Enlightened tone, bar none.

Inheriting the feel and tone of Vintage Jazz Bass, these basses will broaden your performance beyond expectation.

Artists

Carmine Rojas

“From the moment I picked up the Xotic bass, it felt like an old friend had come home. Warm tone and brilliant craftsmanship combined, I can honestly say it feels like an extension of who I am. It expresses what I need to voice as a musician.”

John Peña

“The Xotic XJ series continues to exceed my expectations. I enjoy recording and playing live music in almost any genre, and can honestly say that I've used my Xotic basses for all of the above. Cheers to my Xotic family who continue to create excellence.”

Travis Carlton

“It’s so cool to have a 6-string that still sounds like a jazz bass!”

Video

Story

The production of each high quality Xotic bass guitars begins in our Los Angeles, CA shop where the wood, shape, color, hardware, pickups and all other features are precisely designed for each instrument. Every model goes through an extensive process of R&D to determine which wood, construction and electronics will best serve its envisioned use.

These exact specifications are then sent to T’s Guitars in Japan. T’s Guitars has an enduring reputation of producing exceptional hand quality instruments in Japan and Xotic has a long and ongoing relationship with them.

Great attention is paid to picking the finest woods for our bodies and necks and each piece is hand selected.

Seasoned builders blend old world craftsmanship with modern CNC technology in building each instrument with each step in the process supervised up to Xotic’s meticulous specs.

Guitars are then shipped to our California shop where our Master Luthier will inspect each instrument. Fretwork is finalized with a fret dress that addresses every facet of the fret surface. Additional setup includes string height, truss rod adjustments and fine-tuning of pickups and electronics. Particular attention is giving to the instruments playability, tone, fit and finish.

Parts

Tuners

Trusted for its quality and precision, we use the Hipshot Ultralite for the machine heads. They are durable and lightweight, which helps for longevity and prevents head dive.

Fret

Jescar Fret Wire is an industry standard fret wire that is chosen for its high quality. It is trusted for its superior precision and durability by makers such as Gibson, Martin and Tom Anderson. The FW9665 model used for the XJ series, has proper height and trusted stability in pitch.

Body

Alder and Ash wood give the XJ series a solid low and low-mid range of tone, something that lighter wood bodies can’t achieve.

The XJ’s body is based on original Jazz Bass designs with Xotic touches like the rounded neck joint heel and cut-away that improve playability in higher positions.

Pickups

XJ 4 & 5 strings series’ Raw Vintage Pickups are Alnico 5 rod magnets, plain enamel copper wire, vintage style shielded cloth wire, and vulcan fiber bobbins.
At their base is vintage flavor, but it is versatile and punchy.
It is hand built one at a time in Sunny Southern California.

Bridge

The XJ series use special bridge which brass alloy does not insulate vibrations from the strings, giving it fat and solid tone. This bridge provides adjustments to the pitch and tension of each string allowing for a custom setup. Note: This bridge is not a genuine Hipshot, (built in the USA) component.

Preamp

The Xotic Bass preamp is modern feat of engineering with its tiny size and huge sound. Master volume (push/pull for active and passive), 3-band EQ, Mid and Treble frequency selector and 20db of boost this preamp allows the player enjoy a clean, musical and full-bodied active EQ and boost.

HRI

HRI was developed to answer this difficult request to eliminate the hum noise, while maintaining the tone of the single-coil pickup. Since it is completely passive, it does not require battery or any other power source.