Vigier Passion 6 Series III Trans Black

100% handmade bass in France at Patrice Vigier's shop.

Ever since Vigier started building instruments in the 80's his goal to produce the most comfortable, easy to play and best sounding instruments in the world.

This is the Passion 6 model and it belongs in the Series III of these instruments. For may players this is the absolutely best era as Series III took advantage from Series I and Series II developments and refinements while still using some proprietary parts such as Benedetti pickups, Kahler bridges, etc., which were lost later on. Today's Viger basses are still great but some players feel they've lost a lot of what made them unique.

This Passion model sports two Benedetti pickups located close to the bridge. This produces an exceptionally clear and clean tone where every note seems to ring in the best possible manner.

The preamp is really cool too. You get Volume, Balance and sweepable mids where the frequency is controlled buy a pot and the range (cut-flat-boost) is controlled by a 3 way switch. There's also a Passive Tone Control that ony works in the bridge pickup. This is great if you want to go from a dark Jaco tone using just the bridge pickup and then get a more all round sound just by using the Balance pot. Great.

All Vigier basses have very comfortable necks and this is no exception. A 49mm wide nut is used and we just love that. It simply feels amazingly comfortable.

Vigier doesn't use a truss rod. Instead, he makes the necks with a combination of wood and graphite called 90/10 (90% wood, 10& graphite) and this makes for exceptionally stable necks that have a natural relief that is just perfect. Sure, you can't adjust this but neither can you on a double bass and when the fingerboard curve is perfectly made you just don't miss a truss rod. Same case here. Also Patrice Vigier believes that installing a truss rod on a bass is not a good idea as all the wood you remove to make the truss rod channel really makes the neck weak.

The slighly short scale of 33.8 proves to be really comfortable and the good news is that the low B string works incredibly well. It is loud and focused.

This is a used bass with some dings but everything works beautifully