Looking at these basses, one is tempted to give the term bass lick a somewhat different meaning. Austrian custom bass builder BITE Guitars calls this bass series Tasty Vanilla, quite understandably so. What makes them look yummy in the first place? The satinated off-white finish, the white pickups, the absence of a pickguard – BITE calls this ‘rear access’ – the light-colored natural maple & pearl blocks fretboard, and the 24 karat gold plated hardware to top it all off. 

BITE shows us two variants, a 4-string 34″ and a 5-string 33″, one of the very few 5-string medium scales available. BITE writes, there’s no floppy B string at 33″, it plays and sounds just like the big guy. 

Sound-wise, we’re looking at BITE’s own 1000 millivolt high-output passive pickups, this time in a Reverse PJ configuration, meaning the P has its DG coil closer to the neck. This reverse arrangement gives your plucking fingers more space across the D and G strings and it adds a bit more oomph to D and G. Finally, the wiring is a standard Jazz-type parallel circuit (Volume-Volume-Tone).

Price tags:

Jawbone Tashy Vanilla RPJ 4-string 34″

Full specs: https://bite.guitars/product/jawbone-tasty-vanilla-rpj/

New York 2,539 USD

Berlin 2.658 EUR incl. VAT

London 1.930 GBP

Jawbone Tashy Vanilla RPJ 5-string 33″

Full specs: https://bite.guitars/product/jawbone-rpj-5er-33/

New York 3,235 USD

Berlin 3.429 EUR incl. VAT

London 2.482 GBP