Sandberg California TM-4 Super Light Active/Passive Bass, Redburst

What's lighter than light? Super Light!

Music Store Live is proud to be an official Sandberg dealer! Made in Europe, with the finest German engineering, this bass will slap a smile on your face that you just can't shake. Being such a featherweight also means you can play for hours and hours on end in pure comfort. 

They use a paulownia body so the end result is a bass that is beautifully balanced, but yet only weighs 6 lbs! This is the solution for all the bass players out there that need to be mindful of how heavy their instrument is. You can rock for hours and hours and you'll barely even feel it. For these, they use a Norwegian maple neck instead of Canadian maple and ultra light hardware (their tuners are the lightest on the market). The result is a surprisingly even balance and lack of neck dive to help combat some of the typical issues with overly light basses. The crew at Sandberg have solved that issue!

The paulownia wood is sometimes also called empress and is growing in popularity. It's a softer wood and has similar tonal properties to swamp ash while carrying a fraction of the weight. It has a very clear and articulate sound with a snappy attack. The notes coming out of this bass are very punchy! It'll definitely cut right through a mix, if you need it to. It's always easier to dial something back than it is to try to add it when it's not there. So we are definitely fans of the tone that comes with the paulownia body along with the obvious advantages in the weight savings department.

We've seen a few other manufacturers experiment with this wood and the results were great. Sprinkle in the special Sandberg touch and we were sure these instruments would be nothing short of a grand slam when they first shared their plans with us to build these. We put in an order for a few and we're seeing the first ones roll through the shop now. We're confident these will be game-changers. You no longer need a heavy bass to get a heavy tone. Thanks to Sandberg's proprietary tuners, which are the lightest tuners on the market right now, and the use of norwegian maple for the neck, there is no neck dive to worry about either. This is definitely one big difference in the feel of these Sandberg SL basses over some other manufacturer's attempts at this same concept. You almost always have to basically hold up the neck of the bass while you're playing it. Not with these! The balance of the instrument is fantastic.

A simple 2-band boost/cut EQ allows you to tweak your sound on the fly without ever having to turn around and fiddle with your amp knobs. The mini-toggle switch puts the bridge pickup in either single-coil or humbucking mode for ultimate versatility. From round and thumpy, to bright and poppy, there really aren't too many tones that you can't achieve with this combination of pickups. In passive mode, the treble EQ knob serves as a passive tone knob where the center detent is the equivalent of having the tone knob 100% open and you can cut from there. This is one of our favorite "hidden" features of this bass as it really does make for an instrument that offers just as much usefulness in active mode as it does in passive. Add to that the expert craftsmanship that all Sandberg basses share and you've got a true winner here!

Sandberg basses have instantly become shop favorites here and every single one that we get just continues to impress. This bass weighs under 6 lbs, looks awesome, plays like a dream, and sounds fantastic. It leaves nothing to be desired (other than maybe wishing for more hours in the day so you could play it more).