NS Design CR4 Radius Fretless Bass Guitar - Natural Satin Reviews

I bought the CR4 in Charcoal a little more than a year ago to replace a Fender Custom Shop fretless Jazz that I've had for 25 years. I started to get nervous taking it into clubs, and just needed to retire it. The CR4 has been an absolute revelation. It has the full spectrum of tonality available (requires some getting used to the controls to really master it). I can make it sound like an upright, make it bark like a fretless Jazz, and it works perfectly in Muscle Shoals type R&B environments. I really haven't found anything this instrument can't do. It's light, comfortable, beautiful, and plays like a dream. In my studio experience with it, engineers have absolutely fallen in love with it. I've been playing for over 45 years, and I've owned dozens and dozens of basses. This is right up at the top of my list of favorites.

As there are not a lot of reviews on this bass yet, I thought I would get some info out there. First of all,
obviously these guitars are expensive, so you want to know what you can about it. It is a beautiful bass, but there are LOTS of those. It's lighter weight than a Precision bass. But heavier than a Hofner. And the somewhat unusual radius design is comfortable while playing.

I wanted a fretless with active pickups because I wanted to mute the strings but still have a lot of tone. I have
a Tony Franklin Precision bass, which I use a lot. BUT if I mute it to much I lose a lot of tone. That bass I can
play harder as the pickups are passive. But I wanted use the bass on some big band, Sinatra type music. With the
NS bass I can heavily mute the strings with a piece of soft foam and still get a good tone. So for that situation
it seems to work nice.


I play lots of different music, if someone needs a player to stand in, I get the transcriptions and I read
it. So I have a lot of bass guitars for different styles. I would say this bass does not like hard playing, it
likes a softer touch. So it's not as good at playing Jack Bruce, more Pino Palladino. It's less Pearl Jam...more
Sade. That being said with different muting amounts you can get great tones. I also occasionally use the studio
trick of a some soft cloth loosely tied at the TOP of the neck, to cut down string harmonics. Once the round
wound strings died down a bit it sounded better. These pickups are VERY active. So if you develop a light touch
and really play it sensitively its great. It comes with D'Adarrio EXL 170 round wound strings. I though this bass
would work better with flat wound strings. So I replaced them with flatwound 055 -105. It was big improvement.
With the active pickups finger noise on round strings can be a issue for quieter music. Now...its gone. And I can
still get a good "biting" sound if I use my fingernail(for something like a funkier Esperanza Spalding electric
bass tune) because the active pickups are so sensitive. If I need a fretless and a fretted bass for gigs, I use
this 4 string fretless and my Musicman bass as my "go to" basses now.

I play through a Line 6 Helix, and I haven't tweaked any amp/cabinet combo specifically for this bass yet. But it
would definitely help dial in the sound. Another thing is even with all the knobs and toggle switches (Piezo low,
mid, hi. Pickups bridge, both, neck. Piezo blend, Bass, Treble, Volume) there are only 2 sounds I am using. But
who knows maybe in time I'll find others. That's not really a negative, I find that to be true with most guitars.
I like the neck, at first I thought the "unusual" dot placement might throw me. I prefer no dots, but I kinda like
it now. And while I do like the natural non gloss finish on the the neck (similar to my Ernie Ball Musicman
bass),it's important to know the edge of the NS bass neck has no "relief". And I mean its REALLY a sharp 90 degree
edge, this might put some people off. It doesn't bother me...but then again I haven't played it for 12 hours straight and days at a time yet. I might need to have a Luthier knock that edge off. Something else to know, the CR NS bass has the EBONY fingerboard. The other fretless model (NXTa) uses Richlite. I had a Martin acoustic with that Richlite
stuff...I had to sell it, for some reason my fingers do not like it. If you are thinking of purchasing, you know
it's a Steinberger tuning setup, so I won't get into that. Other than to say tuning for a drop D is very easy with
Steinberger system.

Final word, about the case. It comes with a soft case. For a bass of this price it should really have a hard case.
So I asked around and researched hard cases. No one, not Sweetwater, not even NS Designs could answer about the
hard case. They basically said..."There is no hard case for it."

That's not exactly correct...

From what I've tried, pretty much ANY Precision bass case will work. Of course I wouldn't travel with it in
airline luggage (you need a flight case for that, which NS does sell). But if you want a case for home storage and
some light traveling, etc., a $ Gator Precision bass hard case, works perfectly. There is space at the top
where the Precision bass tuners would be. If that is a concern, add a piece of foam. From what I can tell there is
no movement issue. I also tried it with my G&G Precision bass case, it was fine. A standard OEM Fender Precision
case, both the square case and the "shaped" case, fit fine. I don't really know why this is such a issue, but
there you go. It fit all 4 cases I tired. Buy the Gator case, I am pretty sure it will work for you also.

Bottom line, 4 out of 5 stars. You may be thinking that a bass of this price should be a 5 star bass. But, you
need to adjust to it's particular eccentricities and find the playing technique it works best with. The edge of
the fretboard could be a issue for some people. And It's not the "Swiss army knife bass" that will work for all
players and genres. I've used it for a while now and it has become my favorite fretless for most things, except hard rock fretless.