I've had an HT Custom Bass for about two months now. It is this one:
Standard setup, except there is a humbucker with a coil tap on the neck pickup.
Great bass. It's taken me a while to get it set up right action-wise. I had Kevin cut me an extra (shorter) bridge riser so that I could get the strings off the frets without being too high. Took a few weeks of dedicated tweaking to get it to where it needed to be, but I feel pretty good about it now.
I've been a TB2000 player since 1994, so it's been hard not to compare. This bass is not a TB2000, but it is darned close with some notable differences. The bridge pickup through a loud tube bass amp or a GK 800RB sounds almost identical, perhaps even with more pig iron gain than my bean. If I shave a notch off the volume on the bass itself, it is closer to a TB2000 sound. One more notch off and it is close to a jazz bass on the bridge PU.
EGC pickups are hotter than any other pickups I have played.
Hands down, the EGC bass has more sustain than my Bean.
Still my Bean bass sounds more "piano-like" at low volumes.
The Humbucker is interesting. I haven't found a big use for it yet, but it does decimate the colon when you play that thing fingerstyle with dub "Wobble-esque" equalization. I wanted something that had a fat neck pickup not too different than an Ovation Magnum, or a hot P-Bass even. This is close, no doubt.
I don't dig the Humbucker with pick playing too much, but I feel this way about just about all basses that have humbuckers and playing with a pick. Sounds similar to a Music Man Stingray (?), deep with a crispy top. Does it resemble Joe Lally's bass sound Fugazi's first album? Yes. Not my bag, but not bad.
Coil-tapping the humbucker results in about a -2db volume drop. Strange to get used to (nothing you could do live without re-EQing the bass amp) but the sound is very close to a TB2000 neck pickup. This tapped setting is perhaps a bit more nasally than a Bean or a Jazz Bass on the neck.
Overall, a GREAT rock bass. Not a Bean- not better, not worse, but the closest I have heard and different all in good ways. Sustain until the end of time. Convincing and cutting on the bridge pu.
The most important thing is that the EGC bass is very very good in a league of its own. Built like a tank. Makes me want a baritone now... jeez.
When I am not working 70 hour weeks, I'll record some soundbites through several different amps/cabs and post them here.
