In the 1970s, we began to get familiar with the name Peavey, amazed by the quality of its amplifiers when used with the guitars and basses we were playing at the time. Their circuits originally used tubes, but the power and acoustic clarity we heard from them seemed to set them well apart from the others made in that era. It stirred an irresistible desire to own one, although that was something of a privilege, since they carried a price that, back then, seemed a little high.
Peavey came to be recognized as a company of great prestige and quality, and grew more powerful by increasing the number of its models and product types. Among them, it introduced a whole line of electric guitars that likewise interested many of us.
Peavey Electronics was founded in 1965 by Hartley Peavey (then fresh out of college) who, as he himself says, was in love with Leo Fender's designs, which is very evident in this Zodiac BXP bass.
Today, Peavey has more than 130 international patents registered, and the more than 2,000 resulting products are manufactured at 33 main facilities, some in the Far East, and distributed around the world in 136 countries (Spain included).
Many Bass Models
Today it falls to me to try one from its new series called ZODIAC, specifically the BXP (another type in this series is called SCORPIO).
But Peavey has many more models in its catalog in other guitar and bass series, of course, with different features and for nearly every taste among musicians.
Among the other series they make, the GRIND BASS, MILLENIUM (also in five-string) and CIRRUS (likewise in four or five strings) stand out.
Features of the Zodiac BXP
This model I now hold in my hands reminds me very much of the original design of Leo Fender's Jazz Bass, even down to the tuner buttons, which resemble those earliest ones of that shape from back in the 1960s.
Here the body is built from alder, while the neck is made of maple, with the already standard 34” (864 mm) scale length and the typical 21 frets. The fretboard is rosewood.
It was Leo Fender himself who established the 34” length for the neck of the bass guitar. To do so, he took the measurements of a cello he had in his studio. And of course Hartley Peavey has stayed true to that idea, as have most other manufacturers.
The BXP, now in my hands, has been fitted with D'Addario strings of the pleasant medium-wound type, as I usually like to use.
On the body there are two visible pickups that look like three, because the one nearest the neck is split into two halves, each set at a different height, in order to get better low frequencies from strings 1 and 2.
It is a passive bass, meaning that it contains no battery power in the body, nor electronic circuitry like the “active” ones, but only the essentials between the pots, the pickups and the output jack; the construction of that simple circuit is very reliable and rarely plagued by failures.
The body color also looks very much like the early Fender finishes, with darker edges and the tone fading toward a solid wood color, but lighter than those edges.
The bridge is simple, but surely very effective, with easily accessible adjustment screws in case you ever need to tweak the intonation, depending, for example, on whether we install a different set of strings with characteristics other than those mentioned above. Right now its original factory setup needs no touch-ups. Nevertheless, as a thoughtful touch from the manufacturer, they include a set of Allen keys with this bass so those screws can be adjusted properly; they also add, as a courtesy, a cable with 1/4” plugs at both ends, to connect this bass to our favorite amp and try it out right away.
All the metal hardware is chrome-plated in a bright, gleaming silver-white.
On the top of the body there are also three simple but efficient pots, smooth to the touch as we turn them. Two of those pots control the signal volume delivered by each of the two pickups, while the other pot adjusts the tone control for both pickups together, making the bass sound with more treble or more bass, depending on the songs we play. There are quite noticeable differences in sound as we move that pot.
This model is made in China (with its manufacture and finish quality always supervised by engineers from the company's headquarters in the USA).
On this example now in my hands, I notice a pleasant smoothness as I slide along the neck, which is a light wood color and has a good varnish.
When I try it, I pleasantly notice that the neck has a certain flexibility, depending on the lateral pressure we apply, which lets us alter or “lever” the pitch of some of the notes we play on the occasional moments when we feel like it, as a touch of musical expression that, without a doubt, more than once we will enjoy experimenting with.
Its fretboard has dark inlaid position markers, which contrast very well within the whole and so work very effectively for visual reference.
The cable plugs in, as is most typical, on the edge of the body, pointing down.
The nut appears to be made of a very hard dark wood that, ultimately, gives the sound a certain warmth.
It seems, overall, an instrument of fairly well-balanced medium weight that is easy to hold against the body, even when seated and resting on the knees. Background noise is practically nil, which is appreciated.
Since its neck is somewhat flattened, though of “normal” width, it fits very comfortably under the palm of the hand and lets the fingers play on the fretboard in comfort.
It is offered in other colors, such as black, “sunburst” and white. The manufacturer says it offers it with an unlimited five-year warranty. It can be bought at any store in Spain and, if at some point they don't have it in stock, the company assures you they would get it for you all the same.
In Front of a Frequency Analyzer
As is customary on my test bench, which I have been running for a long time for this ISP magazine, I fed the electrical signal coming from this bass directly into a spectrum analyzer, to see how the frequencies behave overall (but string by string) in terms of quality in the lows, mids and highs, which can then be transformed further to our taste when the signal reaches the EQ of our preamp or the electronics through which we ultimately amplify it.
This particular test of mine does not measure at all the volume level the pickups deliver, but only their behavior with respect to the frequencies delivered.
To do this, I set all three pots to their maximum value (turned to the right) and then plucked each open string, recording at the same time all the values obtained in a database, and finally using them to produce the graph I present here.
This graph shows two related values: the volume delivered and the corresponding frequencies at which each string develops best in each case.
Those frequencies are not exact, but approximate bands within the acoustic spectrum that we can best perceive with our ears.
So if we now take a look at the accompanying graph, we see a result spanning a wide range of audible frequencies, with greater intensity in general in the bands around 120 Hz which, indeed, could well represent the low notes in the bass clef range that the upright bass typically plays, but its good dynamics extend even further, especially in the highs reached by the notes from the first string, going beyond 7,500 Hz.
In any case, this reading, which is “linear,” can later be pushed by applying an external EQ to widen those frequency bands if deemed necessary for special cases, but as we see, for example, the low string (the fourth) is loaded with bass, above and past the threshold that an ear is able to perceive (normally not below 20 Hz).
Trying It Plugged into an Amp
I got very diverse and distinct tonal settings as I played with the combination of moves on its pots. And of course, the way the strings are plucked also influences the sound, as does the spot where it is done (closer to the bridge or to the neck).
The normal approach is to use the fingers on the strings, in various techniques. I often use a pick to “pull out” a “punchy, rounded” sound, which is indeed possible with this example, since, being rich in frequencies around 120 Hz (it is usual for basses to have their “critical point” at slightly higher frequencies, for example around 350 or 400 Hz), it makes for a “deep, full-bodied” result. And of course, all of that is still subject to adding electronic tools afterward, such as the EQs of a preamp or the range of sounds that color the result through pedals or external processors, to which the signal from this instrument doesn't have to arrive strained, but rather relaxed and with a low level of unwanted background noise.
As a fellow lover of the designs of the legendary Leo Fender (as the creator of this brand likewise says, who seems to have followed in his footsteps but, of course, added his “grain of sand”), I feel “right at home” using this model, which in many ways reminds me of those Precisions or Leo's Jazz Bass.
