Don't get too shocked by the width of the neck and string spacing. I have played a Z5 and the neck is fast and very comfortable, if maybe slightly too thin. I have to admit, the Z6 does look a bit of a handful.
Because of its price it is putting itself into the firing line of other basses like Lakland, Music Man and Warwick. I am naturally bias towards Warwick, but if my head spoke before my heart I would go for the MTD Zephyr. It plays great, looks great and has a lot more subtleties compared the other usual suspects. However, there were a couple of things that I didn't like:
Bridge - It looked and felt pretty cheap and the very thin base plate on the Z5 that I played on wasn't even screwed on tightly...there was a gap between the base plate and the body.
Frets - There we a few frets that I noticed that were not dressed very well. A couple of them were actually quite sharp at the edges and were very noticeable when you ran your fingers over them.
Not really a good sign of build quality and that's quite shocking to say that about an MTD instrument.
