The last time we talked about a Russian-made Ural bass, someone was smashing it to bits, and you can see that here.
This time however, someone has gone through the trouble of realigning the neck, installing new frets, installing new electronics and installing what appear to be new replacement pickups. The end result is something that actually sounds pretty good. Granted, it’s a bit of a unique tone, but still a good tone nonetheless.
Getting any Ural bass sounding good is challenging, as these vintage instruments are notorious for almost wanting to sound bad. To get this instrument sounding right, you really do have to gut and rewire the whole thing, along with performing some wood and fret maintenance just so it doesn’t sound like a “loggy,” buzzy nightmare.
YouTube user Valery Salnickov started with a refret, neck realignment, junked the original electronics and installed his own with just a 3-way switch and a volume knob (the front switches were simply removed,) along with stuffing in some guitar pickups temporarily:
After that, he put in some proper pickups (it’s unknown what was used,) put the bass back together (blocking off where the front switches used to be,) and it sounded pretty darned good:
The fact this bass sounds any good at all is impressive.
Take example from this Ural, because it shows you can get any bass sounding right when you put enough effort into it.
If you are crazy enough to want an Ural bass for yourself to modify, just search for “ural bass” on eBay. You’ll find a whole bunch of them, mostly selling for between $100 to $250 at the time of this writing.
Supersound man a bit Wal ! well done !!
In Soviet Russia, bass sounds good. Only one tone authorized by central committee, any deviation from this makes you counter revolutionary. Enjoy playing that decadent western sounding bass in Siberian gulag.
Seriously good sounding bass, and playing! Might actually pick up one of these cold war gems and reworking it…
The pickups have six pole pieces each, so he probably used regular guitar pickups, possibly Strat style…
I didn’t see him even flip one of the 3 white slide switches so we could hear the difference they would make in the sound of the bass.
Seems like a lot of work to make the bass sound good. I guess if you really like the styling it would be worth it.
These Soviet era basses (and guitars for that matter) had a lot of switches that were meant to control amp effects (something that never caught on outside of the soviet union), so my guess is those 3 switches would be for that and they don’t actually do anything towards changing the sound
the MOST important feature of bass guitar is sustain , no sustain – no bass ( imho !!! )
no one bass demo shows that feature, pity