Jason Newsted owns nine of Roger Sadowsky's handcrafted basses: four 4-strings and five 5-strings. He carries eight of them on the road, while one resides at his home studio. (All of the road instruments sport maple fingerboards.) The 4's include a Lake Placid Blue Vintage model with an alder body and a morado fingerboard, a black Vintage model with an ash body, and two PJ models with quilted-maple tops (one cherry sunburst and one caramel sunburst). The 5's include three Vintage models (two black, one cherry sunburst) and two black 24-fret models with EMG-40J pickups. To accommodate Jason's aggressive, downstroke-heavy pick attack, Sadowsky places the neck pickup on the 24-fret models about an inch closer to the neck than normal. All Vintage models include Sadowsky exposed-polepiece pickups, and every bass features the Sadowsky preamp. Each also has a special modification; Roger Sadowsky explains.
"Jason voiced his concerns about moisture and reliability; apparently some of his basses were having an intermittent output, and when his tech would remove the output-jack plate, water would literally run out of the control cavity! The guys in the band don't like to be cold while they play, so they don't use the air conditioning during a concert. It turns out the humidity levels at the shows are so high from the heat, water runs down the front of the amplifiers! And moisture was building up inside the control cavities from condensation".
"Our solution was to put a thin rubber gasket on the back of the control-cavity plates and underneath the football-shaped output-jack plate. We also sealed the holes going from the pickup cavities to the control cavities with silicone sealant to keep any moisture that might come in through the pickup routs from flowing into the cavities".
"Everything else is stock. We didn't charge Jason any extra for the waterproofing service-but at the same time, I really want people to know he paid full price for eight instruments. I sent him the ninth bass as a gift. He didn't try to do the typical artist-endorsement thing with me; he was a real mensch". So is the new Sadowsky promotion "Buy eight and get one free?"
Cheers,
Wallace
"Jason voiced his concerns about moisture and reliability; apparently some of his basses were having an intermittent output, and when his tech would remove the output-jack plate, water would literally run out of the control cavity! The guys in the band don't like to be cold while they play, so they don't use the air conditioning during a concert. It turns out the humidity levels at the shows are so high from the heat, water runs down the front of the amplifiers! And moisture was building up inside the control cavities from condensation".
"Our solution was to put a thin rubber gasket on the back of the control-cavity plates and underneath the football-shaped output-jack plate. We also sealed the holes going from the pickup cavities to the control cavities with silicone sealant to keep any moisture that might come in through the pickup routs from flowing into the cavities".
"Everything else is stock. We didn't charge Jason any extra for the waterproofing service-but at the same time, I really want people to know he paid full price for eight instruments. I sent him the ninth bass as a gift. He didn't try to do the typical artist-endorsement thing with me; he was a real mensch". So is the new Sadowsky promotion "Buy eight and get one free?"
Cheers,
Wallace
