I thought it was about time I took part in this part of Basschat. I've been meaning to for a while, but never got around to it. Late last year, a great friend of mine visited me and I took the opportunity to get him to take some decent photos of my basses. I combined these with some photos I already had and here's the result.
So to the basses..
First up is "Jezebel" (named by my better half, Jennifer), my Sei Flamboyant Offset 7 string created by the un-flappable Martin Petersen and his cohort John Chapman at Sei HQ in Camden Town, London ( see [url="http://www.seibass.com"]www.seibass.com[/url] ). I wanted a Sei from at least 1996 when they were featured in Guitarist magazine and after actually playing one I knew that I would buy one if i possibly could. May 2005 saw the deposit paid and the bass was ready nearly exactly a year later.
Jezebel has full lacewood facings both front and back and a walnut core with a thin laminate of bolivar dyed claret between them. The thru-neck is constructed of maple & wenge and is topped with a birdseye maple board with my signature inlay at the 12th fret. There are even little purple LED's on the side of the neck as I couldn't resist adding them to the spec!! The custom Kent Armstrong humbucker feeds both a standard and an XLR output and only had a concealed coil-tap button next to the outputs to control the tone. However, since these pics were taken, Jezebel has had a Schack 3 band eq added so the bass now has two stacked pots and a tiny switch for the LED's.
This bass plays like the proverbial butter and players who have tried the bass have commented on how playable it is. OK, it's 7 strings but it's bodyshape ensures that it's perfectly balanced and the neck is shaped so well that it's not the huge aircraft carrier you may think it is. The sound is really punchy and focussed, even more so after the extra electronics have been added. It's sound is now incredibly flexible as well.
To my delight, Guitarist magazine published my submission for the "My Guitar is..." feature in their December 2007 issue.
Photo courtesy G.Jones
Photo courtesy G.Jones
..and guess which bass I play...
Next up is my Conklin GT7. this is both bass from which I got into 7 strings and the one from which measurements were taken and handed to Sei HQ so they could construct Jezebel. This bass came from the USA which meant that I had to be up at 4am for the end of the eBay auction. A while ago I wanted a ramp, so I wrote to Conklin and they offered to make me one made of perspex, laser-etched with the Conklin logo. However, I stuck this on with 'clear-drying' super glue which dried white underneath the clear perspex. I even offered the bass for sale as I didn't know what would happen when I removed it. No-one made a firm offer, so equipped with a Dremel moto-tool, a large, flat screwdriver and a large hammer, I attacked the ramp. After about 20 minutes of work, the ramp released with a loud crack and all that was left behind was a little dry glue. So now the bass was looking a whole lot better.
Because I now had the Sei 7, I now wanted to find someone who would both de-fret and make a new ramp for the bass. After reading nothing but good things about him, I contacted Jon Shuker. After a couple of e-mails worth of conversation, I took the neck off the bass and packed both the body and neck as well as I could and sent it down to Sheffield. After struggling to unwrap the bass, Jon did his thing and I collected the bass personally on my way back up to Glasgow after visiting my family down south. The Conklin now plays great and it looks cool as well.
The only downside of the Conklin is that it's darn heavy !! It sounds great, it plays great but being ash with a quilt maple top it's very, very heavy. The addition of a Comfort Strapp (yup, the one with two p's!!) is essential to be able to play this bass standing-up for more than a few minutes.
Photo courtesy G.Jones
Thirdly is my Fender Urge Mk1 in Burgundy Mist (not pink !!). I owned a Sherwood Green one a few years ago (even had a piece published in Bassist magazine about it) and always regretted selling it, so when one came up on eBay at a price that was too good to miss, I made sure I didn't miss it!! As many of you know, this bass was developed by Stu Hamm and the Fender Custom Shop and effectively puts the Kubicki electronics (from the Ex-Factor which Stu was playing) into an instrument with the same 32" scale, but a more familiar outline. Being 32" scale, the bass never really caught on, but it really is a superb bass to play as the combination scale length and a compound radius neck just make it so easy. The controls allow any combination of the 3 pickups, either active, active with a mid boost or even completely passive. If you have an opportunity to play one of these don't turn it down. You'll find an extremely light and extremely playable bass with a whole cornucopia of sounds.
Photo courtesy G.Jones
Next is the bass which I've had the longest, my Jackson Kip Winger. This bass started my love of lacewood, which came out in my Sei 7. This wood has a lacy, scaly grain which is just so different from anything else. Kip Winger played bass for Alice Cooper before fronting his own band "Winger" (not his choice of name!) who created 3 albums from 1998-93. After making some solo records, Winger the band came back in 2007 with a studio album, IV, and a live album and DVD, Winger Live. Winger is one of my all time favourite bands and I've been lucky enough to both meet the man and have a one-to-one singing lesson from him. I also have the Winger logo tattooed on the back of my right shoulder.
This bass is so much fun to play. It sounds great, although to be honest it's not that flexible and it also has a strange combination of active pickups and passive tone controls. The top-end access is absolutely rubbish, but it looks very cool and plays and sounds great. I did have the choice between this and the quilt-maple, EMG loaded version which even had the Jackson logo in abalone. This one sounded better.....
Photo courtesy G.Jones
Lastly, is a bass I bought after seeing it on a site featured on BigRedX's unusual bass thread. The site was [url="http://www.bas-extravaganza.nl/"]http://www.bas-extravaganza.nl/[/url] and as I looked around it, I felt myself strangely drawn to this bass. I just really liked the simplicity and the shape of it and since I've had it, I've found it sounds darn good as well. Between Bas (the luthier) and myself, we did have some concerns that the really thin neck might be damaged in transit, but it made the trip from the Netherlands safe and sound.
It might seem a bit strange that someone who likes 7 strings also likes the 1 string as well, but it's all bass in the end and bass is what I enjoy playing more than anything else. I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have these basses as well as a couple of those g***** things which we don't talk about here. Music, especially bass-playing, can be described an addiction. But it's a nice addiction to have....
