Bassic Review – KLŌS Apollo Pro Bass

The bass arrived as mentioned in two pieces, each within its own proprietary gig big, and already strung! That’s right, the strings exit the body’s bag and continue through the neck’s sleeve, being clamped down to the first fret with the included screw-style capo, to prevent the string windings from uncoiling from the tuners. The accessory complement also includes a branded strap, a rain hood for the two bags (which clip to each other), KLŌS’ own Silent Cable instrument cable that features silencing buttons on both plug ends to eliminate contact noise when plugging in, and a small resealable package that includes branded tools and the bolts for the neck. What more could you need?

The body is mated to a beautiful carbon fiber neck via four bolts, which you as the user/player are entirely meant to become well acquainted with upon delivery. These are machine-style screws that feed into threaded inserts in the neck, for better uniformity and longer life when assembling/disassembling frequently. The neck itself also presented a gloss finish over its more standard C-shaped feeling, not-quite-modern, but not-really-traditional profile, yet never felt particularly sticky or unpleasant. To note, the company refers to their neck profile as “oval,” being a blend between a C and D-shaped profile. Most importantly for me, KLŌS includes an adjustable truss rod in their carbon necks, so the player can set neck relief to their own preference. Carbon fiber may be pretty inert and stay where you put it for the most part, but there is no such thing as a universally acceptable or desirable neck relief setup.

The very short and narrow – miniature, even – headstock is yet another highly unique feature that helps set the bass apart, and at my first glimpse of it I immediately wondered if a big part of that design was related to controlling potential dead spots. The tuners used on this model have varied ratios, tailored to the gauge and tuning of each string. The Apollo Pro’s space-age neck is capped by a synthetic ebony, composite fretboard, adorned with 24 nickel copper frets. It’s a fairly light instrument, aided by its extra-small headstock, carved-out ash body, and the other lightweight materials used, and features a standard 34” scale length.

Playtesting Results

Given the way the instrument arrived and my lacking prior knowledge of the company and its wares, I have to confess, I somewhat expected this bass to feel and play like something of a novelty; a travel bass, with a good portion of its primary value being in its easy and intentional disassembly. I was wrong! In fact, I was pleased to discover, after a bit of a breaking-in phase and slightly modifying my approach to it, that the Apollo Pro is actually a high-performance bass guitar! And it sounds incredible; lively and responsive and rich, thanks in no small part to the equally unique and innovative Fishman Fluence pickup system. These pickups warrant their own full-length review, but for purposes of maintaining focus and brevity here, I’ll describe them as active pickups with three different programmed voicings, selectable via a 3-way switch, and using an internal topology and technology that Fishman calls their Core system, in place of a traditional spool of wire around one or more magnets or pole pieces. In short, they function and are composed differently from all other standard magnetic pickups I’m aware of, passive or active.

The Fishman Fluence system includes a bass and treble control, in addition to a well-implemented pickup balance pot, aside from the master volume control. The bass and treble pots are installed on the Apollo Pro backwards to what I generally think of as standard, with the bass control being closest to the neck rather than the treble. A three-way switch behind the balance pot governs the pickups’ overall voicings, which are comprised of a mid-focused and deep lows-deprived “passive” voice, a full range “active” voice, and a version of that full range voicing with a mid cut at 500Hz and a higher resonant frequency. I preferred the latter two voicings, by far. And should those three options not be enough in the way of overall timbre shaping for you, you can pull up on the volume control to engage a “single-coil,” Jazz Bass-like pickup aperture mode, usable in all three voicings, as well.

A midrange control would have been greatly appreciated (if you had just ONE EQ control, I’d argue it should be mids), but I got along fine adjusting treble and bass downwards from detent when I wanted more midrange content. Removing the scratchplate to take a look under the hood, I discovered one of the only areas of improvement I noted during my time with the bass; a seemingly lower level of attention given to the control cavity underneath the pickguard. It didn’t befit the fit and finish of the rest of the instrument, I felt, giving the air of a less stringent and more casual approach to assembly, including the presence of an odd piece of masking tape for which I couldn’t immediately detect a purpose (see photos). That said though, the solder joints were well-made and all connections were tight and strong, with nothing being functionally problematic.

Playability is where the Apollo Pro shines its brightest. Its fret ends and the entirety of the frets themselves are beautifully manicured without any sharp tangs, corners, or edges evident. But the aspect that impressed me the most – and I confess I’m not sure exactly what to primarily attribute this to – is that the bass just didn’t want to buzz! Regardless of right hand attack type or intensity (up to a certain point), the strings vibrate clearly and cleanly, inviting me to attempt ever lower action. This observation was made with the factory-set neck relief, which to my eyes appeared too conservative at first (more relief than I’d typically set), but it played so well and invited advanced technique so enthusiastically, I just didn’t feel the need to make any neck adjustments. I was able to get the action down so low that the G string’s saddle hit its minimum height setting, which felt just right and yielded about a 1.5mm gap between the 24th fret crown and the bottom of the string; roughly 1.25mm at the 12th fret. The bridge is KLŌS’ own design, but I do have one criticism to levy there: the saddle action screws can become loose and rattle due to the saddles’ side-to-side proximity to each other and side rails, and the potential for subsequent lack of downward force towards the base plate sufficient enough to hold the saddle screws firmly in place. I was able to mitigate this by tightening some screws slightly, but that of course resulted in higher action, which could have been avoided. I do applaud the sturdy, solid design and the inclusion of quick-release string channels, however.

There is a lot of misunderstanding regarding resonant frequencies (dead spots) and the usage of different neck and body materials that may promote or diminish them, but on the whole the BGM experience on the matter is this: all stringed instruments have them, somewhere, to some degree. It’s possible the carbon fiber and synthetic board, and/or the small headstock size, may have lessened the severity of the ones I found on the Apollo Pro, however, with only minor loss of sustain evident on the notes C and Db at the 10th and 11th frets of the D string. Especially in comparison to other instruments I’ve had in my keep, nothing remotely show-stopping and likely unnoticeable by someone not hunting for them with a trained ear.

Their documentation doesn’t identify a reason or purpose behind this, but the fretboards on KLŌS’ basses end slightly more than 1” past the 24th fret. It’s akin to a little ledge of additional synthetic ebony, which looks a bit odd at first. In fact, eating up a lot of the real estate between the end of the usable fretboard and the front edge of the neck pickup, some players might find that it encroaches on their slap technique a little. But it just so happens that I install slap ramps on all of my basses these days (depth-diminishing wedges that go in this exact area, between the end of the neck and neck pickup) to aid in more advanced double-thumbing and what I like to call quad-slapping techniques. So, it wasn’t long until I discovered I could use this little fretboard afterlength as a factory-built slap ramp, inviting all kinds of proggy goodness and finger fleetness. I like for these ramps to be a little lower than fretboard height, but I found I was able to modify my playing without too much difficulty to make this work on the Apollo Pro. Whether or not that afterlength gets in your way for how you play, you’ll need to judge for yourself. I’m guessing that most slappers, being the group likely most affected by this item, may come to like the depth-arresting ledge after a short time, and may even incorporate it into their own bag of tricks.

[Editor’s note: KLŌS does offer customizations, like moving the pickup location to fit better for slap players and they can offer additional pickup configurations.]

The Bottom Line