The Dean EVO XM bass is quite a nice product. For the price, you get a decent sounding very usable bass. The short scale is somewhat of a change up if you are used to playing full scale basses, but, a little bit of adjustment and this baby can rock!

The bass played well out of the box, and once I set it up to my specs, it worked well for me. The pick ups sound very nice and can get everything from that low down growl to a crisp top end. Mixing them together seems to work the best. The critical test was using this bass on a couple of live gigs. The bass performed well and I was able to get about every sound I wanted out of it. About the only thing this bass is not good for is pop and slap as the pickups don't leave a lot of room for that particular style. (although it can be done on it!) The comfort factor is adequate as the bass is quite light weight, however the neck does get a bit tiring on the fingers as it is slightly wider than I like. The short scale can throw you a bit until you adjust to it. The mahogany finish is understated and the over all bass seems well made. I did notice some tuning issues when changing the string gauge and some slight slippage occured. Possibly the strings had to "settle" in. We'll see...

For the money, this is a nice bass and can easily be used by everyone from a novice to a pro. It does NOT sound like a higher end bass, but it will do quite well in most situations.

I bought this to pull recording duties with my PC and GNX3000. It's very capible of making nice tones. The EVO plays well and isn't as difficult for a person that plays guitar primarily to get used to.

The only problems I've had are an output jack that likes to loosen itself up, which I have fixed, knobs that weren't of equal height from the body, fixed, and intonation which looked decent on a standard tuner but a strobe tuner showed that it needed a little help. The problems were minor and easily corrected.

I'm not trying to be a professional bassist but I find it fairly easy to get good sounds. I have the bass run through a Digitech GNX-3000 using the GNX's onboard bass amp models.

I'm normally a guitar player who uses the EVO to add simple bass parts to previous recordings. Easy-to-play instrument that has good rich sound and plenty of control with the 2 humbucker pickups. Considering the price, a great over-all value.

This bass rocks! It's really cheap for such a great guitar. The double humbuckers really caught my eye, and the 24 frets just made me put this in my shopping cart. An attractive bass that gets me compliments, an amazing sound, and more money in my pocket

In my studio, I have gone through an 3/4 cheap bass and a $1400 MusicMan Sillouette 6 string bass that was the size of a guitar. The Dean beats them both. As a guitar player, I confused "short scale" with 3/4's, so it is slightly larger than I had figured. With the 2 humbuckers, it has tons of thunder and instead of a pup switch there are 2 volume controls to blend the pups and a master tone. The woods are great and it plays so smooth. Beware. This is not a guitar/bass, it is a short scale real bass. So, if you are a guitar player, who needs to play bass once in a while, buy this bass. Or, if you are a young beginner, buy this bass. You won't regret it one bit.