Bass of the Week: Aries Basses Senes Custom Bass

Aries Basses Senes Bass Body

Aries Basses is a custom shop producing some pretty incredible instruments out of Varazdin, Croatia, including their Senes bass model.

The Senes bass sports a singlecut design with a unique hole in the upper horn, offering a distinct look. The bass is completely custom, and can be built with a variety of top woods.

Standard options for the Senes includes a choice of mahogany, maple, alder, or swamp ash for the body and either a 3-piece flamed maple/hard maple or 7-piece wenge/padouk/maple neck. The fingerboard is typically ebony.

Aries utilizes Hipshot hardware in black, gold or chrome. The pickups are a pair of their custom handwound dualcoils matched with a custom preamp featuring a 3-band EQ and pickup switches.

For more, check out the Aries Basses website.

Aries Basses Senes Photo Gallery:

Aries Basses Senes Specs:

Body:Mahogany, Maple, Alder, Swamp Ash
Neck:3-piece Flamed Maple/Hard Maple, 7-piece Wenge/Padouk/Maple
Top:Choice of Woods
Scale:34″ and 35″
Frets:6150
Fingerboard:Ebony
Bridge:Hipshot
Machine heads:Hipshot Ultralite (Black, Gold, Chrome)
Pickups:Aries Custom handwound DualCoils
Electronics:Aries Custom made 3-band (Bass, Middle,Treble, pick up switching)
Accents:Wooden knobs & Wooden electronic and battery cover
Finish:Matte, oil, high gloss
Options:Custom options are available

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Share your thoughts

  1. She is beautiful. I wonder how it sounds?

  2. I’d love to have one of these. Beautiful work, it exudes quality.

  3. When a Musician need’s a tool , not a toy.that’s a serious looking GUITAR-

  4. fukin hell, they look really great!

  5. There are mixed feelings about Aries bases here in Croatia; on the one hand they carry an aura of prestige to those bassist who play on them, and there are quite a few of those in Croatia considering the price of Aries bass guitars. Their overall ergonomics and neck playability are particularly celebrated by those playing them. On the other hand, there are many second-hand Aries basses being offered on sale with as much as a triple price drop by their owners (who had them custom made for themselves). Why there is such an unusual fluctuation of these custom made basses is still unclear to me but I suspect something is not entirely right.

    • It would seem to me that custom basses are usually sold at low prices due to the fact that customizing also means personalizing to an extent that some features in the instrument were of the likes of the original owner and are allude him or her, making it difficult to sell at a price similar to what was originally paid. I’ve seen cases of basses and guitars with very specific customizations such as lettering or things of that sort, like a Roscoe I’ve seen with the word “PEKE” embeded on the fingerboard, which is the bassist’s nickname, but imagine this guy having to sell his bass… he paid a good amount of money but with that lettering on the fingerboard you either pay for another neck, or sell that bass for a very low price… pesonally I wouldn’t pay much for a bass with somebody else’s name on it. Who knows what other custom features might cause a drop in the price of a bass…

    • Daniel Bass Point taken; however there are still way to many second hand Aries basses circulating the yellow pages in its homeland. One would expect that bassist investing some 3500$ into a custom made bass would get what he wants and would not give it up all that easy. For instance I’ve heard complaints by players that Aries has unique pickup slots which make subsequent change of pickup difficult if not impossible, and Aries PR responding that many of its clients are butchering their basses turning them into something Aries would no longer call its product. I am not taking sides here, but there is some bad blood flowing between Aries manufacturer and a portion of its clients. I hope that Aries will work that out and improve on subsequent backup service to its clients. Bad reputation is a killer for small workshops.

    • “one does not simply sell a custom shop instrument”
      well, this is a known issue and is appliable to most of custom tailored high-end basses from small manufacturers. if you let them make you a bass for 4000$ now, you can sell it in a year for 1800$ and even consider yourself lucky if someone actually buys it. because, the main point here is: it is made for your specifications / technique / taste. this makes them so unique, that you can only target a fraction of a consumer group. therefore this small demand causes the price to drop. on the other hand: with an avarage bass you can target a wider group of consumers: the potential demand is much higher, hence the smaller price gap. demand/suplly defines the resell price: it has more to do with simple economics than the reputation of the company or its players.