Sandberg Basses California Ida Nielsen 4 Soft Aged Custom Pink

Prince did not hire bass players casually. When Ida Nielsen joined the New Power Generation in 2010 she needed one instrument that could handle razor-sharp slap, deep pocket playing and a stage the size of an arena — and look like it belonged up there. The signature bass Sandberg built for her came out of that, and this one arrives in a custom pink high gloss with gold hardware that is not on any spec sheet.

Ida went to Braunschweig herself and worked through the bass with Holger Stonjek — which pickups, where they sit, the electronics, the hardware, and the thumb rest between the pickups that most signature models would never bother with. What came back is a California TM with the details moved around to suit a funk player rather than a catalogue.

The standard version is soft aged black. This one is pink, glossy and untouched, with a matched pink headstock, gold tuners, a gold bridge and a cream Asian silk pickguard covered in gold floral print. It is the loudest-looking bass in the shop before a single note comes out of it — and then it turns out to be a serious working instrument underneath.

The body is European alder, and for funk it is exactly the right wood to build on. Alder has a tight, controlled low end that stops where you put it, a present and slightly forward midrange, and a top end that opens up without turning glassy. It has no strong character of its own, which means what you hear is the pickups, the fingerboard and your right hand rather than the wood pulling the sound in one direction. The California body is contoured front and back, so it sits closer to your ribs than a slab-bodied bass and stays comfortable through a long set.

The finish is a custom pink soft aged with a matched pink headstock, and every piece of metal on the instrument is gold — tuners, bridge, knobs, strap buttons, even the pickguard screws. The pickguard is Sandberg’s Asian silk in a cream and gold floral print, and the white pickup covers and thumb rest keep the whole front of the bass in the same palette. Nothing here is an afterthought; it reads as one design rather than a colour swapped onto a standard build.

The neck is Canadian hard rock maple, bolted on with six screws instead of the usual four. That second pair of screws spreads the clamping load across the whole heel, keeps the joint from working loose through years of seasonal movement, and couples the neck more tightly to the body — you hear it as a firmer fundamental and longer sustain. The profile is a C-shape, full enough to fill your hand without slowing anything down, and the heel is sculpted so the top frets are genuinely reachable.

The fingerboard is birdseye maple, and on a bass built for slap that is the spec that matters most. Maple is the brightest and snappiest board wood in common use — it puts a percussive, glassy edge on the front of every note, which is precisely what makes a slapped E crack and a popped G sing. The birdseye figuring is not only decoration: that swirled grain comes with a density that adds articulation and keeps notes focused instead of spreading. Pearl block inlays run up the board, and the side dots are fluorescent, so the neck stays readable on a dark stage.

There are 22 frets plus a zero fret at the top of the board, and the zero fret is one of Sandberg’s better ideas. Instead of resting in a cut nut slot, the open strings sit on a fret exactly like every other note — same material under the string, same attack, same decay — so an open E actually sounds like a fretted E. It also means the action in the first position is set by fret height rather than by how well somebody filed a nut, which is the single most common reason a bass feels stiff down at the bottom of the neck. The scale is 34 inches and the board measures 39.3 mm at the zero fret, so your left hand is on familiar ground from the first bar.

Sandberg also puts the finished bass through their vibration treatment, a mechanical break-in that works the instrument the way years of playing would. The point is a bass that is already loose and resonant when it comes out of the bag rather than one you have to play in for a season — and on this one it is immediately obvious in how freely the body rings unplugged.

The pickups are Sandberg’s Black Label TM set, positioned where Ida wanted them: a T-style single coil in the middle of the body and an M-style humbucker down at the bridge. It is a deliberately unbalanced pairing rather than a traditional one. The single coil handles the round, vocal, slightly hollow voice that fingerstyle grooves live on, while the bridge humbucker brings mid punch and growl and stays quiet under stage lighting where a bridge single coil would be buzzing at you all night.

The blend between them is where the bass actually lives. Wound toward the neck you get the fat, old-school pocket sound; both pickups together give you the scooped modern voice that slap players want, with the maple board putting a hard edge on the attack; bridge alone is forward and nasal in the best way, the sound that cuts straight through two guitars and a keyboard. Sandberg’s 2-band EQ shapes it from there, with a passive tone control alongside it for rolling the top off without touching the preamp.

The preamp switches out of the circuit entirely, and passive mode here is not just a flat-battery escape hatch. It is a genuinely different instrument — softer at the edges, more compressed, springier through the low mids — and being able to move between the two between songs covers most of what a gig asks for. It also means a dead 9V costs you a switch rather than the set.

The details are where Ida’s involvement shows. The thumb rest sits between the pickups, which is exactly where a player who anchors between pickups wants it and almost nowhere else on the market puts it. The bridge has real mass under the saddles and adjusts between 18.5 and 20 mm, so you can set the string spacing where your right hand actually wants it for slap. There is a D-tuner on the E string, so drop D is a lever flick rather than a retune between songs, and the fluorescent side dots do their job the moment the house lights go down.

This is a bass for a player who works in the pocket and does not want to be invisible doing it. The alder body and maple board give you the snap and articulation that funk and modern pop demand, the TM pickup pair covers everything from a fat fingerstyle line to a slap tone that takes the top of your head off, and the passive mode is there when the active sound is more than the song needs. The signature model normally shows up in soft aged black — this one came through in custom pink high gloss with gold hardware, and we have not seen another one.