F Bass BN5 Deluxe Sage Green Metallic

F Bass BN5 Deluxe — Sage Green Metallic

The Deluxe is what happens when F Bass takes their benchmark BN5 platform and asks how much further it can go. Humbuckers with three switchable modes per pickup, Tara Labs wiring, a string-through A-style bridge and small vintage fretwire – this is the most versatile instrument to come out of George Furlanetto’s Hamilton, Ontario workshop.

This one is on its way to us and you can reserve it now, with delivery expected within 5-6 weeks. It wears Sage Green Metallic under high gloss, with chrome hardware and a roasted birdseye maple fingerboard. It’s a colour that shifts between elegant and bold depending on the light, and the figuring in the board matches that energy.

Body, Neck & Woods

The body is northern ash — the harder, denser cousin of swamp ash, and F Bass’s signature body wood. It gives the Deluxe strong fundamentals, a bright and punchy attack and the sustain to carry all three pickup modes convincingly. The Sage Green Metallic gloss lets the hardware and the birdseye board do the visual talking around it.

The neck is F Bass’s three-piece quarter-sawn construction in roasted maple. Roasting drives the moisture out of the wood, which makes the neck more stable through seasons and stage lights — and it drys up the attack slightly, adding a snappier, more focused edge to every note. The roasted birdseye maple fingerboard continues that voice: fast, bright and full of character under the fingers as well as the eyes.

F Bass fits the Deluxe with small vintage fretwire — less metal between your fingers and the wood, a more precise feel under each fretting hand movement, and a slightly warmer, woodier attack than tall modern frets. Combine that with the 34.5 inch scale, which adds just enough tension to keep the low B tight and piano-like, and you get a neck that rewards both a light touch and a heavy hand.

Electronics, Sound & Feel

The exposed-pole F Bass humbuckers are the heart of the Deluxe, and each has its own 3-way toggle. Single-coil mode is the brightest and most open of the three, with the quickest attack — a touch leaner and warmer than the stacked singles in a standard BN5. Series humbucking is the power setting: highest output, thick, dark and compressed, perfect for rock and anything that needs weight. Parallel humbucking splits the difference — slightly thicker than single-coil, completely hum-free.

Behind the pickups sits the F Bass all-boost preamp: flat means flat, and the bass, mid and treble knobs only add what you ask for. Pull the master tone knob and the whole instrument runs passive. Tara Labs wiring throughout keeps the signal path as clean as the switching is clever, and the string-through A-style aluminum bridge anchors every mode with extra sustain and punch.

If the standard BN5 is the benchmark, the Deluxe is the chameleon — one bass that genuinely covers vintage single-coil work, modern hi-fi and full humbucker growl without a pedalboard’s worth of compromise. For the player who refuses to choose one sound, this is the one.