7string Posted October 2, 2008 Share Posted October 2, 2008 (edited) It’s been a while since I posted pics of my gear, so I thought I’d create this update. There’s been a few comings and goings, the biggest of which is my live rig a Trace Elliott SMX 350 and a Mesa-Boogie 1x15 road-ready cab. I suffer from M.E./CFS and have done for nearly 4 years now. Thing is, there’s no way I can do a gig, so I sold them and the funds went to my in-progress ACG 9 string (the link to the build thread is in my sig and all things ACG can be found at www.acguitars.co.uk). My double bass was sold to finance that as well, but I know I can play one if the occasion ever arose. Some here’s some photos and some blurb about my basses: First up is ‘Jezebel’, a Sei Offset Flamboyant 7 string made by Martin Petersen and John Chapman down at Sei HQ in London (www.seibass.com). It really is one heck of a bass to play and it nowhere near as big and cumbersome as you might imagine a 7 string to be. The bass has a walnut core, full lacewood facings back and front (including the headstock) and a veneer of bolivar, dyed claret separating the two. My wife’s favourite colour is pink and this is as close to pink as they could get. It’s a nice touch to have that on the bass. The Sei has purple LEDs on the side of the maple/wenge neck and my signature at the 12th fret is the only item which adorns the birdseye maple fingerboard. The pickup is a Kent Armstrong humbucker whose signal is shaped by a Schack 3-band eq with switchable frequencies. There’s also a little coil-tap button next to the jack and XLR outputs, the idea for which was stolen from another Sei. The tiny switch on the front is for the LEDs. The bass is tuned B E A D G C F. Photo courtesy G. Jones Next up is my Conklin GT7 which I bought via eBay from a guy in the USA. It meant getting up at 3.30am for the end of the auction, but it was worth it. Originally the bass was fretted, but when I got the Sei, I decided to have it de-fretted and have a ramp installed. This work was carried out by Jon Shuker and I’m very happy with the result. The only problem with the Conklin is that it’s really, really heavy. It weighs 1 stone. Yup, a whole stone, 14lbs. The ash body has a quilt maple top and is bolted to a wenge/purpleheart neck with a purpleheart fingerboard. It sounds better fretless that it did fretted, although I have no idea why. The electronics and pickups are as standard. It sounds good so there’s no need to change them. The next bass is a bit of a rarity as it’s a James Tyler 4 string. James Tyler is well known for his electric guitars but he hasn’t made basses for a few years now. This bass is incredibly light with a body of Mamywo (Malaysian Mystery Wood) which I’ve been told is James Tyler’s playful name for Jelutong. The maple neck and pau ferro board are unbelievably great to play. The neck shape is a shallow D with a little more meat on the bass side than the treble. Electronics are 2 Bartolini humbuckers linked to a Demeter 18v preamp. Instead of the pre being the usual 3 band, low middle high, it works on the low range, middle range and high range of the mids only. This means you can dial in a sound which will really sit well in a mix. This explains why some top sessions guys play a Tyler bass. The James Tyler bass is a rare bass indeed. They don’t come up for sale very often as the owners buy ’em and keep ‘em. This bass was bought sight unseen from The Gallery in London after I spotted it lurking on the bottom on their stock list. OK, some might not like the headstock, which also features on their guitars, but the Tyler bass is light, feels great and sounds amazing. I’ve had my Jackson ‘Kip Winger’ bass for years and years and was bought in the glory days when the Bass Centre was in a hard to find building in Wapping near the river Thames. OK, the shape might be a bit unfashionable and some people might not even know who Kip Winger is, but it’s a great bass all the same. The bass is all lacewood with a rosewood fingerboard and it’s because of this bass that ‘Jezebel’ had to be lacewood as well. The lacy, scaly grain is so different and just looks so very cool (to me at least!). This bass has the weird combination of active pickups and a passive tone control, but it sounds great so I haven’t changed the electronics at all. The only thing I’ve done to the bass is to fit lacewood knobs which came from Roger at THG (www.thgknobs.com), as I thought the bass deserved a little luxury after all these years. A little more unusual is the Kinderbasje or “Child’s Play” bass. I was following BigRedX’s unusual bass thread and had a look at the Bas Extravaganza website (http://www.bas-extravaganza.nl). That’s where I found this 1 string bass. It was made out of the spare parts that were lying around the shop and was given to his children to paint. The instrument sounds pretty darn good, balances well on a strap and is cool to play. The neck has a very sharp ‘v’ to it, the whole thing is a light as the proverbial feather and is a great thing to play. Well that’s it. Hope you liked the tour Edited October 8, 2008 by 7string Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Galilee Posted October 3, 2008 Share Posted October 3, 2008 What a fabulous collection. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darkstrike Posted October 3, 2008 Share Posted October 3, 2008 That Conklin looks mental! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
7string Posted October 3, 2008 Author Share Posted October 3, 2008 Thanks for your kind words The Conklin is a very cool bass. They don't make them anymore, but they turn up pretty regularly on eBay or in Bass NW or Bass Central's websites. I bought mine for US$ 800 (inc. postage). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doctor_of_the_bass Posted October 3, 2008 Share Posted October 3, 2008 Love that one stringer - very `Dali' esque! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
7string Posted October 3, 2008 Author Share Posted October 3, 2008 It's a bit mad ain't it It is a great bass to play as it's so darn light and it balances well on a strap. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wizbat Posted October 4, 2008 Share Posted October 4, 2008 Great collection!!! 'Winger' is one of my favourite albums, great version of purple haze!! and I love 'seventeen' Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
7string Posted October 4, 2008 Author Share Posted October 4, 2008 Nice to find another fan The "Live" CD and DVD released earlier this year were really great. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D-COOPER Posted October 6, 2008 Share Posted October 6, 2008 Hi 7string.Is the EQ on your Sei an addition?I remember your bass having no controls at all!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ped Posted October 6, 2008 Share Posted October 6, 2008 Have you got any clips of the Tyler? ped Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
7string Posted October 7, 2008 Author Share Posted October 7, 2008 [quote name='D-COOPER' post='300828' date='Oct 6 2008, 09:28 PM']Hi 7string.Is the EQ on your Sei an addition?I remember your bass having no controls at all!![/quote] Yup, you're right. The bass used to just have a volume control. When we went through the details of the bass, Martin Petersen (the guy behind Sei basses) thought that it might be a bit of a risk going passive. Because of this, we agreed that the full control cavity be routed anyway so if I did want to change then it would be easier to drill holes and add some wires. After a few months, I wasn't getting the sound I wanted, so the Schack 3 band was added. This was on 2 stacked pots, so it was one more hole for that and a tiny hole for the dinky switch for the LEDs. After a bit of fiddling with the dip switches on the Schack unit, the bass sounds great. [quote name='ped' post='300846' date='Oct 6 2008, 09:50 PM']Have you got any clips of the Tyler? ped[/quote] I have no idea how to upload mp3s to put them on here! If anyone knows, could you tell me. I could then record something to show the sounds from the bass. The Tyler has a lot of switches, but I could probably find some way of demonstrating it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ped Posted October 7, 2008 Share Posted October 7, 2008 Email them to me and I will host them :0) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
7string Posted October 7, 2008 Author Share Posted October 7, 2008 Now I've GOT to try and record something I'll do me best! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lukeward2004 Posted October 8, 2008 Share Posted October 8, 2008 Oh wow, that sei offset 7 stringer is a real beauty! I remember seeing those pics before and thinking it was a cracker then, I'd love to see how it plays in real life. I'm not a 7 stringer by any means, but that could tempt me over to the dark side! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lukeward2004 Posted October 8, 2008 Share Posted October 8, 2008 Oh wow, that sei offset 7 stringer is a real beauty! I remember seeing those pics before and thinking it was a cracker then, I'd love to see how it plays in real life. I'm not a 7 stringer by any means, but that could tempt me over to the dark side! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
7string Posted October 8, 2008 Author Share Posted October 8, 2008 Thanks for the kind words about my Sei bass. It's the first (and up to now the only) lacewood Sei, but the simplicity of the 1 pickup came from another 7 string Sei which has a flamed sycamore top (which looks a little like flamed maple). The idea for the coil tap button came from there as well. Luckily, he's a good guy and didn't mind me pinching his ideas. It plays superbly well and I've taken the action a little higher since I've had it. I hope that I'll be able to make it to a Bass-Bash at some point and then people can have a go on it. Anyone who's played it finds it a lot easier than they expected it to be. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
7string Posted October 8, 2008 Author Share Posted October 8, 2008 Quite nervous posting this! I took Ped up on his offer of hosting an mp3, so I'm able to post some soundclips for the first time ever Here's a chord progression (C, F, G) which I recorded for one of my students to practise along with. I did several passes, altering the controls on the bass for each run through. I've edited them together with some fade in/fade out's. There's no effects of any kind, it isn't even normalised. just the Tyler into a Presonus Firebox, into a laptop running Cubase 4 Essential. The bass is panned dead centre together with the original recordings of two 12 string guitars which were panned extreme left and extreme right. On one side is my Ovation USA Elite T 12 string, the other side is my K.Yairi DY88 12 string. [url="http://dl-client.getdropbox.com/u/85432/Tyler%20demo.mp3"]http://dl-client.getdropbox.com/u/85432/Tyler%20demo.mp3[/url] The controls used are All controls flat, switches up, top pot full anticlockwise All controls flat, switches up, top pot full clockwise All flat First control full on, switch up Second control full, switch down Second control full, switch up Third control full, switch down Third control full, switch up Tyler - my nearly ideal settings for this track The effects of the different settings are quite subtle but all very useful. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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