Chris2112

Absolute legend of a player, the finest funk player of them all. I recall that he was ill in the 90's and had to step back from ToP for a while, but he had a good run and was able to return to playing for many years after that. He will be missed.

That sounds pretty interesting, do you have any photos you could share?

Just this Cort Rithimic Jeff Berlin signature model. Incredible tone and playability, weighs about as much as a feather duster. This and my Peavey Palaedium Jeff Berlin model are the two I would never sell.

I love this bass. I had a very close look at it when it was on sale here and I was very tempted, and the relieved that it sold and saved my wallet! I love Jose Merlos's designs, his Instagram is has a number of beautiful builds on it.

The Schack is unique in that video being the only one that is passive with singlecoils. I think it sounds great - they all do - maybe the Kingbass Artist or Bogart being my favourite sounding. FWIW, those are undoubtedly toned that Karl favours, I tend never to scoop any mids as a rule and often bump them a touch if needed. Jeff Berlin and Alain Caron were the sorts of players whose tone inspired me and my Bogart is usually running a sound with that in mind. They have a fairly organic sound I find, that many players might not instantly recognise the graphite neck based on tone alone.

My dad came up with a good trick for this a few years ago, using a small piece of anti-static mat cut into two strips. One strip would sit below the bass, the other would sit behind the headstock. It did give the disconcerting effect of making the basses look like they were propped against the wall. My old ACG Harlot was photographed like that and was sold on looking like a new instrument.

If it's that white 5 string one, that looks really cool. Stefan has recently started an official facebook page and is always available if you have questions or need support. Karl Clews and I administrate a Bogart Owners group on Facebook, that's also a good resource.

I've never actually played any Basslab instrument but I'd love to try one. The blue six string that has turned up here on occasion has been sorely tempting to me. They use a hollow-form like the Status Stealth, so that bodes well. Vigier and G. Gould remain on the list of things I want to try.

And so, to summarise my thoughts on a few other bits and pieces I had owned... A good few years ago, I had owned a Zoot fretless bass with a carbon fibre neck. I wasn't sure where the neck had come from, though Zoot offered them as an option at the time and I had seen a few others around, though none as a semi-lined fretless like the one I had. It was alright, but never sounded quite how I had wanted it to. With a Bartolini humbucker, full maple body and carbon fibre neck I really expected something wild, but it never quite hit the mark for me. I had owned a Zon Sonus at one point that was a bit of an eye opener, in truth I had probably sold it off a little too quickly and should have kept it longer. It may have been a Sonus Special model because it did have an ash body with a bubinga top and two Bartolini singlecoils. At the time, I was a little disappointed in the tone because I was coming to it off the back of a slew of Status Graphite basses. Joe Zon had wanted to reinvent the Jazz bass for the 90's with the Sonus and I think he did well with his intended goal, creating a distinctive instrument that was very lightweight and with great balance. I had hoped it would be more bright and hi-fi than it was, and it definitely wouldn't compete with a Status in that regard. These days, I would consider Bartolini to be my favourite pickups by a country mile and I feel that I would give the Sonus a warmer reception now. At the time, I still thought it was incredible and the craftsmanship was stunning, but it wasn't enough to make me want to keep it forever. As much as I adore Zon basses, the company is really in an odd place at the moment. I know they had moved addresses in the past couple of years, IIRC it was because the lease on their workshop ran out and the building owner wouldn't renew (or at least not on reasonable terms). That seemed to start an annus horribilis for Joe Zon, with a number of posts and threads on Talkbass with owners complaining of having been unable to get in touch with Joe or having paid either in part or in full for a bass, often several years ago, and yet still not having sight of it. The fact that a number of buyers were waiting for their basses but new basses were being made and sold for trade shows (presumably then delivered to customers or sold for the trade show) was an understandable cause of anger. There was a particularly bizarre episode involving a now-deleted thread about some guy who was a long-time Zon customer slandering the company over a bass that he had ordered and that seemed to grease the wheels to get it delivered to him, before he tried to retract his posts and say the whole thing had been a misunderstanding. It knocked my confidence in the company after seeing Zon as a long-time stalwart of the custom bass scene. I truly believe that Joe Zon makes the coolest graphite-necked instruments in America today but I would never buy one new. It doesn't take much effort to send an email to a waiting customer. This thread would not be complete without a mention of Stefan Hess, the German builder behind SKC Bogart. I am not sure how Stefan got started in the world of graphite, but he was instrumental in the production of a number of high-end instruments in Germany from the late 80's and beyond. His own Bogart Blackstone basses are probably his most well-known works, but he also made graphiter products for other builders. The Clover Slapper, also known as a the SKC Clover Slapper, was a headless grahpite-necked bass using a 'cricket bat' style neck and body piece with maple wings, brass hardware and Bartolini pickups. Some of these were made in 36" scale and sound absolutely massive. Kai Eckhardt had used a 34" 5 string model with John McLaughlin in the late 80's. Kai Eckhardt also used another of Stefan's products, this time in a Schack bass - many readers here might remember the old 'basslobster' site that hosted videos of virtuoso players before youtube was even a thing. That site had a video of Kai playing a Schack double-neck with graphite necks. SKC produced the graphite necks for a Schack at the time, though nowadays I believe Schack make their own necks following their resurrection. Stefan's own SKC Bogart Blackstone basses are notable because he didn't just make the carbon fibre necks, he worked with new materials to produce the body. The 'Blackstone' material referenced in the name of the bass is a composite foam injected into a body shell, designed to have the tonal characteristics of alder wood but with total uniformity in mass and construction. In truth, I think the final product is a bit heavier than alder wood, but I commend Stefan for his desire to design and create. SKC Bogart folded for a while around the turn of the Millenium, but Stefan has been back building basses now for several years. I currently own a 1994 Blackstone 5 string that had previously belonged to Stuart Clayton (he used it in his video cover of Alain Caron's 'D-Code' and by youtube views I think that makes it the most famous Bogart bass in the world!). I've written about this bass extensively elsewhere on the site and it still remains in my regular rotation today. It has some very aggressive sounding Bartolini pickups and a Noll preamp. These basses have always been very underrated on the used market and continue to be something of a well-kept secret outside of Germany. They most regularly pop up on the German Ebay, and I would quite like a fretless model some day.

My next great love in this field was Status Graphite. It came at a period in my late teens and early 20's when I was obsessed with Level 42 and Jonas Hellborg, so the instruments had a certain allure even before I had held one. The first I ever played was an S2 in a shop in Newcastle and though I couldn't afford it at the time, I was hooked. Before I start talking about my first Status bass, I want to refer to a post I saw on Basschat many years ago regarding a jazz bass with a Status neck that was for sale. If memory serves, this was a very early model with the old 'GMT' logo on the headstock and pickups (I think I am correct in saying the very early Status instruments were branded GMT for 'Green Machine Technology' and a company of the same name is listed on Companies House, based in Colchester with a Mr. Robert Green as the director). This particularly bass was had a yellow tinted carbon fibre neck and interestingly, there were some visual imperfections seen in the weave. This was because it is not always possible to get the graphite cloth laid exactly flat into the mold and that can produce a 'creased' effect in the finished product. What this indicated was that whilst this was still 'space age' technology in the literal sense, we were still looking at handmade products crafted by visionary designers who were still figuring things out. Fast forward to my first Status, a 1996 headed Stealth six string. This thing was utterly flawless, and showed how Status Graphite had gone from innovative upstarts to undisputed masters of the field. The finish was like glass, the weave was utterly perfect and there was barely a manufacturing mark on it. As an aside, I think the 90's were the high point for Status basses in general with products like this and the Jonas Hellborg bass with it's 36v preamp. The wood selection from those days was also uniformly stunning, just a real high point in bass design in general and the old catalogues from those days make me very nostalgic, even though I didn't start playing bass myself until the year 2000 or 2001. I am a stickler for small details and the old 'Hyperactive' pickups with the red script and rounded edges were just divine, they sounded incredible and the rounded edge was ideal as a thumb rest. The Stealth was just incredible and is one the bass I really regret selling. The tone was so deep and rich, with loads of midrange flex and burp. It was very light, balanced perfectly and felt so sturdy. I later picked up a Matrix with a P/J pickup configuration. I enjoyed this bass and it had a good sound but otherwise was not particularly noteworthy for me. Light, excellent balance, top quality hardware as one might expect. I don't think I've owned any other Status basses save for a 1987 Series II. Now, this one was a world-beater in terms of design. I still don't think the 'flagship' Status product in the 'S' series has been bettered. The tone was very aggressive, the notes really just flew out of this thing. I was playing it through an Ashdown Mark King amp at the time and it probably came at the zenith of my love for bright, super-modern tone. General opinion seems to be that tonally, the later basses were never quite as bright or aggressive as the Series II models. I had always believed that the 'cricket bat' design of attaching wooden wings to the carbon fibre neck and body portion had accounted for this. Even with the extended set neck, no other Status 'S' bass had as much carbon fibre in it as the Series II did. Mine literally looked as though it had come out of a time machine, even the brass hardware was bright and clean. In terms of basses, at the time I thought 'if I ever felt like a bass imposed 0% impediment on my ability to play, this is it'. All these years later though, it's the Stealth 6 string that keeps me awake at night. I have often thought about putting a call in to the workshop and seeing if - if only - they could make another as a special order. If they still had the old rounded Hyperactive pickup casings and the mold to build the headed Stealth I 6 string shape again, I would not hesitate to make an order. However, I had heard in the past that Rob was not particularly keen on 'one off' builds like this. Maybe some day I will make that call. On the other hand, I will always love the original Kingbass and yet I've not owned one of those... Apart from when I'm playing UZEB stuff, I rarely slap these days and yet Status was always about so much more than that for me. The finger style tone is incredible and hearing that tone from my own amp was like going from watching a VHS to sitting in front of a super-rich 4K monitor running at 100FPS. It was '3D' in a way, with a depth and character that seemed more than just a flat wave of sound washing out of your amp. For all his design and engineering genius, more needs to be said about Rob Green's ability to wind a pickup and voice a preamp. Incredible... In my next and final post, I will round up a few thoughts on other things I've owned like Zon, SKC Bogart and Zoot basses, as well as putting forward a few thoughts on some other notable names in this corner of the bass world. The stuff on Bogart will probably be of interest to some, as Stefan Hess is like the Rob Green of Germany and yet the basses that his products went into are arguably still relatively unknown and underappreciated outside of mainland Europe and they are probably the last bargains to be had in this field. I've kept my Bogart Blackstone longer than I kept any Status, so maybe there is something to that...

This is a subject that is of considerable interest to me as I've been fascinated with the old but hi-tech instruments since I was 15 and discovered Stuart Hamm. I've owned and played quite a few of the instruments that are notable in this field. When I was 16, I bought a white 1989 Kubicki Ex-Factor (I later also owned a red 1989 model). Both were stamped with the Fender Custom Shop logo on the back of the headstock, though both were 18v models (with the original preamp which was, IIRC, 6 position). There is a lot of misinformation about these basses out there that has persisted for years, so as a quick summary: Phil Kubicki had never sold his company to Fender. He was an ex-Fender employee, having worked in their R&D department in the 70's (he worked on some very interesting projects for them in the 70's, worth reading up on if you want to know how forward-thinking a seemingly conservative company like Fender could be with their prototypes). At the end of the 80's, he went into a deal with Fender and the 'Fender era' began. There was obviously some crossover between parts as both my old basses (#1777 and #1859) were 18v models. The deal was effectively a distribution deal, as it allowed Kubicki to get their instruments into the Fender dealer network and removed some of the logistical and sales burden from the Kubicki workshop. The preamp was simplified to 9v at one point and IIRC two modes were removed - probably ones that Phil had found were rarely used. The original preamp architecture was reinstated when the Fender era ended in 1994. I personally only ever used the bass in two positions for 95% of the playing I did on them, usually active/flat or active/mid scoop for slap. Phil had chosen the multi-laminate neck after concluding that graphite was too expensive to work with. There was a brief deal with Moses Graphite to produce carbon fibre replacement necks, though few were made and they were expensive. I saw the other day that there is one for sale on Reverb right now. The profile was really smart, being a round C at the nut that will be familiar to any jazz bass owner, moving to a slightly thicker feel in the middle and transitioning to a flat-backed 'D' at the higher end. It was a really smart, fast neck to play on. I could writer chapter and verse on the Kubicki design, suffice to say it remains to me the absolute masterwork of ergnomic design in the bass world. All of the hi-tech solutions and ideas that Phil had were well implemented and well reasoned. The tone is just utterly exceptional to me, completely unique. Nothing else has ever replicated the sound of a Kubicki. They were and are easy instruments to own. Phil himself was always on hand back in the day to offer advice via email or telephone and StewMac.com carried loads of replacement parts including the bridge springs and clips. Today, they are still in production even though Phil himself died a few years ago. In my next post, I'll talk about my experience with Status Graphite.

That is fantastic! What a distinctive looking bass. I love the fact that Stefan will make these really 'off the wall' looking basses. I still own and play my Bogart 5 regularly, it is just sublime. It's currently strung with some Elites that have to go though, I used to like those strings but these ones seem utter crap.

A rare beast indeed. There can't have been made of these made at all.

Tetsuo Sakurai on 'Casiopea World Live '88'. Absolutely sensational - he motors from the word go!

Glad to hear it all worked out well! Sling the Precision and enjoy the Shuker, finally working as intended.

I could really sit all day and cite variations of the wonderful tones that Jeff Berlin has had from his instrument over the years. Although he has always tended towards a specific and very distinctive tone, I have listened so much that I can discern the subtle variations in it from different records and eras. Isn't that what being a keen listener is all about? I had to think of which piece to pick to link to that would demonstrate the various facets that I so enjoy in his tone. I think 'Freight Train Shuffle' really does it. You get that very deep, tight and punchy staccato sound in the verses and choruses and the solo sections have an astounding chorus warble that really makes them stand out.

That KGB is an interesting thing. I hadn't heard of that builder before.

That's some operation. I wonder where they managed to get their hands on a Smith preamp. They were never sold as a standalone item.