Early 2000's Overwater Progress III Deluxe 7 String bass, Quilted Maple Top
Overwater have been building top quality basses from the U.K. for more than 40 years.
This Particular model is a gorgeous Progress III Deluxe 7 string bass.
If you are looking for an ERB (Extended Range Bass), this one is pretty amazing. A 7 string bass will allow you to explore the upper register without having to shift your position. Of course it's up to you whether to use the extended range or not. The key question here is that this bass will not restrict you in any manner.
Also it has the advantage of sounding incredibly clear and defined but also groove so you can play just about anything on it: basslines, slap, tap, chords, melodies, incredible harmonics, etc. The sky is the limit. We love the flat fingerboard. It's a wide fingerboard for sure but it's so well made that even small hands will find it easy to play, believe it or not. It's not lightweight, of course, but we'd include a very nice extra wide padded strap along with it and this makes a big difference. Here are the specs:
- 35” scale
- Neck through 5 piece Maple/Walnut neck
- Mahogany Body with a beautiful Quilted Maple top
- Indian Rosewood fingerboard
- Two Overwater Twin Coil pickups
- Active Overwater 3 Band EQ with Active Blend control; Jack & XLR outputs
- Pickup coils and the control cavity are fully shielded against outside interference by low resistance nickel based shielding paint.
- Overwater bridge with 18mm string spacing (perfect for slap and fingerstyle, but also for chords). The increased angle at the saddles improves tone and tuning stability.
- Gotoh machineheads
About the CIRCUIT: having not found in the market a circuit that fully satisfies them, Overwater make their own circuit boards at home, with some special specs:
Bass: +/- 12 dB @ 50Hz very gentle “shelving” curve
Mid: +/- 6 dB @ 250Hz, gentle “bell” curve
Treble: +/- 6 dB @ 1kHz, extremely gentle “shelving” curve, designed to contour the whole of the uppper response of the bass, from the mids right to the very top end.
The idea was to design a circuit that was subtle but effective in use, with an emphasis on “real use” tone controls rather than over the top unusable controls
This is actually a different approach to electronics designing, and we can confirm how musical and practical this is. Thanks Chris!
The active control is an active stage, which prevents the cross-feed that can be experienced with passive blend circuits, where the output from one pickup feeds into and is loaded by the other and vice versa.
As you can see in the pictures, there are two outputs: Unbalanced (1/4” Jack) and Balanced (XLR).
The fact that the pickups are so close to the bridge in the Progress model means that the tone remains defined and articulate no matter how you set the controls or play the bass. This is an all round bass that can cover most any style of music, and is terribly easy to be heard in a loud band because of the well defined mids.
This is a used bass of course but it's in amazing condition. No remarkable dings, just normal wear but we can see that it has been really well taken care of.