What bass does Peter Hook (Joy Division/New Order) play?

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by froufrou:
What bass does Peter Hook (Joy Division/New Order) play?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I can answer this.

For New Order and Monaco he usually plays a Shergold Marathon 6-string bass. They are no longer a company, but they have a website - www.shergold.co.uk (http://www.shergold.co.uk)

For the Joy Division sessions he used a Yamaha RB1200. (Basically a P-Bass copy)


Hooky is one of my favorite bassists. I think twenty-four hours is the perfect song :-)

btw this is my first post. Hello everyone!

Great link to Shergold......thanks.

I'm sure I've seen Hooky playing a (what I think is a) Hagstrom of some kind....hollowbody, twin F-hole thing....a copy of a Gibson, to my eyes. I have no definitive data on it, which is why I didn't respond to the original post.

On congrats on your first post....

Cheers

John

I think he has played loads of different basses over the years and I've seen different ones every time I've seen him play. I remember seeing him playing a Rickenbacker once. He does tend to play the Shergold for "lead lines" rather than actual bass parts, but there have been songs which have needed a rounder bottom end and I presume he picks the bass for the job/song. "Transmission" has a typical Rickenbacker sound, for example.

I do agree that "Twenty Four Hours" is the classic track and a great example of a song built completely around the bass line. When this first came out in England every bass player was trying to get this sound and incorporate into their songs - I wrote at least 2 or 3 that were blatant rip-offs of this song! http://www.talkbass.com/ubb/wink.gif Much later, I came to realise that the biggest influence on the "sound" of Joy Division was the late Martin Hannett and if you check out any album that he produced around this time you will hear what I mean.(cf. Magazines's "Correct Use of Soap")

Apparently in the sessions for "Closer" Hook (and the rest of the band) were constantly arguing with Hannett to get the sound more raucous and aggressive. Hook himself said in an interview with Q magazine : "I wasn't satisfied with it at the time, but now I think it's the most beautiful, melancholy thing I've ever done."

Yeah, Martin 'zero' Hannett's influence was definitly very strong over the sound of JD. If you've ever listened to the stuff before Hannett - the scrapped RCA album specifically - All of the songs sound really cliched. the synth stuff on 'transmission,' for example, is really cheesy - like something from spaceballs. http://www.talkbass.com/ubb/biggrin.gif I think the most important thing that Hannett did was give credibility and a sense of meaning to the whole thing. He found ways to bring out the character of Ian's voice and Hooky's bass style. He even managed to make the synth stuff sound elegant http://www.talkbass.com/ubb/smile.gif . It's too bad though that both he and Ian died - such a waste of talent. I even enjoyed how he treated New Order's first album. Sometimes when I'm in a mood I'll put the first minute of 'Dreams never End' on repeat http://www.talkbass.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

As for bass sounds, I really dig the bass on 'Something must break.' That is a cool song.

The semi-accoustic bass Peter Hook uses was made by Chris Eccleshall- http://www.thebeast.demon.co.uk/eccleshall/335bass.html

I'm pretty sure that's the exact bass in the pic.

Does anyone know what type of bass Hook is playing in the "Regret" video. It showed up shortly after Republic was released along with a video for "World". It used to air on MTV back when 120 minutes showed decent videos. I thought it was some kind of p-bass, but I could be terribly off the mark on that.

The main basses hooky plays now are a 6 string shergold, and a 4 string semi acoustic made by chris eccleshall. I'm not sure if he still plays it now, but i remember him looking really cool playing a Rickenbacker 4001 when he was with Joy Division.