BEST IN CLASS
Hi guys! This is my first post (of many more to come, hopefully). Here, I review my first bass ever, the Cort Elrick RB5.
The Cort/Elrick RB5 is a collaboration between Korean giant guitar maker Cort with US-based bass luthier, Rob Elrick, who mostly builds high-end basses. Personally, I have owned this bass for about 10 years, and it it ticks all the right boxes. In short, this bass provides plenty of (professional) quality at a very reasonable price tag, one of the best bang for your bucks!
Specification summary
Origin : Made in Korea
Scale : 35 inches
Number of strings : 5 strings
Number of frets : 24 frets
Body : Double cutaway Ash body with Flame Maple top
Neck : Bolt on 2 piece maple neck with rosewood fingerboard
Pickups : Bartolini MK1 soapbar pickups
Preamp : Bartolini MK1 EQ (Volume, Blend, Bass, Mid, Treble)
Hardware : Black Hipshot tuners and EB-1 bridge
Price : Street price US$600-700 (discontinued)
Pros : Excellent playability, versatile, great looking figured maple top
Cons : longer, larger, and heavier than average, brittle treble, weak neck PU
Looks/Build Quality: Great looks on top of a sturdy construction
The RB5 is a beauty by any standard. The ash body felt solid, and the figured maple top coupled with a glossed finish give out a nice boutiquey look to the bass, and it does feel like one. The bolt-on neck is constructed out of two piece maple topped with a rosewood fingerboard. It is, however, bit heavier than average, but that’s nothing an average person can’t handle, and is compensated by the sturdy construction, anyway. The design is almost identical with Elrick’s Gold Evolution basses, with the strings spaced at 1 3/4″ at the nut and 19mm at the bridge.
Ergonomically, I would say that the body is slightly larger than average. The overall shape is roundy, and falls nicely on the body. One interesting detail to mention is that the body is asymmetrical, with the bottom side of being longer. This does cause the bass to sit rather funnily on a guitar stand, and need some extra care to ensure that it’s not slanted enough to fall down.
Butter, butter, and more butter
Playability? The neck plays like butter, which is the bass’ best feature, in my personal opinion. The modern-C-shaped neck is well balanced, not too thick or thin to reach all 5 strings and provides a very fast access to all the frets across the fretboard. Cutaway is also made deep enough for access towards the 24th fret. The low B is SOLID (no floppy Mr.B here even with low action) thanks to its super long 35″ scale, which arguably will not be a fit for everyone. For me, the neck does feel a little long horizontally (even after all these years), but then again it’s nothing out of hand, I must say.
Sound: More than enough to cater all your needs
So how does the sound of this bass fare? I’d say pretty well. Despite only having the lower-end (Korean made) version of Bartolini pickups and preamp, it does provide a quite wide array of tonal palette to the table with a blend control and bass/mid/treble EQ boosts.
The bass boost from the preamp is fine, and while the treble is slightly brittle, I think the mid punch is the star here. The Ash body has a naturally punchy-middy sound – which by the way resonates really well unplugged – and the preamp is set up quite well to complement the natural tone. Personally, I think that the bass sounds best with a 50:50 blend between the neck and bridge pickup. In particular, the tone of the neck pickup could be plenty better.
With a 50:50 blend and some tweaks to the preamp (i.e. bass boost and treble cut), the sound is decent enough even for any professional player to take to the studio, IMO. Its also worth mentioning that the preamp has minimal noise as well. In terms of style, over the years, I have found myself favouring to play more finger style on this bass relative to slap, partly because of the brittle treble and stronger mid-punch.
Eventually, I had the pickups upgraded to USA Bartolini (MK5 Soapbars) and the preamps to Aguilar OBP3. This is a pretty popular mod to the RB5 (and most other basses really). The result? Huge difference. OBP3 boasts a lot of oomph in the low end (trust me, A LOT of oomph) as well as a much more commanding treble sound. It has also a neat mid frequency toggle, which will allow you to switch between 400Hz (low-mid) and 800Hz (high-mid) frequencies for the mid knob. While the upgrades are not necessary (the bass is plenty good as it is), it is indeed very rewarding tonally as it provides an even broader array of sound and adds a lot of presence to the low, mid, and high frequencies.
Verdict: Can’t go wrong with this bass
At a price tag of US600-700, I’d say this bass is in contention for the Best in Class award; it’s tough to get all that boutiquey look, butter-like-playability, solid build quality and studio standard sound for this kind of price tag at once. The bass has been discontinued since a few years ago, but its remains to be quite popular among bassists. Please do not compare this bass to the original Elrick (which costs US$3500 and up) – the price difference already tells you everything you need to know about the gap between the two basses. Some noteworthy 5-string contenders at this price range I could think of would include : G&L Tribute, Cort A5, and Yamaha TRBX. But overall, for all that quality at that kind of price tag? Totally worth it. And here are my scores for Cort/Elrick RB5:
Review summary
Looks : 7.5 / 10
Build quality : 8 /10
Sound : 7.5 / 10
Playability : 8.5 / 10
Price : 8.5 / 10
Total score : 40 / 50
P.S: credits to Peter @cameradphoto for the pictures. Go check him out on Instagram for some mad photography skills!
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