a beautiful piece of crap! Clearly, this is an instrument where more attention was put into looks, rather than playability and sound quality. Adjusting the neck was a friggin' nightmare, due to the fact that it has to be removed completely to access the truss rod nut. It can be done, but even after several adjustments I couldn't get the action set right. The only way to avoid fret buzz was to keep the strings high. Maybe it's related to the string height, but I also found a huge discrepancy in volume between the E and A strings. The A was noticeably louder than the E, even with heavy compression. The pickups themselves weren't bad. I read another player's review where he said the pickups hummed or hissed excessively. I actually found them to be fairly quiet. They are, however, low-output pickups, so maybe the signal-to-noise ratio was what bothered him. The volume and tone controls were adequate, I guess. It's really hard to tell, because I couldn't seem to pinpoint the reason this thing sounded so blah. The hardware on this thing is downright cheap. One must take great care when turning any of the screws, as you may very well strip the heads. The finish on this thing was adequate, I suppose. They probably could have put on another coat of polyurethane or whatever it is they use. As for the sound...I tweaked everything I could but could not get a decent sound out of this thing. It was either too "clicky" or too boomy. I once owned an Epiphone Jack Casady, and I was kind of hoping this thing would sound similar. No matter how I tried, however, I couldn't seem to find that "sweet" tone. I may as well have been playing an old Teisco Del Rey. It's a cool-looking bass, but if were any of you, I'd steer clear.

Construction	75%
Appearance	90%
Playability	75%
Sound	50%
Value	50%
Overall	50%