Joe’s best sounding bass was the MIM Jazz with Seymour Duncan Antiquities in it he played before sponsorship by EBMM

Thank you for the honest review Lobster. Seems like a money-grab by Music-Man. I don't think the product justifies the price, although I have to admit I like the sound and looks.

This is the first video of yours I’ve ever seen, randomly got it recommended and I’m glad I watched! You seem like an absolute class act and a lovely guy and your review was both professional and thorough. I totally agree that the bass may be nice in terms of build quality and that it’s intentionally gimmicky but it kind of supercedes the joke level into downright disrespect towards the customer. Anyway, thanks for the review and have a lovely day 😊

The price of these for what you get is insane! I put an ash-bodied five string Jazz together with a 3-band preamp, coil tappable pickups, and tight string spacing, for less than a third of the UK price of the Joe Dart II. Save your money, build a parts bass and get one of these for much cheaper. EDIT: Also, what is that five string over your shoulder (not the Dingwall)?

Love your energy! Don‘t care about low volume pickups… I find they usually have more dynamic range and special sauce to them. Great video!

Thanks for an honest review. Since the average “Joe” might order this online it’s nice to have a heads up. At this price point, it should be near flawless and have a zero regret, zero surprise factor. This appears to fall short. Let’s be honest… it’s a CNC made bass with anemic pickups and some sub-premium parts. And that non-routed rear cover plate is really sad.

It's hilarious how you become mortal when you play with pick! LOL. I love how you are not afraid to be critical of a company you obviously love and a bass that is so lauded everywhere else. That's why I watch! Bass on!

100% a gimmick. I love Joe’s sterling bass with the one pickup, but as soon as this was announced I knew it would be another Jazz Bass copy. For $2700 its a rip off, ever for half the price at $1350 is still way too much. Huge L from Vulfpeck.

to be completely honest, I love Joe Dart but have been disappointed in his tone since he put down the Fender Jazz bass and picked up these signatures

Haven't watched the video yet, but just had to comment that the length of this video being 21:12 is.... probably just a coincidence. Hopefully Lobster doesn't take this one closer to the heart!

I'm pretty sure the low output was an intentional choice to avoid an overly dark and mid-rangey sounding pickup. More akin to the vintage p and j bass pickups that were used to record a lot of iconic bass lines from motown into the 70s. The knobs look really great, kind of reminiscent of the old Harmony cupcake knobs, maybe not the cleanest execution but the visual effect from 3 feet away is that bass looks awesome. I think it sounds good too. I can't understand what you mean by "I was getting drowned out at rehearsal" ... Turn your amp up. It's not like professional guitar players would say that a 60's stratocaster is "too low output" they are lower output than say a Gibson 335, but that's on purpose... It's what makes a strat sound like a strat. Low output pickups are what make this sound like a joe dart bass. I don't know why I seem to take issue with your review, I already own a bass and I like it and I don't plan to buy this bass any time soon, I guess it just seems like you don't like the bass for a bunch of reasons that someone else might really like it.

I completely misread the title as Joe Dirt. Boy I was confused going into this one

Thanks for this review. I was not expecting this rating at all... it seems more a collector's item than a gigable instrument.

Why are these basses so expensive??

Awesome review. My general rule is that most signature models are overpriced and lacking. Plus I'm not a fan of unusual shaped pickups as swapping them leaves very limited options. As for pickups, I think lower output pickups doesn't always mean weak sounding pickups. I have a few basses with lower output but sing though a mix with just a tad boost on the amp. Some of those lipstick pickups are lower output yet sound great for example. But in the case of this bass though, you nailed it as there was nothing that sounded great from what i heard. Very blah and anemic sounding to my ears. Keep up the reviews. Glad you're back on youtube.

I got a NOS Caprice bass in February of 2020 (just in time for all those gigs!) and can confirm that the output is lower than I expect. However, I think that's why we have gain knobs on our amplifiers... back when I was playing live and using a Squier VI, I fought extensively with the fact that it was SO much quieter than any of the 4-string basses I played alongside it. It meant we had to do our setlists as blocks of "what can be played on which instrument." Initially, I got around it with a BYOC boost pedal, then I put hotter pickups in it that also made it sound more bassy anyway. For the Caprice, I eventually realized I don't care, and I'll either use a boost or just play it and not switch between instruments. Music Man themselves suggest an almost comically high pickup height, but since the magnetic pull of the pickups is so low, you don't *seem* to get much in they way of frequency wobble or intonation problems. I haven't done a lot of science on it, just noting during setup with the Peterson. Incidentally... the pickup poles on the Caprice's covers are misleading. If you pull the pups, you see standard fender-style double magnet rods on the bottom of the bobbins. I haven't tried to separate the guts from the covers to see if they are just inlays into the covers or if for some reason the pole pieces change from dual-small to single-huge inside the bobbin, but I thought that was fascinating, and I wonder how many of the other recent pickup designs are similarly configured. I haven't had the pickup out of my short-scale Stingray, but I have pulled my Bongo's neck S and bridge H pickups and they appear to be thick magnets the whole way through. Not that it stops me from enjoying the Caprice. I brought it home because I thought it was the best-to-me sounding PJ I have ever heard, and I really like the feel and look. I wish I had found out about the line earlier so I could have tracked down the diamond blue/maple version, but the heritage tobacco is handsome and the body wood on my example is pretty.

And I'm going to go with just a gimmick, as are many of the EBMM signatures, like the Cliff Williams, an identical model to any late seventies Stingray at about three times the price. EBMM makes really good basses, I just find many of these signature series instruments to be really lacking in any improvements.

Awesome review Lobster! I wanted one of these but I’m glad I saw your review. Not so much now! Thanks! 🎸

So happy to see you back

Wow. This is definitely one of those don't meet your heroes situations. On its own, it sounds fantabulous. However, even your beat buddy drowned it out. OK, that's a matter of settings, but a whole band would ailence it totally.

Who else really really wants a Jonny Dibble "K N O B S" t-shirt?

Sweet Playing Maestro Lobster!!! Welcome back!!!

Low output generally sounds better to me. That's what the volume knob on your amp is for.

I may be missing something here... but if a bass has "low output" can't you just turn up your amp/DI etc to compensate? Unless you are already running at max volume. I do understand that plugging from bass to bass, lower output ones can seem "weak", psychologically speaking...

Looks and sounds killer, can't wait to see the fearless Flyers live in Paris next month... great review, thanks. :)))

Worst case scenario, can't you just boost the output with a compressor (or a simple boost) pedal?

Sadly, the bass doesn’t even sound that good in Joe’s hands. In the recent live recording vulfpeck put up, it is consistently absent from the mix and when it’s there, it’s not that good.

Fun to see your review. I'm on a bass quest as I just started grooving in December. My mandolin led me to the bass. Never had I heard of Joe Dart until I started watching all the bass content on You Tube. Love his staccato type picking. Somehow I am kinda smitten with those odd knobs. Seems they pulled them off of some bedroom drawers. I'm really enjoying your channel and your style. With your bass collection...which 3 are your favorite to play? The ones you pick up the most? The ones you want to go to lunch with? I give you 5 claws!

As much as I love a Music Man,there's a magic in a Jazz single coil tone that Music Man can't replicate

what an amazing thing to come back to when I come home from my vacation

To my ears through headphones, it sounded fantastic. Easily fix the weak pups with a simple signal boost pedal.

The pinching the like button thing works on me every time I love it

I like the tone a lot- even if it's not the 'punchiest' or 'bassiest' as you say... it has a sort of purity and clarity that stood out to me as more jazz-like than either of the other two jazz basses. I could probably live with the low output. But I really need a tone knob on my jazz bass (and prefer two). The way you describe the neck sounds amazing. If it were literally half the price I'd be intrigued. Maybe 1/4 the price given the tonal limitations.

Wow. Definitely paying for the Dart name. I've never liked those big knobs from the moment I first saw them, then to see how tinker toyish they are up close is just sad for a MM product. That side by side comparison with the Marcus Miller made the Dart sound like a clunky, no grit, first bass that a five year old would get. Can take this one off my bucket list, but it sure is perty! Thanks Lobster!

Love my Joe Dart ii; play it with my band all the time. No problem to cut through the mix, and I like the unique look of the knobs-I don’t find them to be low quality. Overall, this bass is not a gimmick. Plays great, sounds great, the neck is just amazing, the case is cool. Maybe intended as a collector, but now I play it more than all my other basses. Mine is numbered in the very low teens. I also have the first Joe Dart, and it’s amazing as well.

Thanks for the review 🦞, and great to see you back on the tube! That’s a nice piece of ash, and the neck looks wonderful. It’s a shame the electronics are a bit lacking, especially with a premium price. But I’m sure the whole run of 100 will sell out.

Good to see you back on track! If I may do a request: could you do a top 5 best neck vid?

Good to see you back, Mighty Sir. ♥️🎸🎸❤️❤️🙂

For the price I totally agree with you on this instrument. I did however like the tone of the neck pickups when you played it. As a side note I have decided that the slap bass playing is like bluegrass fiddle tunes, they have names so you can tell them apart. 😉 thanks lobster as always man great video. 👍

I'm new, and sort of confused here. Low output pickups translate to getting lost in a band setting? isn't this something a compressor + gain will fix no problem? Wouldn't a lower output bass take gain later a lot better than higher output basses? Seems like this was built to spec for Joe who uses a lot of compression and a lot of tube gain. But again, i'm new so I am likely missing something very obvious here. @lowendlobster what am I missing?

Welcome back!!

'Proprietary gun stock oil and wax'? I'm a kit-builder, and a great fan of Tru-Oil and Birchwood Casey's matching gun stock wax, but one of the reasons I like them is that they're the easiest, most forgiving things out there when it comes to application. To be honest, I like those products because I'm too LAZY to use something better, and even in a factory setting the costs would be much lower than something like nitro if only due to having no hardware overhead for sprayers and compressors. Too sum up: the neck finish on this bass is not the flex its makers would like you to think. :)

That's where my wardrobe door knobs went, ill have them back please..... and the bass too(trade it in)😉

Those Geddy Lee pickups are tremendous

Been waiting for this, you can definitely hear the low output. I understand why they do this, but same with the John Myung signature with no eq for 3k most people want to dial in a certain tone and a eq helps boost in a live setting very beautiful bass nonetheless thanks for the video lobster 🦞 that Joe dart doesn’t touch even the sire, that’s a shame. Still a beautiful musicman tho it sounds like your playing with 2 yr old strings just not any special tone to it.

Nicely done sir!

I have an SX six string Jazz bass and the pickup output was really low as it shipped. I bought a couple of really powerful magnets and stuck them under both pickups. Signal was boosted a lot. I don't mind having to do that to an SX. I would be angry if I had to do that to a $2700 bass, though.

Welcome back Will!!!!

I have one and love it. Having the pickups wide open without to e circuits is great . Also you get a lot of tonal variation from changing pickup volumes and hand position.

Man, I think that bass sounds like a really nice old jazz bass with flats, one of my very favourite sounding basses. Wouldnt pay that much for it though, but I never buy basses new.

I had a EBMM Caprice which suffered from the same anemic pickup output. It didn’t last long. One other thing about the Joe Dart II is there aren’t any replacement pickups for it.

This sounds like a bass designed to be boosted from the amp/eq, from a pure neutral tone. as your comparison suggests. It would be nice if this was made part of the marketing so people would know at least it wasn't a bug but a feature!

Very helpful review. Thanks!

My favorite in the comparison is the Sire and that costs like $1000 or so, right? Insane price for just a "meh" bass.

this was a great review, but I have this weird feeling that that wasn’t a real lobster doing the video

As always a fantastic review. Thank you Sir. : )

That FGN blows every other J-Bass you own out of the water 🔥

This is entirely off subject of the video. But my truss rods on my Rickenbacker have gone completely exhausted, its a 2011 and i was wondering since you know so many helpful things if you might know where i can order new truss rods? I tried reverb, google, etc and came up short. Thanks in advance if you know of somewhere!

the weight savings ...comes from the volume knobs!

Could it be that the poor quality of the knobs is on purpose, to mimic his origionals? It would seem to me that those would have originally been taken from some sort of old appliance or radio or something. It doesn't seem right that the poor quality would have been overlooked.

Why couldn’t Fender give him a signature? At least it would be easy to swap for real tone controls

Wow, surprised that the pickups aren’t cutting it! You would think that they would be sweet, since they’re the only electronics, no tone control or preamp. But I believe it, since Joe’s tone on the recordings with this bass doesn’t blow me away

$2700? Not a chance at even half the price for me. A HB JJ450 with some work done and maybe new tuners, if they were actually required and some Dimarzio Js and for $500 you'd have something that would likely sit better in the mix. This is just EBMM MIA price gouging.

Thanks, Lobster. Would you mind reviewing the Fender Jaco Pastorius Fretless model? I would love to hear your thoughts. I've been considering this bass lately. 🙂

It sounds decent but the other jazz basses you had sounded better. Well to my tastes. The highs sound muted. That would work well in a Motown kind of scenario but not elsewhere. Maybe this one could be modded??

Seems as though it suffers from the same personality defects as I found with my Caprice. I wanted to love it so much, but It didn’t happen for me. I feel that I know exactly what changes it would need to become a personal winner for me, but modifying a $2700 limited edition bass is pretty much out of the question IMO

It's hard to believe MusicMan has come out with a bass that just sounds meh! Especially for that price! I was noodling around on my 2008 SR5 HH while watching this review and some of the same DNA is in the tone of that JDII, but man I agree with you that it lacks the punch, growl and low end that you expect from a MusicMan.

"Now if we take the tone down to about 50..." I laughed. I shouldn't had, but I did.

Any chance you can rip off the control plate and see if there is a cap permanently in place and what its value is?

Beautiful Bass. I actually prefer the low output pickups .... leaves more room for accentuated dynamics for guys with sausage fingers or heavy hands like me. This is now my #1 pick .

Definitely appreciate the real review

Would a preamp solve the dynamic issues? I’m leaning towards getting a squire cv over a sire because I could get a better neck from warmouth and replace anything I had issues with, probably just slap a preamp in it and call it good for awhile then get a new nut, bridge and tuners before replacing the pups and get a ebony neck (I actually like the stock cv pups)

Looking at your awesome bass backdrop, I mostly see maple necks. Why do you prefer them in comparison to RW?

I bought a Fender American Ultra Jazz last year for a lot less than the Joe Dart II. I don't see the value there. Thanks for the review Lobster!

The next Joe Dart signature will have no pick ups.

Don't you think the light weight was due to the wood, the carved part below the neck socket, and the tuning pegs configuration (so, the headstock is shorter)?

I get what you mean about the knobs. I've seen that exact set at AliExpress before, and I wouldn't be surprised if they're sourced from a wholesaler in China

I love this bass, I wish it was better or cheaper. Joe Dart is my bass hero lol. The V7 color I want is the same as his MIM jazz

Nerd rant. That knob style is called RCA. Image search RCA knobs and/or RCA BC-6A. They were high quality Bakelite knobs that were on RCA audio consoles attached to Daven stepped attenuaters with solid silver contacts. Many radio stations and recording studios used them in the 40's and 50's. The old stuff was so cool. Too bad these white plastic knockoffs are molded and painted so badly. Not a fitting tribute to all the old RCA consoles and limiting amps that used these knobs. Even Les Paul's original multitrack console and tape preamp rack used these knobs. Important knobs in audio history.

There are two types of signature instruments to me. The "Walking Billboard" kind, and the "Make It Your Own" thing. This really doesn't seem like either. On one hand, it doesn't scream Joe Dart or Vulfpeck, but at the price point it doesn't seem like a drill some tone knobs and toss in a Kahler type of instrument either. It could be that I just dont know anything about Joe Dart or Vulfpeck too, so if any of you are fans of their work, do you feel the same?

For 2700 bucks it oughta come with a preamp pedal. Neck pickup does sound great but how do you market split coils as a jazz bass?? Love my Lakland 55-02 and saving 1000 bucks, I also love your reviews!

A very fair review. The basic tone is fine, and it's an attractive instrument, but I dont see $2700 of value to anybody except collectors of limited edition signature instruments and Joe Dart fetishists. Still, nobody is making anybody buy it, and there are many, many alternatives.

If the knobs aren’t fragile, why is then perceived lack of quality an issue at all? Does it work? Are they accurate? Cool.

Love the look (aside from the large knobs) and I prefer the sound to the Jazz basses.

The knobs remind me of something my grandma would have on her furniture. 🤦‍♂️

I used to have a fender deluxe active preamp jazz bass that sound pretty much like that 🍹

LOBBY AND BULLY,,,my favourite,,{PASSIONATE BROTHERS ON BASS}

It's a good jazz bass for what it is and anyone getting one is buying it for the Joe Dart name on the headstock.

Is there a sub $1000 passive jazz bass that sounds exactly like the Joe Dart II? I want one.

Who wants a bass without tone controls?! This seems 100% aimed at collectors, whereas Tim Commerford's signature bass line was thoughtfully crafted with player-centric features.

How are the two coils in each pickup wired? If they are in parallel, wiring the coils in each pickup in series might improve the output, but would cost some high end brightness. If they are already in series, not much could be done other than replacement. Shouldn’t have to do anything with a $2800 bass…

Saw some people talking about how it only sounds good with the vulf compressor and other effects Joe throws on his bass back when it was announced

Being heard isn't about volume, it's about frequencies. Add mids and turn up the amp a little. BOOYAH

Love the look.

The Jazz mids sounds good but can use a preamp boost... and some better knobs of course!

Don't you have a gain knob on your amp? Lord above! It's like saying 'my strat is so much quieter than my Les paul.' I'd bet Joe uses a compressor/pre not suited to active basses.

Hi Sir :) I'd like to know if you've heard about the Gibson Thunderbird Rex Brown signature and, if so, could we see your personal review of it? I ask because, in my opinion, his signature version is a much better and more interesting bass than the traditional one. He brought it to the next never ;)

Great review and I am not sure this bass is worth the price tag it has. I wonder how it would sound with an external pre-amp like the Sadowsky.

Maybe your pickups are out of phase - hence the weird output level?

I have a "Slick" bass,(Guitar Fetish) "P" bass,(Canadian Ash body/maple neck) no tone control just volume. I dropped an EMG P bass pup in and wow talk about taking the reins off the horse. Fantastic sound, plays great and cost me less than $400 with all the mods.