I got this last week, mostly because post-stroke, I'm trying a lot of things that help compensate for a somewhat diminished left hand. (I'm a righty.) This bass is multiscale, and I find the fanned frets to permit a more comfortable playing surface.
The main reason I bought it was that is just looked to me like art you could play, and as I collect a lot of things, art included, this was a "double word score." As an added bonus, it is serial number 1, so at least for now, I'm the only person in the world that has one of these, outside of the manufacturer. Even if he never builds or sells another, that is still a cool factor with me, but I expect I won't be the last to buy one of these.
I found the maker/seller, Josh Helms to be easy to deal with, responsive and once I received the bass, proved himself to be a highly skilled builder.
Ther is not one single ding, nick, flaw, gap or stray mark on this bass. Up until now, I Plek every bass I buy, but this one arrived nice low set-up, with zero fret buzz, and no rough spots, so no Plek necessary.
I had the chance to experiment with it over the weekend and even had some fellow oldsters to try it out in a live mix, and I really like it.
The body is Jatoba, and the neck is Maple/Jatoba/Maple laminate.
It is feather-light, plays like "buttah" and sounds great. It has a 3-band EQ and a volume for each pickup, as opposed to a pan.
I set everything to neutral, so to speak, pots all in around the middle position, and set the amp flat. Playing through an old SVT head with a fridge cabinet with original CTS drivers in it; it sounded really nice.
For comparison, listen to Creed's "One" and you will know how this bass sounds out of the box with nothing extra rubbed on it. Don't know what kind of bass Creed's bassist uses, but it matches this one's "native sound."
Put heavy compression on it, max out the attack, turn up the amp till you get a bit of drive, (or use a bit of distortion fuzz pedal) and hammer on the strings and you can totally cop a Godsmack "Bad Religion" bass sound, so it has a lot of versatility with regard to sounds you can tease out of it.
I'm quite pleased with every aspect of this purchase and doubt it will be the only bass I end up buying from Helms.
By the way, I happen to know serial #2, with a walnut body, is in the works. If he decides to let it go, I'd advise you to jump on it if you like basses that are different, rare, uber-cool and play like adream.
The main reason I bought it was that is just looked to me like art you could play, and as I collect a lot of things, art included, this was a "double word score." As an added bonus, it is serial number 1, so at least for now, I'm the only person in the world that has one of these, outside of the manufacturer. Even if he never builds or sells another, that is still a cool factor with me, but I expect I won't be the last to buy one of these.
I found the maker/seller, Josh Helms to be easy to deal with, responsive and once I received the bass, proved himself to be a highly skilled builder.
Ther is not one single ding, nick, flaw, gap or stray mark on this bass. Up until now, I Plek every bass I buy, but this one arrived nice low set-up, with zero fret buzz, and no rough spots, so no Plek necessary.
I had the chance to experiment with it over the weekend and even had some fellow oldsters to try it out in a live mix, and I really like it.
The body is Jatoba, and the neck is Maple/Jatoba/Maple laminate.
It is feather-light, plays like "buttah" and sounds great. It has a 3-band EQ and a volume for each pickup, as opposed to a pan.
I set everything to neutral, so to speak, pots all in around the middle position, and set the amp flat. Playing through an old SVT head with a fridge cabinet with original CTS drivers in it; it sounded really nice.
For comparison, listen to Creed's "One" and you will know how this bass sounds out of the box with nothing extra rubbed on it. Don't know what kind of bass Creed's bassist uses, but it matches this one's "native sound."
Put heavy compression on it, max out the attack, turn up the amp till you get a bit of drive, (or use a bit of distortion fuzz pedal) and hammer on the strings and you can totally cop a Godsmack "Bad Religion" bass sound, so it has a lot of versatility with regard to sounds you can tease out of it.
I'm quite pleased with every aspect of this purchase and doubt it will be the only bass I end up buying from Helms.
By the way, I happen to know serial #2, with a walnut body, is in the works. If he decides to let it go, I'd advise you to jump on it if you like basses that are different, rare, uber-cool and play like adream.
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You might have already tried it, but if you haven't, and you want to try a pretty gnarly rock tone, crank everything on the bass, adjust treble then mids to taste, but your probably going to want to turn your amp down. 
One of the things I was going for with the pickups and preamp is to be able to hit the front of an amplifier pretty hard without getting fuzzy or farty and have plenty of attack if you want it, but fuzzy and farty is definitely still possible depending depending on the rest of the signal chain.The combo definitely does have a range. Mild to wild, one might say.
