WinterMute

A while back when I was lecturing, I'd ask students to bring in examples of what they considered good production, one lad brought in a well worked grimy/hip-hop version of Sgt Pepper, I'd never heard it before, it was interesting and well done. At the end of his presentation I jokingly commented, didn't the Beatles do a cover of that? He looked and me and said "who are the Beatles?". Much hilarity ensued. There's no reason that kid should have known who the Beatles were, half of them were dead before he knew what music was, the other half old or narrating Thomas the Tank Engine, but it made me smile. The music we revere is not the music everyone reveres.

Beatles, Coldplay, anyone who sounds like a pig stuck in a drainpipe, Foos output of late, most rappers, nearly all Jazz can get in the sea. I do quite like Nickleback though...

They would be, but I don't want gig my recording basses, so I have gigging basses and recording basses now. A 20th Anniversary SR5 and an ACG Krell fretless for the studio, and a Bongo 5 and "SR5" frankenstien fretless for stage, That way I'm not too worried about dings and scratches.

Alan builds some very special basses.

Looking good, it's the last few weeks that hurt the most I think, knowing it's out there, but it's not here...

Typo: 16 string...

TBF, I didn't even mention it to Alan, I'm not a big fan, but they are bloody useful on dark stages.

It's aluminium dots I think, there are luminlay dots to the side, but it's just reflected light in the pics. I toyed with the idea of LED's but I don't play live very much at all these days and I thought better of it in the end.

My 87 thumb was 16.5, a bit narrow, the 20th anni SR5 I have is 17 I think, as I based the Krell on the dimensions of that bass and I measured it from that bridge. Having played a couple of 18mm basses I’ve found them uncomfortable. So yeah the Krell is 17, not 16.5.

Nope that’s the standard Krell bodyshape. I didn’t see any need to change that. All I did was choose the woods and the spec, and add a mahogany core through the centre. It’s pretty standard. The only thing I messed out was the multi-coil pickups as they only come in 18mm spacing and I prefer 16.5mm, which is standard MM SR5.

Semi fretless? I've seen some half and half fretboards, NS did one for their 8 string, maybe one with a slightly bumpy fingerboard? I've a Frankenstein SR5 fretless, and it's not got the sustain and tone of the ACG, it fretless with a capital "F".

I just paid the bill. Alan Cringean did all the graft and has all the talent.

Been waiting a year for this, there's a build diary some of you have been kind enough to comment on. Awesome build quality, the pictures don't really do the complexity of the grain justice. Plays like butter, Alan commented that it was "very fretless" and he's bang on, tons of mwaaaa all day long. Absolutely love it.

Has arrived, is awesome. What a finish, I'm used to bubinga having a grain to it and I think I imagined the feel of the bass to be more textured, but it's absolutely flawlessly smooth. Gong to take some time to get used to it and the filter based pre, which seems to be capable of some very wide-ranging settings. I'll out a few more pics in an NBD post in Guitars.

Exactly, and provided you've a drummer able to set and keep the tempo correctly, this is a much better option for keeping DAW's and synths in sync, extract the timing template from the drummers performance and use that to drive the DAW timeline. The preservation of feel and the ability to lock MIDI and loop parts to it is essential.