Review of Aria Acoustic Bass - FEB-FLLVS

I've had this memorably named bass for a while now. I mainly play electric bass, and I like fretless for the variety of tones that it can produce.  The Aria is very well priced and has a surprising number of good features despite this.  I bought mine secondhand and if you can find one this means you get a huge amount of instrument for your money.

The price point is only really noticeable in a few finish niggles.  The worst is that the truss rod rattles very slightly in the neck when certain notes on the bass are played hard.  The rest are just the standard small blemishes due to lack of time for the workers finishing the guitar, but no deal breakers.

The positives greatly outweigh this.  First off the acoustic sound is louder than most acoustic basses I have played, this I guess is down to the huge body this model has which allows it to displace plenty of air.  The lower bout is 16.5 inches or 420mm, and the soundbox is 4.72 inches deep or 120mm.  I think the fact that the bass has f-holes also helps with a more double bass sound.  The soundboard is an x braced laminated spruce, nothing too special here, but it is thin enough to be resonant.  The sides are a beautiful flamed nato laminate, and bound with wood rather than plastic which is a very luxurious touch at this price.  The bass feels very light, and I think this also helps with resonance.  The bridge is a nicely cut piece of rosewood and the strings feed through this with pins in standard flat top tradition.

The pickup is a under saddle piezo with a decent pre-amp and tuner built in.  No complaints here, though I prefer to record this using a microphone to get the full acoustic range.

The fretboard is a well manufactured and finished piece of rosewood and my bass is strung with flat wound strings which give this instrument more of a double bass vibe, with a nice bit of slap onto the fretboard if you want that effect.  The neck is nato with a rosewood veneer to the headstock.  the tuners work well and the bass stays in tune extremely well.

I use this bass to play some jazz numbers we do with the band, when I want a more acoustic sound.  It does tend to feed back at higher volumes, so you have to be more careful about positioning the amp compared to an electric bass.  Unplugged I think it would just hold its own against an acoustic guitar, but would quickly get lost with more instruments even though it is quite loud compared to other acoustic basses I have tried.

All in all I am very happy with this bass, which was a bit of a spur of the moment purchase.