For the past couple years I've been looking for an excellent quality five string that could provide me with the sound of a good Fender Precision Bass. That has proven to be a pretty elusive quarry, until now.

I've been playing since the early 70s, and over the years I've owned Precisions (old ones back in the 70s, an American Standard, and a '57 Reissue, Jazzes (again old ones in the 70s, and a '97 Jazz Deluxe US model), a Tobias Classic V five string with 34" scale, and most recently I've been playing a Lakland Deluxe 55/94, which has been my favorite bass overall of all of them.

I had about given up the search when I stumbled across Roger Sadowsky's website and his announcement of his new "Vintage PJ5" model. I was thinking, "if ANYONE could build a great five string with the sound of a great Precision Bass, it would be Roger Sadowsky".

I checked with Roger, he didn't have any in stock, and I really didn't want to order one and wait 3-5 months for it. Roger also noted some of the Nashville studio greats who are now using Sadowskys... Glen Worf, Michael Rhodes, Willie Weeks, Mike Brignardello and others. These folks are some of my favorite players (I play country almost exclusively). Of course, I also know that several of these folks also play Lakland five strings. Roger also sent me what turned out to be TWENTY NINE PAGES when I printed them out for "bathroom reading" of testimonials from Sadowsky owners, many of which were culled from TBL.

I emailed the three Sadowsky dealers in the United States asking them if they had something in stock or due to arrive soon.

Evan Sheeley at Bass Northwest responded as soon as he got back from NAMM that he had a PJ5 in Olympic White coming in, and that it was due to arrive in a couple days. Then in a couple days, it showed up on Bass NW's website, pictures and all. I was toast. I had to have it. Bass Northwest FedExed it to me, Saturday delivery.

Wow! Neat case, unlike any guitar or bass case I've seen before. It's made by "The Modern Case Company", and the outer layer is heavy black Cordura nylon with no latches or metal hardware. Even the handle is nylon webbing, and there is a sizeable zippered pocket on the outside. YKK zippers hold it closed, and the case is very light, but MUCH bigger than my Lakland's hard case. It has a hard shell (I don't know what the shell is made of, but as I said, it's much lighter than other guitar/bass hardshell cases I've seen. Inside, the case is lined with grey velour and very tightly form-fitted to the bass, with room for quite a few accessory items. Roger supplied a quality "Bondhus" allen wrench for bridge adjustments and the mating hardware for your strap to mate it to the standard Dunlop straplocks that are on the bass.

Which brings us to... the bass.

This particular Sadowsky is finished in Olympic White (with a nice "aged" color, almost a creamy yellowish light tan). I'm a big fan of classic looking instruments, and this one has a tortoiseshell pickguard and the headstock is painted to match the body. Gives it kind of a Mary Kaye vibe. VERY classy and classic-looking.

It has a Brazilian Rosewood fingerboard with what has to be the BEST fretwork I have ever seen on an instrument. All frets are highly polished, fit properly, level and no file marks on the ends. Mine is a 21 fret neck (hey, I'm a country player, I don't play up there anyway... the money is below the 10th fret ;-)). The profile of the neck feels VERY similar to my Lakland. I didn't "A/B" them by gripping one and then the other, but my hands felt immediately at home on the Sadowsky neck. String spacing is the same as my Lakland at the bridge too.

Roger uses a string keeper that is similar to the one on the Lakland, a horizontal bar across the strings just beyond the nut, although the Sadowsky's is spring loaded where the Lakland's is not. Like the Lakland, Roger uses Hipshot UltraLight tuners, which I've found to be excellent quality tuners and which really help the balance of both instruments. They both hang naturally from the strap without any tendency of the headstock end to want to "dive".

I checked the relief on the neck, and there is NONE, with the action set right where it feels great to me. I've found I normally like a tad of relief on the Lakland, but the Sadowsky plays perfectly without any buzzes or dead spots exactly as set up at the factory. I see no reason to change it, so I haven't. I checked the 12th fret intonation, it's perfect.

The bridge on the Sadowsky is a very heavy duty Gotoh bridge, completely adjustable and featuring "quick change" stringing. No "through body" stringing on the Sadowsky. For studio and gigging players, the quick change feature is probably desirable, and since that's the audience for Roger's basses, I can see why he went with that design.

The Sadowsky is fitted with Roger's strings, which are stainless roundwounds with a tapered B. Roger tells me they are specially wound for Sadowsky by LaBella. Generally, I'm not a big fan of stainless strings for my style of playing. These are quite bright and "grand piano-esque", which is probably wonderful for most folks, but it isn't my preferred sound. I generally prefer the warmer sound and smoother feel of nickel strings. More on this later.

The Sadowsky PJ5 is available in many configurations with many options. One option is to have the staggered P pickup set mounted in reverse from the normal P configuration, ie: with the pickup that covers the B and E strings closer to the bridge than the one that covers the other three strings. This apparently increases the "pop" on the G string and tightens the sound of the B string somewhat, which is an option favored by slappers and poppers. I'm a fingerstyle country player, so I opted for the standard setup for the classic P tone. Roger recommends the alder body / rosewood fretboard combination to go further toward that tone. That's the combination mine has.

See http://www.sadowsky.com/images/pj5.jpg

My PJ5 looks like the one on the left, but the pickup setup is like the one on the right.

Roger tells me that the pickups on this bass are active, although it does have a preamp bypass that is activated by pulling up on the bass knob. It has Roger's magnificent preamp which is a "boost only" design for the bass and treble. So when you roll them completely back, you get a flat response. It really does sound the same when the preamp is bypassed compared to the flat settings with the preamp engaged, it's just a bit louder with the preamp on. The tonality is the same.

An option I wish mine had but didn't is Roger's "passive tone control" option. This is usable with or without the preamp, but gives you the capability to roll off the treble, which is not possible with the standard setup. Roger sold me a retrofit kit to install this option, and I had it installed by a local luthier. Just what the doctor ordered.

I played the bass acoustically for a while before plugging it into an amp (we had done a two-night gig and my Eden setup was still at the gig), and noticed that like my Lakland, this instrument is very "live" acoustically. I can feel the vibrations in my chest when I play it unamplified, and when I press my ear against the upper horn of the body and play it, the tone is rich and full. This is really in keeping with Roger's philosophy that if it

doesn't sound good acoustically it isn't going to sound good amplified, and my experience with both the Lakland and the Sadowsky tell me this is true.

Flipping the bass over, the neck is affixed to the body with four screws in metal inserts. The neck pocket is VERY tight and well-fitted. The finish on the back of the necks on both basses is very similar, with a satin smooth feel. I believe the Lakland's neck is sealed with tung oil, I don't know what Roger uses... but they feel the same and look the same. They are both magnificent to the touch.

The Sadowsky has a neat battery compartment that allows you to change the battery without opening the control cavity. I opened the cavity cover on the Sadowsky to check the fabled Sadowsky workmanship.

The first thing I noticed was that the Sadowsky uses regular wood screws into the body wood to affix the cover. The Lakland uses machine screws into metal inserts, which I like. I remember how easily the wood screws holding on the cover on my Tobias stripped, and I resorted to stuffing toothpicks into the screw hole to tighten them up. I was somewhat surprised to see Roger didn't use the machine screw / insert method on his basses, but in thinking about it, because the battery is in a separate compartment, there really isn't any reason to open the Sadowsky's compartment other than to take a peek in there. So it's probably not an issue.

Some differences in the contents of these compartments and the shielding on the Lakland and the Sadowsky: The Lakland is very nicely done, with copper shielding covering the entire compartment including the underside of the removable cover and even extending out to the other routed compartments. The Sadowsky in contrast is done with carbon conductive paint, with all grounds run to a single point.

The wiring on both is very clean, but the Lakland's compartment is definitely "busier", probably due to the three band EQ and the coil switching on the MM pickup. They're both neatly done, but the Sadowsky is even cleaner than the Lakland in here. On the Sadowsky, the compartment is fairly large, but there isn't much in there. You can see the underside of the chrome control plate the pots are mounted to, and the preamp is there mounted on a small circuit board and apparently encapsulated in something black (epoxy, maybe?), but what's in there takes up very little of the available room. I wonder if the large compartment is done for weight saving or resonance reasons? It's MUCH larger than it needs to be to contain what's in there. The underside of the lid for the Sadowsky's compartment is signed by somebody (maybe Roger, I can't read it, and "NYC").

Another body detail on the Sadowsky... Roger's attention to detail is outstanding. For instance, the standard Dunlop straplock buttons are mounted with a white felt washer between the base of the button and the body. The Lakland has the same thing, but uses black felt washers.

Both basses have a heavy chromed metal plate on the lower bottom edge of the bass that holds the output jack. Very solid and prevents you screwing up the finish on the bass while feeling for the input jack with the end of your 1/4" plug. Nice.

OK, enough about the physical features. On to what it's all about, the TONE.

This thing sounds like a good Precision Bass. I've tried other P/J setups from Fender and others, and they don't sound like Ps and they don't sound like Jazzes. This thing, with the pan pot rolled all the way to the Precision pickup, sounds like my '57 Reissue with the Duncan Antiquity pickup set in it. REALLY. It sounds like a P Bass but with an awesome B string.

For me, the Lakland has the B against which all others must be measured. It speaks SO clearly and authoritatively. Dan Lakin has gone to great pains to perfect the sound of that B string. My Lakland has the birdseye maple fingerboard, and that, combined with the 35" scale, through body stringing, taperwound B, heavy bridge, and even little details like having the B string tuner located about 2 1/2 inches above the nut to make the overall string length longer combine to make the Lakland's B string still the best I've heard.

The Sadowsky's B is also terrific. The Lakland does have a slight edge on clarity and tightness of the B string sound (but again, remember that I opted for the standard staggered P pickup option rather than the reverse P that Roger says tightens up the sound of the B string). But really in a performance situation you can't judge which has the better B. I played the Sadowsky at a gig last night where I'd used the same rig with my Lakland the night before, on the same bunch of songs, with the amp set up in exactly the same place.

I was playing through the following:

XWire Wireless -> Eden Navigator -> QSC PLX-1602 -> Eden D-115XLT

(small club, so I hadn't brought the D-210XLT that normally resides on top of the D-115XLT)

I found that the EQ I use for the Lakland was way too bright for the Sadowsky. It had that big round grand piano sound due to the stainless strings and the inability to roll off the treble below flat as I normally do on the Lakland. I found (no doubt due to my poor technique) the string and fretting noise to be objectionable and the "wiry" tone not to my liking. I rolled back the passive tone control and got just what I was looking for.

I rolled on just a tad of bass boost on with the pan pot set to the middle for both pickups mixed. Man! Big, round, punchy sound with no boominess. Rolling the pan pot to the Jazz pickup at the bridge position makes this thing sound like a VERY good Jazz, but with NO HUM whatsoever. I mean, there were neon beer signs not more than a foot from the Navigator and not four feet from the bass, and NO HUM. Try THAT with a Fender Jazz! (I also get zero hum from the Lakland in the same situation), but our guitar player's old Tele was buzzin' like a bastard 15 feet away from those beer signs.

Rolling to the P-Bass pickups, and lo and behold, it's a P-Bass with an awesome B string! Exactly what I'd been searching for. For country, this bass is exactly what the doctor ordered. I couldn't be more pleased. My bandmates also commented that they liked both the classic look of the Sadowsky _and_ the tone. It's gonna be my main gigging axe from now on.

Because my hands aren't all that big, I also find the 34" scale to be kinder to my hands. We do a lot of stuff that involves walking basslines that cover a four fret range, and although I've been playing the Lakland's 35" scale for a while now, it's still a stretch for me, especially down around the third fret. People with bigger hands probably wouldn't have the problem, and it hasn't really been a BIG problem for me, but the Sadowsky is definitely easier on my hands.

Mr. Roger Sadowsky's received so many accolades about his incredible instruments and his customer-oriented attitude. The man truly cares about his customers and is VERY responsive to emails and questions. I'm sure I bugged him a lot with my questions, but he was always the complete gentleman, providing very quick answers.

So, I'm thoroughly delighted with my new Sadowsky PJ5. It has in one day displaced my beloved Lakland as my #1 axe, and I'm happy to be a new member of the Sadowsky player family.

Construction	100%
Playability	100%
Appearance	100%
Sound	100%
Value	100%
(expensive, but worth every dime!)
Cust. Service	100%
Overall	100%