Chris2112

Although I really liked that bass, I think I sold it at the right time and don't really miss it. I look back fondly but it was practically brand new when I got it off Pete. A really cool bass that plays and sounds just brilliant, but I've seen it up for sale a few times and never had any burning desire to get it back. OTOH, I sold a Status Stealth 6 string years ago that I still miss. Six strings are always the ones I regret selling, though having something fill it's place staunches the wound! These days, I just buy basses. Selling them is a faff and I'd rather build a collection than thin one out.

Can anyone offer a short summary of what they did wrong, for someone like me who will probably never see the show?

Bass Direct can be a bit hit and miss. I usually use them for strings without issue, it seems odd ordering something without getting a confirmation email back (other than from PayPal) but the strings usually turn up - eventually - in good order. I did once get a set of six strings from them when I had ordered five and was never sure why. Perhaps they sent them by mistake, perhaps they didn't have a five string set available so just sent the six string pack rather than lose the sale. On one occasion, I did try to buy something from them (I think it was a bass though I can't say what) only to be told it was out of stock after payment had been taken. However, I was refunded the next day without issue. Things seem a little more haphazard there since Marcus left. Maybe it's all in my mind. In any event, despite their great stock and one-man-band approach, Bass Direct do seem to be lagging behind a bit in the customer service stakes. It would be great to have a place like that in the UK that was genuinely heralded as being flawlessly excellent, like the kind of customer service you might get in American from say, the Bass Centre in Florida. In terms of bad customer service, two things come to mind that aren't bass related but stand out as just being fosters poor. On one occasion, many years ago, I was out for a meal with my parents at the old San Lorenzo restaurant on Gosforth High Street in Newcastle. I had some sort of pizza with mushrooms on it. As I was eating it, I found a short and curly black hair with a white bud on the end. I notified the waiter, who came back and said the chef wanted to see the pizza. He came back and told me the chef had said it was a hair from the mushrooms! Of course, the pizza and the offending hair were by that point probably in the bin. I declined a replacement pizza and yet I still had to ask for the pizza to be taken off the bill once we were all done. Treating the customer like an idiot - fail. I never went back. The most petty and egregious bit of bad customer service still lives with me now, even years after the company went under. The offending party was Grainger Games, with their store in the Metro Centre, Gateshead. I had been a customer of Grainger Games for years, ever since they were a small octagonal stall inside the Grainger Market in the toon. I can even remember the first game I bought there, it was 'Hexen' for the PS1. Over the years, my brother and I had probably spent thousands there. On a whim, I wenty into the Metro Centre store once and picked up a used copy of Devil May Cry for the Xbox 360 (the rubbish remake with the emo-Dante lead). It was only about a tenner or less, so I bought it and went home. I went to get the disc out of the box a couple of days later and noticed the disc was cracked all the way through, but the seam on the top side of the disc was fairly tight so you wouldn't notice the damage unless you were lifting the disc out of the case. In that sense, it would have been easy to pop the broken disc back in without even noticing the damage, which is exactly what I had assumed had happened. I went back to the store a few days later to return the game, not particularly bothered about the cash and quite happy to take store credit for something else. The manager of the store, a dreadfully impolite bloke, had a look at the disc and outright accused me of breaking the disc. He said "Nah, you've broken that getting it out of the case" and proceeded to flex the disc in the holder, showing the break. I had no doubt that was how the damage was caused but I didn't appreciate being accused in this fashion. He refused to refund me, made me out to be a liar and probably contravened my statutory rights in doing so. I decided there and then never to spend another penny at a Grainger Games. So incensed was I that I wrote a letter to the head office (which was in Benton at the time), complaining about their customer service and noting that I was a long time customer and felt stiffed by the store manager over a £10 game. They sent back more than that sum in vouchers in response, but I never did spend my own cash in store again and I warned my mates of their attitude too. The company went bust a couple of years ago, doomed by their unsustainable business model and the changing market. Although my business wouldn't have saved them, it wouldn't have hurt either.

They have that really rough-hewn, hand-bodged look that Wish and Carl Thompson basses have.

She does occasionally take the hats off, too.

I don't think you could actually buy that from Wish, it'll be a scam like everything else on there. There original was built for the famous YouTube oaf Jared Dines and turned out to have been made in China following some sort of scam involving the original US based builder he had contracted to build it.

Personally, I'm thrilled. I bought a load of Brand X albums back in the days before you could easily check stuff out on the internet to see if you liked it or not. Suffice to say, I didn't really like any of it, finding the albums quite forgettable. I thought it was a lot closer to prog rock than the sort of great fusion it had been described as. In a way, that was sort of understandable given the size and shape of the UK scene at the time. Moreover, I was never a huge fan of Percy's tone. Much like John Patitucci, I found his presence for plucking near the neck could render his sound a little indistinct. That said, it was of little consequence to me as I didn't really give their records repeat listens. The hiring of Jeff Berlin is a great move, I think, because if you're suddenly faced by a longstanding bass chair being vacated, why wouldn't you seek to hire the best in the business? I would have thought that Jeff's historic association with Bill Bruford would play well with Brand X fans and his feat of being able to play an AWBH at a few days notice in the 80's will certainly have worked in his favour.

'Sadness Will Prevail' by Today Is The Day could have done with being a single album. It's a concept piece, yeah we get it - but the concept could have been conveyed the hour of great tracks and left the rest of the ambient/dawdling parts behind.

Another legend gone. He redefined the guitar in popular music - he was the first rock guitarist who could really play! Glad we got many years of great music from him.

I notice Paul Gilbert is in that list, I really wish he would address his ongoing obsession with blues and the pentatonic scale! I had read that Paul was not pleased with his performance on Jeff Berlin's 1986 album 'Pump it!', where he notably played on a cover of 'Crossroads'. Now it should be noted that Jeff took the two solos that you'd usually hear played in guitar, but Paul laid on some absolutely great shred licks in the background in a fashion that is inimitably his - the definition on each picked note is second to none! However, although I can't find the exact quote or source now, Paul had said he was a little embarrassed by what he could offer there as it showed him how little he knew of the 'blues language' and he put himself to study. I do rather think in the intervening 30-odd years he has gone too far with that. He can still play his derrière off and he does write the occasional banger still but I have found that the blues feel and sound became overpowering in his sound as the years went on. For a guy of that technical talent, I would have loved to hear him if he had chosen to study jazz harmony.

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.