Ibanez miKro GSRM25 5-string Bass Guitar - Black Reviews

I loved my Mikro 4 string and then bought this one from Sweetwater. Our guitar player says the pickups have more "spank" on the 5. It's been my main bass since 2014. Just buy it.

One is about 3 years old ( you can see my review a few posts down ....
The 2nd I bought as a backup
The third one ( most recent ) is going to have the Frets pulled out of it by a local luthier.

I had to replace different sized screws in the bridge ( as noted before in other purchases of the exact same instrument ) , and by others customers, I noticed , in this same thread .....
The factory screws would not allow the saddles to come back far enough to intonate properly ...
Just went to ACE hardware and bought the same size threads, just a shorter screw.

Otherwise, For 250.00 this thing continues to perform a sweet playing bang for the buck ... for sure.
I bought an Ibanez headless high end multiscale workshop series not long ago - THIS BASS overall OUTPERFORMS, for a fraction of the Ibanez EHB workshop series cost.

...this is a very nice bass .It looks good and it plays really easy .

I picked this Bass up about a year ago after deciding my 6-string Bass was too difficult to reach strings with aging joints. The size was a strong determinant. It is easy to play with little effort offering great sound for any kind of music. This Ibanex miKro GSRM25 holds tuning very well only needing attention when the weather effects it. Otherwise, it is highly dependable. My ears can pick up even slight alterations in tuning. This thing is a joy to play!

I own several ibanez bass guitars and all have the quality and sound expected from the brand.The mikro completes my collection. Great product!

Even though it took me about a week to work out some of the kinks and get this thing to intonate and hold tuning ... I am very impressed with this lil booger !

I had to replace the screws that allow the saddles at the bridge to pull back to properly intonate the bass. One of the screws from the factory allowed this .... but the other four screws were too long to allow the string saddles to move/slide back to its furthest potential.

Im playing a... bass through a 1000.00 Mark Bass 12' combo Amp and couldn't be happier !!

Some reasons I love this guitar:

It's solid, well-made, and attention was given to detail.
The paint job is flawless. Not a slight scratch or factory ding on it.
It made me appreciate black guitars again.
Easy to intonate.
Well balanced - doesn't try to slide off your leg.
Frets are VERY well finished; some of you get twisted about that.
Tone knob works the way it should.
If the sounds and body that come out were from a more expensive guitar of typical size, you
wouldn't be surprised. From this one you are.
The recommended gig bag is tightly padded and fits like a glove.

If Ibanez makes a 6-string version of this model, my check will grow wings and fly to Sweetwater faster than my new girlfriend got to me.

So call my Man on the Mountaintop Matt Fuller at extension 1284 and get one. It'll make you fell better.

This bass is lightweight yet still has a great sound. My first 5 string and surprisingly the B string is not at all sloppy, plays fine. I look forward to learning new ways to advance my playing. If any Ibanez designers are listening, offer more colors like you are doing with the 4 string version.
Thanks Kingsley for all your help with my purchases!

I was looking for a medium or short scale bass and prefer 5 strings. I was surprised when I found a short scale bass with 5 strings. Most short scale leave the low E a little floppy. So you can imagine my surprise when this short scale bass's llow B string not only sounded good but was only a tiny bit looser than my long scale basses. This little bass sounds really good. I'm thinking about getting a second one to trick out.

For starters, I had reasonably high expectations due to the positive reviews already written. But I was very pleased with my new shorty 5 string bass. Plays and sounds great. Very little setup required, too. No fret sprout, nice action, pickups sound fine, knobs are tight, tuners work well.

Of course the proof is using it on a gig. I have a couple of weeks until that happens but I have no doubt it'll perform like a champ.

I have owned this bas for about a year and I absolutely love it. Over the years I have possessed musicman, fender, gibson, ken smith, and higher end ibanez's. I can honestly say this little guy really holds it's own.

It arrived perfectly set up, with nice low action, right out of the box. Basically plays and sounds like every Ibanez bass I've ever owned, which is great, especially at this price point.

It's well balanced and feels like a real instrument, not a child's toy, which is something I was worried about. It's about the size of a strat! But lighter!! I dig the tone and so do friends and band mates.

Fit and finish is really good. Fret ends are a little sharp. Pearl white finish is great. Neck has no finish at all. Just raw wood. Guess that's a way to save some money, but personally I love the unfinished neck.

Negatives? Hard to complain at this price point. Tuners don't hold as well as a high end bass. To be expected. The fret ends are sharp and unfinished. That's about it.

Bottom line: I love it. I have many basses, but end up playing this one all the time. Also being such a short scale, it's just easier to play.

Just what I needed ordered and received with OUTSTANDING customed service

I have partially crippled hands which preclude me plucking or fingering single strings. Therefore, all of my rigs (guitar or bass) are strung from the same string set in various patterns (ecg24-7), tuned open "G", thumb-strummed with a soft bar across all strings. That being said, I find the miKro 5-string easy to setup and play. It's light and small, and provides the big bass chords that support the rest of the group. I do wish that the silver knobs, bridge and tuners would be replaced with black, but that's only a vanity thing, not a problem with the bass. At the price point, it's worth every penny for the type of playing I do with the band. I can't say how good it would be for a regular bass player, but for a strumming baritone, it's great.

This is my first 5-string and I love to play this through the bass rig at church. Huge tone and this thing feels amazing to play. Full size basses are a challenge for my smaller hands but i can play so comfortably with this. I'm totally sold on 5-strings with the low B and rarely pick up my 4 string short-scale Ibanez. The pickups are much better than the ones
in the 4-string. Would like to see more color options though(especially pearlescent white)

This little bass has got it all together. Just what I needed. It's light and very easy to play with a great big full sized sound. The intonation needed a little more setup but that was an easy fix. I love it.

I was really pleasantly surprised at how good this bass is. I wanted a shorter scale bass for travel, and by all means, this is not just a beginner instrument.
1. Fit and Finish 5/5: The neck has a real nice natural/satin feeling finish on it and is nicely contoured, fingerboard feels totally fine, frets have nice rolled edges and are all nicely crowned. The gloss black body finish looks really cool, though some other color options would be nice. The rounded neck joint makes access to the higher frets really easy and the body contours are very comfortable. Bass came well-setup out of the box and the stock strings are very good. Really surprised at quality of fit and finish...
2. Hardware 4/5: The bridge is totally fine, easy to adjust. The knobs are easy to feel and roll without looking, though I would have preferred a hard-stop middle position for all of them. The bass stays in tune and the tuners are fine considering the heavy strings/short scale, but take longer than average to get right on the money, I would upgrade these to something with a better gear ratio, and any standard size tuners will work.
3. Electronics 4.5/5: To my ears trained on instruments of all cost ranges from expensive to affordable, these are very decent pickups for the money, great for practice and amateur gigs. The tone pot seems to be an audio taper, which is great, while the volume pots seem to be linear tapers. I am not a fan of the volume pots, the volume goes full or turns off completely with still about 25% left to turn. The B string sounds great and even better than some full scale basses I've played.
Fantastic bass for the price for any level of player. Slap may be a little hard because of the lack of real-estate but it's totally fine for fingerstyle/pick. It's also a great bass to upgrade as the player progresses to a more advanced level, there's no need to switch to a standard-scale instrument if they don't want to, I would just throw in an EMG no-solder pickup/electronics kit (4 string pickups will fit in without requiring any routing) and swap the tuners for Grover or Hipshot and... you'd have a killer professional instrument. I'm even considering selling my other basses, buying a couple more of these and putting in different pickups in all of them, so I'd have 2 or 3 easily portable/playable and inexpensive instruments with a variety of tones for any kind of gig.

Really good bass, my first 5 string and I like the fact it is short scale but is a proper instrument. Two pickups are nice to have also. Plays really well - expected from Ibanez. rotary knobs are cheap plastic but everything works well. Didn't get a bag with it which I forgot to check - I thought they shipped with one.

Sweetwater packaged it well and it arrived in perfect condition.

Excellent bass... I put some flatwounds on it for a fatter sound, and it now kicks bootie! Leave the roundwounds on it if you like a "twangy" slap tone. I am still getting familiar with new "B" string adding that 5th string. A bit of "untraining" after 40 years with 4 string basses, but absolutely worth it!
What a great bargain for the money! Holy Moly! And it is short scale, so fingers move faster!

This bass came with everything except a description of the controls and the proper tuning sequence for a 5-string. After I got that figured out, I've been having a blast with it. It plays really well, and I like the short scale neck; the frets are a bit closer together. The neck is fast, the tuners' movement is smooth & positive, and the bridge is well designed and solid. All in all, an excellent entry-level bass, for the money.

Just turned 70 and was tired of lugging my 12 lb 5-string long neck basses around. This bass is 7 lbs and the sound is very good for the price. The setup took some work and the selection of short-scale strings is very limited. Other than that a very good deal

I've always wanted to play bass, but I had problems with the correct fingering, one finger per fret, This bass solved that problem. I'm too old to play in a band and I'm not going on the road anytime soon so I can't tell you how the bass act on stage. It sound great in my bedroom studio. Sweetwater is a great company, the best there is.

A friend recommended ibanez bass guitar to me.
I heard him play and the sound was awesome.
I wish i could also experience it my self.

It's a great little guitar! What do I like about it? It's passive, It's punchy and the notes don't get lost when playing along with a band. It has no dead spots and the pick up are very clean with no static of any kind (even when not being played) ,they are very quite actually. I am really impressed. It reminds me of the fender version of the short scale mustang and in five string, even better. The fifth B string sounds pretty clear and at two hundred dollars, I will probably buy one more for back up! If Ibanez could only come out with different colors it would make it more interesting. It's advertise as a beginner bass, but I took it for a gig and I was really impressed! Light weight, what else can you ask for! I highly recommend one, get one while they last!

I got this bass to take to sit around the office and mess with on breaks, and that role has been filled nicely. It is fast, fun, doesn't take up much space and I get to keep playing the low B. The tone is only going to get so deep on an instrument build like this, but since I put a set of flat wound La Bella's on, my expectations on sound have been exceeded. Definitely feel the bass is a good value and I would replace it in a minute if lost or stolen.

I got one of these and couldn't get the D & G strings to intonate. Thanks to Sweetwater's great return policy I was sent another while returning the first. It was not possible to bring the bridge saddles for those strings back far enough. It first I had thought the bridge was mounted in the wrong position, but then realized that it's simply that the screws used to move those two saddles are simply too long! Cutting the length of those screws with a dremel tool fixed that issue. Now to work on the neck to get rid of the buzzing on the B & E strings...

This bass, even with it's issues seems like a good bargain for the price. Might take a few tweaks but the quality of the build doesn't seem bad.

Will add to this review once it's serviced.

As previously noted, this is a really nice bass, for the money; however, I've been having a really difficult time finding string sets for it...Ibanez seems to be really hard to contact (unless there's a technical problem with their website). Keep in mind that replacement strings for a short scale 5 string bass are hard to find; I've found one set, but they cost more than 25% of what the bass costs. Apparently, this is a "buyer beware" instrument, so be forewarned...