Partners Daniel Alegria and Rodrigo Werneck formed D’Alegria in 2003 with a focus on building high-quality basses using environmentally sustainable Brazilian woods. The Defender’s freijó body was topped by mahogany cut from the tree’s “crotch”—where the first limbs extend from the trunk—giving it a distinctive grain pattern. I felt the deep sunburst finish obscured the top’s three-dimensional grain a little too much; I wanted to see its fancy looks more clearly (and show them off, too). Everything was gorgeous, but the plastic control-cavity cover seemed out of place on a bass in this price range. [Rodrigo Werneck of D’Alegria responds: “We have upgraded to an aluminum cover plate.”]

The ipê fingerboard looked like light-colored rosewood but was dense like ebony. The fretwork was faultless, and I appreciated the zero-fret, which made the fretted and open notes sound similar. The tauari neck’s grain pattern looked like mahogany, but it seemed a bit stiffer than other mahogany necks I’ve played. The bass was a little neck-heavy, especially on my lap. I found D’Alegria’s standard U-profile neck too shallow for my left hand, but deeper profiles are available since D’Alegria can shape to order. 

The D’Alegria has a huge variety of sounds for a passive bass, good news for tone sculptors who don’t want an active bass. For starters, each pickup’s series/parallel mode greatly changes each pickup’s sound. The parallel mode’s thinner, slightly biting sound helped my sonic presence in a cluttered band, where the louder, thicker series mode was sometimes obscured.

Then there’s the Vintagizer. Rotating the 6-position knob clockwise takes the sound from a brighter, more Technicolor sound, to darker, sepia-hued tones. Each Vintagizer setting changes the pickups’ capacitive load, altering the resonant frequency peak to change the pickups’ fundamental voice. A peek inside the control cavity shows that the Vintagizer is a system of capacitors and resistors. At low practice levels, I couldn’t hear much change when I rotated the control, but at higher, neighbors-be-damned or gig volumes, the effect was more rewarding. The tone pot and two volume controls had a small useful range, with a quick drop-off; perhaps D’Alegria used linear-taper pots instead of the more typical audio-taper pots, which account for our ears’ logarithmic sensitivity to sound. Since I’m more of a knob-on/knob-off kind of player, it didn’t really bug me.

None of the tones I dialed up with the many knobs and switches were an exact duplicate of other famous bass sounds. Instead, the JB Defender Deluxe evoked the most mojo-licious aspects of some well-loved tones, while offering something different in a versatile instrument. It was almost like having a set of paints, but with different colors than anyone else. With the soloed neck pickup in parallel mode and the Vintagizer set to either of the two darkest modes, the JB’s throaty mids sounded similar to a P-Bass, especially when I played pickstyle. But if a rotund, beefy bass presence was ever needed—and it often is—series mode can fit the bill. The Defender also had a righteously solid-sounding and -feeling B string.

For all of its charms, the Defender had a few problems. The test bass arrived with terrible intonation, and adjusting the Gotoh/Wilkinson bridge was a royal pain. Setting the intonation was tedious guesswork that involved loosening the string so that you could manually move the saddle, before retuning and hoping that you nailed it. (D’Alegria offers other bridges; I’d recommend taking the company up on it.) All of the knobs and switches were either audibly scratchy or clicky. Sounds like these are often caused by a little corrosion on the control’s contact points and often disappear when usage cleans the contacts, but they remained throughout our time together. [D’Alegria’s Werneck responds: “To avoid this problem, we have changed to using switches with gold-plated contacts.”]

D’Alegria’s Defender JB Deluxe is like nothing else out there. It’s a well-made hand-built bass with lovely woods, a unique electronics package, and a massive array of sounds. Still, the JB Deluxe seemed more expensive than similarly endowed instruments. But sometimes that’s the cost for having the only one on the block.

TECH SPECS

Body Freijó
Top Bookmatched crotch mahogany
Neck Tauari w/crotch-mahogany headstock   veneer
Fingerboard Ipê
Pickups EMG 40HZ humbuckers
Controls Neck volume, bridge volume, tone,   Vintagizer, series/parallel mini-switches   (for neck and bridge pickup)
Nut Bone, with zero-fret
Bridge Wilkinson/Gotoh WBG
Tuners Gotoh mini
Scale 34"
Weight 9 lbs
Made in Brazil
Gig bag Included
Warranty Ten years

Street $2,770
Pros Versatile, innovative electronics; tight, solid-sounding B string; uncommon wood options
Cons Some hardware troubles
Bottom Line Exotic and innovative, but with a few rough edges.

CONTACT

(704) 562-3564 www.dalegria.com