Ibanez GSRM20B-WNF 5-stars Reviews

Little but powerful

I was a little bit concerned about the dimensions but the sound it's amazing for the price! Recommended

Light and comfortable

Great choice for: guitar players and amateur bassists.

Wow!

Arrived today, it’s a lot smaller than I expected. Beautiful finish, quality made, great sound. Recommended.

Great bass for the money

The bass sounds great, but the 4th string slightly touches the frets. But i guess i was lucky and that does not have that great impact on the sound. But anyway...

Better than I thought! Great short scale bass

Overall, a great short scale bass for a great price. Bought this for my 10-year-old, I liked the weight and size of it. I think it fits him perfectly.

I was impressed at the build quality, I didn't have high expectations because of the low price. So that was a nice surprise. Set-up was not too bad, about 30 minutes of messing around with it and it stays in tune. I also found for the price it sounds decent with the basic pickups.

Superb bass!

This is not just a great bass guitar for the money, this is a nice playing and sounding instrument full stop! I've had some hit and miss experiences with ibanez instruments over the years, but this bass was really a home run. The short scale and light weight is perfect for guitar players or persons with smaller hands/arms. After some truss rod, string height and intonation adjustment, the bass plays great and sounds really good. Tools are included, along with a user guide to set up the instrument.

PROs:

- Superb fretwork and smooth neck. Easy to adjust trussrod and saddles.

- Good sound by blending the volume of both pickups

- Nice walnut finish, no blemishes on body

- Very lightweight and easy to play after adjusting the string height and truss rod, with no fret buzz

- Good tuning pegs

- Looks and feels more expensive than it is

- Fits in a guitar gig bag

CONs:

- Tone pot a little scratchy at lower end

- Not the best looking maple neck, but very well finished

- A little neck divey (but comfortable on lap)

Perfect for the price

I bought this bass as a gift for my sibling and I can't stop borrowing it from her.

For this price it's a really solid instrument. It feels comfortable to play, it's really light and the size is perfect for a guitarist so if you're also a guitarist and you're worried that a regular size bass would feel uncomfortable to you, this should be the right choice.

When it comes to quality there isn't a single thing I can complain about. The tuners stay in tune, the knobs work smoothly, the neck is comfortable and I haven't found a single sharp edge on the frets.

The sound of both of the pick ups is also good. Nothing special but it sounds better than you may expect at this price.

Overall I can't give this bass anything else than 5/5.

Nice little bass.

Very good value for money.

Easy to play and really nice if you want to adventure on playing chords on the bass.

Great bass for guitar players

I use this bass for practising bass lines for home recording and it is a fantatic bass with great tone for such a low cost. I've had no issue with this and this has now been more than 2 years with it!

Great bass for starting out or for those who want extra bass layer in recordings

I'm a guitar player and I was looking for bass to improve my recordings. I did not want anything fancy. I don't know a lot about bass guitars so I can't really talk about specifics. But so far this bass has been good.

The sound quality is surprisingly good for a cheap instrument.

The maple neck feels very smooth, like always. The body finish also feels very nice.

The size is also a plus, which gives me comfort when reccording and it's also VERY light for a bass guitar.

The pickup knobs do not really provide that big of a differnce in tone, it feels more like on/off switch. You can feel the difference better if you leave one of the pickups on, the other off, or both of them on. Can't say the same about the tone knob.

Overall I'm really happy with this product. Highly recommend for those who are just starting out or need bass for songwriting.

Great bass

I am new bass player, so I dont know much about basses. Considered that sound is very good, its small and manageable and it looks awesome.

Best Buy Ever!!

I bought this guitar because i wanted to start playing bass.

The short-scale neck is definitely not a problem since i am a former guitar player. It actualy helped me to get used to the bass style.

Perfect sounding music maker!

The finish on it is impecable and a lot of people say that they love the colour.

Great sounding and comfortable bass

I am a guitar player that just wanted to record some bass lines to some songs and this is perfect for that! I am really impressed with the overall quality of this instrument for such a cheap price.

The short scale makes it really comfortable to play and easier to do some big stretches that can't easily be done on long scale basses. It is very light and easy to play. For such a small size the bass also packs a lot of punch and cuts through surprisingly well in the mix.

The only problem I have found so far with this bass is that when the jazz pickup is all the way up, there is a significant amount of buzz through the amp. I much prefer the neck P pickup anyway so not a problem for me but if you plan on only using the bridge then this is something to be aware of, I have also heard other people have the same problem.

Overall the I would definitely recommend this bass to anyone not just guitar players.

Perfect size for a guitarist or small handed musicians

I'm a classical guitarist and wanted to play some bass without stretching my fingers too much (I've got small hands) and this bass is PERFECT for that.

This action is very low (for a classical guitarist it feels super low) but I guess it's fairly common. It means that there's a bit of a learning curve to adapt but nothing major.

Love the look of this bass!! Totally recommend!

Great bass guitar to start

Always wanted to try bass, but standard-scale basses seems to be too big, too heavy, too long scaled.

Then i found this one.

I can't say that it looks like a toy, it looks like a regular electric guitar but with 4 bass strings on it.

Because of it size, there is no need for special hard case, Ibanez mikro fits regular ST style guitar hard cases very well.

I'm very satisfied with sound, quality, playability.

I would recommend it for everyone who want to try bass guitar for the first time, it is a good opportunity to start.

Great little bass!

Firstly, let's get this out the way, short scale basses and guitars are real instruments, not toys or just for children. Paul McCartney - short scale Hofner "violin" bass and John Lennon - short scale Rickenbacker 325. Get my point? OK.

With that out of the way, this little bass is great for a wide variety of people. Beginners of all ages, the young with smaller hands, older beginners who may not have paticularly supple hands any more, but all beginners can benefit from a short bass. My first bass was a Hofner and I went on to play many 34" scale basses, once you have some proficiency the step up is easier than diving in the deep end.

The other group of musicians who really do well with short scale basses is guitarists, who may want a bass around for a bit of practice or home recording. It is almost seemless jumping between a 25"(ish) scale guitar neck and the Ibanez 28.5" scale neck. This is exactly why I have tried this bass. I still have 2 full scale basses, but have been playing a lot more guitar recently and was finding the 9 inch scale difference a little bit troublesome. This bass has cured that.

This bass also has a factor that is hard to put into words, it's unusual and you just can't put it down, it's fun, unobtrusive, light and easy to pick up and noodle on. All excellent reasons to consider it. Anything that makes you want to pick an instrument up is a major plus.

The setup out the box was exact to the published Ibanez specs, action a little high for my personal tastes but still easy to play - the shorter scale seems to result in a lot less string tension. The only issue was intonation was out, all strings were sharp. This only became apparent at 12th fret and above, and probably not noticeable to a new or low experience ear. With saddles adjusted fully back, G was sorted but E, A, and D remained a little sharp on the tuner but close enough. Fret work is surprisingly good for a lower price point bass, tuners are decent and about what you would expect. Volume and tone pots aren't great, but work and I expect the volumes will be more pickup selectors than blenders. While I've not had it long, it's seems at its best with everything on full, tonally it's quite responsive to where you play the string, which is good for beginners and it makes it easy to markedly adjust tone by adjusting playing position. It's not hard to get great tones out of it.

Over all, this is a great, fun little bass for the money, probably not for the experienced gigging bassist unless you've some medical need (but it is very giggable) , but great for everyone else.

Fantastic short-scale bass

I have short fingers so I have had a friend of mine convert this to a fretless, and it is absolutely amazing. Sounds great, easy to play. There aren't many low-budget short-scale options for bass players, and in this price range I doubt you can find anything better.

The little bass that could

I have this bass for a year now, and it has dethroned my MIM Deluxe Jazz as my goto instrument for everyday use.

Portability

Lugging a full sized Bass around in a sensible car is no easy task. I wanted a smaller bass that I can always have with me.

This bass is as long as a strat is, and a lot lighter.

Short scale

Imagine your bass being capo'ed at the third fret. That's almost exactly what the fret spacing feels on this one.

Sound and Pickups

Shortscales are known to have a deeper sound. This is no exception.

Acoustically its body resonates well, to the point that I routinely not plug it in to do exercises if the room is silent.

The pickups do their job better than you'd expect.

The P sounds great with the boominess of shorter scale.

The J complements the P well, but on its own it's a bit luckluster.

The pickups are pretty much standard sized if you wish to swap them out. Notice like the P has the treble side higher up, in contrast to a Fender.

Quality

Fretwork was good. Couple of bit higher frets near the 12th, but not even to the point that I had to have them fixed.

Neck feels great with its satin finish. Skinny, but it fits the instrument well.

Keys and Bridge, strap buttons are basic but work.

The colour is nothing to marvel at, nor is it gloss finished, but looks good enough from a distance. Standard GIO Ibanez walnut.

Fretboard wood happened to have a light colour streak. I love it now, but didn't at first.

All in all, this little bass has become my goto instrument and I've even gigged with it with passing grades.

Haven't met one guitar or bass player that didn't immediately wanted to get their hands on it when they saw it.

Excellent bass for a guitarist

I play guitar and this is my first bass. I bought this bass to experiment and learn bass. I can say that I was impressed by this bass.

I have not played many basses, but the few times I noodled around on a friend's bass I always found the 34 inch scale uncomfortable. This scale length is very comfortable and felt familiar to me being used to the guitar scale (unsurprising as there is only around 4 inches of difference vs around 9 inches from a standard bass).

The sound is excellent. both the P and J pickups have a great full sound and they offer a good variation in tone when blending between them with the volume controls. The controls are quite simplistic with 2 volumes and a tone. There are no eq knobs so you need to use your amp settings for those.

The setup was also impressively good. The action was comfortable low and the intonation was spot on.

Aesthetically, the bass is also a beauty, and looks more expensive than it is.

Overall recommended for a guitar player wanting to cross over to bass.

Great little bass guitar

I'll start with some context for this guitar. I'm primarily a guitarist and singer, and recently I have started to get into recording music. For this I initially borrowed a friend's full scale Fender Squire J-bass but I have found it impractical adapting to the larger fret size and neck length. This bass guitar beautifully solves this problem with a significantly more manageable size and means I have to change my style only very slightly when going from guitar to this bass (just for reference, I'm 6'2" so it's not necessarily for short people).

In terms of the sound, I switched the strings out for some D'addario flat wounds which make the sound even more mellow. The pickups seem alright, although I've not had much experience with bass pickups so I'm not really qualified to comment.

In terms of playing, it's got a typical smooth matte Ibanez neck which are always nice to play. The finish is a lovely matte dark brown and fits beautifully with my other guitars.

My one con, which isn't major, was that on arrival I plugged it in to my amp and the electronics didn't seem to work. Took the plate off the back and one of the wires was shorting on one of the pots so I fixed it with electrical tape and it now works fine.

Overall I love it! For the price it's incredible. Get one, it's good for the collection and in my opinion, is an excellent choice for the guitarist who occasionally wants a bit more bass in their life.