I picked up this Mikro bass as a backup instrument with the intention of using it for practice and potentially recording some more difficult parts I struggle with on a full-scale bass. To my pleasant surprise, this doesn't play or sound like an entry-level instrument. The pots are smooth and quiet, the pickups are nicely articulate and clear, and the neck is very comfortable to play. Tuning was stable right out of the box and intonation improved with a few minor adjustments. I'd expect this level of sound quality and playability on a bass at least three times the cost of the Mikro, and if you're at all handy with setup and adjustments it can play like a much higher level instrument. Even the finish is very consistent and aethetically pleasing (I ordered the weathered black). As a smaller stature player, this is very comfortable with the compact body and short-scale neck. I wouldn't hesistate to gig with this bass as it sounds and plays beautifully.

My first bass and I'm loving it. The GSRM20 is the perfect size and sounds great. Now I'm looking at 5 strings.

As a 40+ year guitar player, it surprises me that this is my first bass. I was looking for something light and comfortable to play around with, learn, and expand my capabilities. After reading and watching many reviews on short scale bases, I decided on the Ibanez miKro. The finish on the bass is fantastic. The neck shape is comfortable and the finish is smooth. Sliding up and down the neck is effortless. The J pickup is a little lacking in output but the P pickup sounds fantastic. The 4 star rating is due to the setup, or lack thereof, as delivered by Ibanez. At this price, it did not qualify for Sweetwater's 55 point inspection. I had to set neck relief, string height, and intonation. Once set up properly, it is a joy to play. I could not be happier with the value provided by this bass.

My expectations were not high, but should have been. This is a great-sounding bass for the money. With both pickups and tone cranked up, it sounds remarkably good.

The tuning wasn't as stable as I'd like. (My reason for 4 stars instead of 5) Not terrible, but I had to tune more often than I wanted, so I replaced the tuners for $ with Gotoh lightweight tuners. No new holes were required to be drilled. Easy replacement.

A friend recommended I buy this as a bass to noodle around on while sitting on the couch. Good call.

It's also a neat little guitar-sized travel bass. Rather than carry it on a plane in a gig bag, I unscrewed the neck, bubble-wrapped the neck and body, and took it on vacation in my checked through suitcase. (I brought a screwdriver with me to reassemble.) it survived the baggage handlers just fine, with clothes surrounding it in the suitcase.

I'm very happy with it and would recommend it to anyone looking for a cheap bass for travel or noodling.

Awesome 3/4 size bass for the $. Plays, sounds, and looks great. Well constructed too. Highly recommend it!

Great value for me (a hobby).

This bass plays good, easy on the hands and shoulder(light as a feather)

Absolutely love this bass! The scale length is SO comfortable. I'm primarily a fiddle player but I play a lot of guitar and cello and this scale length really fits right in. The precision style pickup mixed with the jazz pickup gives a ton of options for sculpting tone. The body is really light but not so much that the neck and headstock want to droop. First time I plugged in, the jack was good and tight. Not much danger of your line coming out. The playability is just my favorite thing about it. Out of the box, the action required no adjustment and it's sweet to play with no fret-rattle…I even drop-tuned it a whole step with no trouble. I've been using it non-stop with Studio One and the signal is clean as can be with no buzz. I love this bass and I think if you're looking for a short-scale bass, you will too!

If you are in the market for a short scale bass, this is the best bang for the buck. Superb build quality, tuners, bridge. Pickups are nice and punchy. It's an absolute pleasure to play. Mine had zero issues with frets. The fretboard on mine looks like a dark piece of ebony, but that could have been the luck of the draw. Highly recommended.

This is my first time playing bass after not picking up an instrument for almost 15 years. So far, the Mikro has been great to learn on. I would recommend tinkering with the action/strings a bit to make sure it feels comfortable and you get the tone youre looking for. Fret buzz might be an issue if the strings are too close. Also bear in mind that it is a short scale which means the fretboard is 4 inches shorter than a standard bass.

Otherwise, Sweetwater's customer service has been fantastic. I placed and order on a Wednesday night and it arrived by Friday afternoon with the free shipping! They were even able to edit my order last minute and add a case that I requested.

High recommend ordering from this site!

First of all, short scale basses have been used by professional level bass players for decades. They're not just for kids or players with "tiny" hands.

I'm primarily an electric guitar player, rock/thrash/doom metal, that also plays bass and acoustic for over 35 years now. I'm 6'3", not tiny, and I both own and enjoy playing this bass. I do indeed have full size basses too. I use them all for different applications.

Now that we got that out of the way let's talk about this weathered black Ibanez Mikro. What a nice playing and sounding bass for $. What a great time to be a musician. The more affordable import lines are truly rivaling many USA made instruments these days.

The neck is super playable, fast, and mine had zero issues. No sharp or uneven frets. Pickups sound fine. Blending the two offers decent tonal variety.

Guitar is balanced and super easy to manage. Being short scale makes it super fast to play and yet still thumps out plenty of low end. Winner.

Tuners and bridge both work just fine. Tuning stability on par with anything else out there.

The action was set up great (though I always give the truss rod a little tightening adjustment with every guitar I get). The intonation needed a little adjustment but tuners and screwdrivers are common. Every guitar player needs to know how to do that, it's easy.

A good short scale bass is handy in the studio. Quick and easy, sounds great, no hum, nice finish too, my fav of the bunch.

Ibanez Mikro is worthy of consideration by both beginners and professionals alike. Easy to transport, fits in a crowded studio or closer easily, and simply fun to goof off with.

I have avoided Demo purchases. This wasn't a big-ticket item, so I gave it a shot. I simply wanted a short scale bass to give my hands a break. The 55-point inspection gave me a little courage and I'm pleased with the purchase. The bass is actually fun to play and it really make my older fingers work just that little bit better. The little guy is well worth the demo price and regular price.

I've done some research on what bass I wanted to purchase for my Wife and I. I couldn't find the Ibanez Mikro locally, so I looked up where I could buy it online. Sweetwater had it available, their website is very user friendly and good information is provided on the product. I ordered the instrument on a Saturday or Sunday night and it was at my doorstep on Wednesday. I couldn't be happier with the instrument and the order fulfillment.

Sounds and plays great once setup, and is a lot of fun. Would definitely recommend this to someone looking for a short scale bass.

My daughter wanted a bass guitar and picked this one out. It got here as scheduled and plays and sounds incredible. Sweetwater is top notch.

Great guitar, it came out of the box ready to play, but not "weathered" by any means. It's just matte black.

I bought this bass for my wife, who is determined to learn to play. First of all, Sweetwaters staff and customer service people are some of the best I've dealt with. The bass showed up at my door right on time, and it is exactly what my wife wanted. I will definitely be buying more equipment from Sweetwater. Recommended

I love my new bass! It's lightweight and the smaler neck makes it easy for me to reach all the frets. Perfect size for us petite rockers!

i am shocked at how well this sounds and plays right out of the box. i recommend this bass no matter what skill level you are. it's tons of fun for a petite machine.

My weapon of choice is a guitar but I wanted to also have a bass to fill in some of the cover songs that I do with my daughters. I was contemplating a full scale vs short scale but decided on a short scale so that my young daughter can also learn to play. I watched review and stumbled upon this bass. I made the right decision, this Ibanez short scale bass has great tones, easy to play, looks beautiful, with a great price. If you play standard tuning, this bass should be enough for you, I do see a problem if you drop tuned as the strings will be more like a spaghetti. For my needs, I give this bass 5 stars.

I've been playing bass for 25 years and while my bands have been popular and I've had a lot of fun, I've come to the point where I would like to become more technically proficient on this instrument. I primarily play acoustic bass and I own a Taylor fretted and a Michael Kelly unfretted bass. These are wonderful instruments, but are larger than most basses. I also play an electric upright and a double bass which are even larger. When Covid struck and I knew I was going to be isolated I decided that now was the time to settle down with all the bass instruction books, DVDs, CDs and online courses I've collected over the years and which so far have only been gathering dust. At that point I read an article from Sweetwater about short scale basses and wondered if perhaps one of these would be a good idea for learning and practicing on. I was drawn to buying a Gibson or Fender, but these are shaky economic times for everyone and I knew that this was destined to be a practice instrument so I settled on this Ibanez GSRM20. I'd recently sold off the last of my solid body electric basses from my blues and pop band days. This last instrument was an Ibanez and had served me well, so I was willing to try the micro even though it was a quarter of the cost of the Fender and a fifth the cost of the Gibson. Well, I've had it a week and I'm impressed. It's small, lightweight and its short scale neck is a delight to navigate. For pure tone I prefer the Taylor and Michael Kelly acoustics, but the micro doesn't disappoint. Perhaps my biggest surprise is the sustain: it stays and stays. I may never gig out with it, but I've already but in many hours of practice and am learning new skills. The small scale and light weight make long practice sessions more manageable. This old dog is learning new tricks and this micro bass is making it fun. An extra bonus is that you don't need to get a new gig bag if you already have an electric hard body guitar case. My little black beauty fits fine in my Fender tweed padded gig bag. Hope you enjoy yours. I love mine.

Extremely fast neck, but good luck using extreme drop tunings as the lower tension of short scales renders you a bit spaghetti, though it does hold tuning. Where it lacks in low end grunt, it makes up for in sustain. Controls are something to keep an eye one as they often feel flimsy or get sloppy even with minimal use. May just be how mine is setup but the first few frets pull quite sharp almost like it's a scallop-type fretboard if you have a heavier grip. The P-pups are also oddly offset from the poles which might cause some issues with per-string levels. I'd recommend going over it carefully as while it is a budget gem, just expect that it comes with a budget setup.

I"m primarily a lead guitarist, but I"m working on my next album and I am currently living in a rural area. Bass players are notoriously hard to find so I decided to record my own bass parts. The Mikro Bass is a short scale Bass which I found it"s allot easier to play for me since I"m a lead guitarist. It looks and plays really nice and has a good tone, comparable to more expensive basses. But, I"ve never really believed you always have to have an expensive guitar to sound good. My first album was recorded with an inexpensive Ibanez strat guitar. You can"t go wrong with the Ibanez brand of guitars because even the low end models are of quality.

This Ibanez Mikro Bass is now my main Bass guitar. I have small hands, both which have been broken twice, and suffer from tendinitis so I had to move to short scale in my guitars and basses. With a new set of strings, and set up this thing is fantastic! I like tapewound strings and after making the mistake of getting the Rotosound short scale tape wound bass strings, which did not fit (read my review of those for the details - would not fit nut, too thick, could not set intonation, thick wound into tuner), I found that the "D'Addario ETB92S Tapewound Bass Guitar Strings, Medium, 50-105, Short Scale" were PERFECT for this bass guitar. The P pickup sounds surprisingly great. The J pickup is a little lacking and I might upgrade that one with a better Jazz bass pickup and also re-wire it for one volume, one tone and a toggle switch (adjusting two volume knobs to change sounds takes too much time). The bass is lightweight, has a great neck, great scale length for people with problematic hands, sounds good, and it looks gorgeous! Oh, and the price!!! I am very happy with this Bass Guitar!