Joe Lester of Intronaut

[Tupac]

Is a beast. That is all.

[bolophonic]

Dude.... Fretless, no less. That was rad!

[AaronMB]

Nice. Good posting. The more songs I hear, here and there, the more I like these guys...

[ElMon]

Saw them here in OKC at The Conservatory. He was rocking a Pedulla Pentabuzz that night and he and the whole band just killed. Fat fretless tone that just punched through everything. Super nice guy too.

[d180fuzz]

I'm pretty jaded, but INTRONAUT certainly got my attention the first time I heard "Australopithecus". That fretless fuzzbass outro is just about the sickest thing I've heard. I've seen them live a couple of times - they're super-tight and sound great, and they're very nice, approachable dudes too.

That video's cool, but I remember thinking the first time I watched it a while back that the ZON / EMG combo pales in comparison, tonally, to his trademark Pentabuzz.

[Oneirogenic]

I was wondering about that Zon he was playing in that video. Is it his or was EMG just like "Here, play this!" His Pentabuzz tone is sick.

[d180fuzz]

Guessing they asked him to play a bass with EMGs in it...

Yes - the Pentabuzzzzz rules.

[Oneirogenic]

Does his Pentabuzz have the stock Bartolinis in it? It seems weird he would do promo vids for EMG if he doesn't use EMG pickups...not that I'm complaining because those videos are great.

[ZombieSpacebat]

I wonder why he's playing an upside down righty bass? (although i doubt it's actually his since the strap pin is on the horn for righty playing, so i don't see how he could play standing with this bass)

[d180fuzz]

Originally Posted by ZombieSpacebat

I wonder why he's playing an upside down righty bass?

I'm guessing the fine folks at emg didn't bother to note that he was a left-handed bass player, so that may have been "all they had".

Good work, guys.

[TBAR Shane]

Joe is a beast. I love that he throws in the upright bass from time to time, like in Australopithecus, it's not something usually in metal.

[tsar nicholas]

Originally Posted by d180fuzz

I'm guessing the fine folks at emg didn't bother to note that he was a left-handed bass player, so that may have been "all they had".

Good work, guys.

^ Yeah, I gotta jump on the dogpile here. A friend of mine just posted a link to this video on my Facebook page with the comment "I assume your Zon fretless sounds like this?"

1) That tone is mediocre-to-horrible. Lester is a top-notch player and normally has wonderful tone. That bass is almost certainly not his.

2) This is a wood-necked Korean-made (and as pointed out, right-handed) instrument, which in my opinion have virtually nothing to do with the carbon-necked flagship models except shape. Absolutely not representative of what I consider to be typical Zon timbre. Lester usually plays a carbon-necked Legacy when not playing the Pedulla, I believe.


Get your act together, EMG!

[bstringkyle]

Mouth of the Architect Shirt! awesome playing as usual from this guy!

[bezo420]

I just saw them last week and got to talk to him briefly about his Zon fretless. They played with Mouth of the Architect and Scale the Summit. It was a great show. His fretless tone was pretty spot-on.

He says he loves the Zon basses. Lots of snap and midrange. Then I started talking about Spector, since he brought up loving basses. We talked about the Spector used by Scale the Summit briefly before someone else stepped between us and tried to blow him.

I didn't get to see his amp, but I remember him running a Fulltone Bass Drive and a tuner up front.

[MCS4]

Joe does play a custom Zon bass with EMGs now, which sounds great, but that isn't it. It looks like that video was taken before he got the custom Zon, so the prior posters are probably right that they just grabbed some random bass with EMGs for him to use in the vid.