TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
Join free Log in
Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.
Steve Swallow (AE5 Swallow Signature Custom) : Harvey Citron
I know he had a bass before the Citron one but I can't remember what it was....
Hmm... Steve Swallow is one of those musicians who I have immense respect for -- not just his consummate musicianship and huge encyclopedic ears but also his discipline, restraint, self-control, his willingness to listen, the thoughtfulness he puts into every note, the fact that nothing he plays ever sounds like a canned lick but always a sensitive well-regarded musical response to being in that precise moment -- but I cannot stand his tone. I wrote this somewhere else on TB a few years ago, or something to this effect: Steve Swallow's first electric was one of those terminally muddy-sounding Gibson EB-2D basses, and ever since then he's been commissioning brilliant luthiers to spare no expense in recreating that crappy tone.
But here's a fascinating and insightful quote about instruments and tone from Steve Swallow that I also shared in TB ~4 years ago in this thread:
"The conventional wisdom regarding the electric bass is that Leo Fender got it right. It's really remarkable the extent he nailed it right off the bat with the Precision Bass and subsequently the Jazz Bass in the '50s when the instrument was being born. But some of the things he nailed were along the lines of making an extremely efficient instrument, an instrument that spoke very quickly and clearly, that sustained very well, that could be heard at a greater volume than the acoustic bass could be heard. Those were all tremendously valuable attributes, and had a tremendous effect on certain kinds of music, but not really on jazz music.
"What I've been looking for in the electric bass is, in a sense, the opposite of what Leo Fender accomplished. I've been looking for a kind of inefficiency to the instrument that I loved in the acoustic bass. Every acoustic bass has notes that need to be favored. I has 'wolf tones' and it has dead spots on the neck. It has personality, and as a player, you're often at odds with that personality and you're trying desperately as you practice to thwart the instrument. To make the 'wolf tones' speak and to make the tones that are popping out at you not pop out at you, to bend the instrument to your own purposes. I've been looking to retrieve that in the electric bass, to get electric bass makers to build an instrument with anomalies, to dare to build an instrument that's inefficient, that stinks of personality, of its own identity.
"And I've had some success in persuading makers to pursue that, in particular Harvey Citron, the guy who's built the last half-dozen instruments I've had. It's been fun to explore this."
