Hello everyone,
I just posted my first post this morning, on the Wishbass forum, but then I thought I should provide a proper introduction.
I began playing bass in my high school jazz band in the late 70s, played in bands in college (my avatar) and after college, then traveled around the world for 10 years, played bass in Japan for a few years during that time, and then continued to jam sporadically after I got back from traveling, including some jamming in Mozambique when I was doing fieldwork there 10 years ago.
Six months ago an old jamming guitar buddy asked if I wanted to jam with a drummer he's been playing with for 5-6 years. I said yes. The jams have been going really well, so I decided to get some new gear. This led me to Talkbass via a DuckDuckGo search, I think.
Anyway, that was a few months ago. I've learned so much here! I just want to say thank you for all the great advice and info I've been able to gather from everyone on Talkbass. I've never really thought too much about gear, although I like to jam with effects. So it's been a steep learning curve, somewhat obsessional at times.
As far as my bass bio goes, it's something like this:
My first real bass was a 70s blonde Rickenbacker (in the avatar), under the influence of Chris Squire (Yes). Then I got a used, white 60s or 70s Fender Precision fretless, under the influence of Jaco (Weather Report), who I had the pleasure of seeing live while I was still in high school (a Joni Mitchell tour). After college I traded in the Rick for a 70s Fender Jazz fretted. I don't regret getting the Jazz, but I do regret having traded in the Rick. I didn't realize the sentimental value it would have for me later, and that Rick neck was super fast and I loved the gnarly sound.
Anyway, in the early 80s (or was it the late 70s?) I put in active EMG pickups in both Fender basses and added a J bridge pickup to the Precision. The PJ fretless has been my go-to bass since then. I also bought a Juzek upright in high school, under the influence of Glen Moore (Oregon), but I had to sell that once I started to travel around the world in 1985, as I had no way to maintain it while I was gone. Chris Squire, Jaco, Glen Moore, those early influences, and a little later, Robbie Shakespeare (Black Uhuru), are still with me and go a long ways towards defining my eclectic style. Basically, I play sounds and shapes just as much as notes, with a sort of Miles Davis impulse to always try to find something new to play (among my repertoire of sounds are the "goo drip," "muddy toes," "wailing whale," "too-late foghorn," "rapid rubber mallet," "drunk Haden," "dying goose," "wandering wave," "slimy slippers," "recurring nightmare," "frozen wind," "baffled buffalo," "Jacocaine Novocaine," "dubstep bathtub misstep," "Prisoner thunderclap," "clawing casket cadaver," "whiteout," "loose chainsaw," "split-rock avalanche," "pouting hippo," "submerged submissive fridgemate," "quiet quaalude," "leaky rowboat," "lurid lava," "falling brick," "timeless uptempo trot," and "spit splash").
My amp has been a Peavey two-channel Mark IV series. I bought the amp head used in high school and made two cabs with 15" speakers and tweeters in the garage. Having two separate channels and running effects in parallel has always been an integral part of my jamming sound.
Anyhow, after a few successful jams this last December and January, my new jamming trio really started to click, so I decided to have my fretless neck redressed. I have always liked roundwounds, but they eat up the fretless's rosewound fingerboard, so I thought about putting a tougher, ebony fretless fingerboard/neck on my fretted Jazz bass, since I never really play fretted bass anymore. That way, the PJ fretless could have flatwounds and the Jazz could have roundwounds. My trusted luthier, Ron Tracy at Hoffman Guitars in Minneapolis (the same guy who worked on my Fenders back in the 70s/80s), mentioned Warmoth as a good neck option, and that opened the floodgates.
I ordered a stock neck, and was ready to put it on the Jazz bass, but then I thought, well, for some more cash, I could get a custom body configured just the way I like it, maybe even try one of those newfangled five-string basses I've been hearing about for a few decades. So I returned the Warmoth neck and began putting together my dream bass. That's about when I found out about Talkbass, probably while doing a search on Warmoth or woods or something.
Around the same time I came across a YouTube video of a guy playing a fretless Tacoma Thunderchief, and was amazed at how much it sounded like an upright. Even more amazingly, I found one used on our local craigslist a few minutes later.
So, bass number three was added, which got me back up to my old pre-travels assortment of one fretted electric, one fretless electric, and one (fretless) acoustic--all 4-string.
I then spent a lot of time on Talkbass obsessing over Warmoth options. I settled on a Wenge G5 body, a Wenge Deluxe 5 neck shaft, a Bocote fingerboard, Delano SBC HE/S-4 quad-coil pickups, a John East preamp, a Hipshot bridge with Graph Tech Ghost piezo saddles, and Gotoh res-lite tuners. After I had ordered the neck and body from Warmoth I changed my mind about which Delano pickups to get, but by then Warmoth had already routed the body, so I'm putting in a Bocote ramp to hide the mistake (I've always thought ramps looked kind of odd, but now I'll have to convince myself they're cool). The bass will be able to switch between series, parallel, and single coil as well as having piezo and midi options through the bridge pickup. My trusted luthier, who's more of an acoustic guy than an electric guy, didn't feel comfortable with the complex electronics however, so more Talkbass searching and I located John Brown's Guitar Factory in a suburb south of Saint Paul. John makes his own fretted/less custom bass with almost exactly the same electronic configuration I was after. Perfect. He got it immediately.
So, bass number four (still in production).
Then I set about upgrading my rig. More Talkbass. I settled on a Genz Benz Shuttle 6.2 amp. I had always wanted a really modern, transparent and accurate amp sound. My Peavey amp added too much of its own sound, although that sound isn't necessarily bad, and had worked pretty well with the old Rick bass in a Rock/New Wave/Post-punk context. My homemade speakers also kinda lacked definition so I decided to become a fulfledged Genz Benz man and got their 1288 cab as well. Then I bought a few rackmount items from Talkbass members and got a proper pedal board for my effects so that I wouldn't have to spend 20 minutes connecting everything before each jam. (I'm not sure about this last idea though, because part of my jam performance is stumbling across new effects configurations by accident.)
Unfortunately, inadvertent Talkbass searches during all this had gotten me intrigued by the six-string option as well. So I bought two used on Ebay only to return them--a sweet Ibanez Portamento and a Ken Smith Design. I didn't like the Ibanez's flatish neck and narrow string-spacing and the Ken Smith was too noisy. Then I found out about the Steve Bailey six-string Fender Jazz, which has a compound radius starting at 9.5" at the nut, and traditional 3/4"/19mm string-spacing at the bridge--perfect for my Fender-habituated hands. As luck would have it, I found one used on Reverb and bought it up without bidding (the bids were already within 100-200 dollars of the Buy Now price). The single coil pickups were also noisy out of detent, however, so I put Delanos SBC HE/S-4 quad-coils into that as well, ruining its resale value, and switched out the preamp for a Glockenklang. It sounds awesome now through the Genz Benz gear, although the C string still confuses me. I like how six strings screw with my perceptions (which one's the A again?), kind of makes the bass a new instrument deserving a fresh approach. And I like being able to do some three-finger chords instead of just double-stops as well.
Bass number five.
But I still didn't have a fretless bass for roundwounds. On the three fretless basses I already had (Fender PJ, Tacoma Thunderchief, Fender Jazz 6-string), or the Warmoth G5 that I'm having put together, I'm either going with TI (Thomastik-Infield) jazz flats or nylon tapewounds. I don't want roundwounds wearing down the fingerboard on any of them. I put on TI Power Bass strings on the Fender Jazz fretted, and really liked the sound and great sustain, so I went back to thinking about a fretless bass I could put that kind of string on.
More Talkbass, a Michael Manring video, and eventually, a Moses Graphite neck with a 7.25" radius. Then more Warmoth, leading to a Z4 walnut body (for brightness and sustain), once again with Delano quad-coil pickups, but MC FE/J-M2 style instead of SBC style, and a John East preamp. I also decided to try a different style bridge, the 2TEK bridge on the Warmoth site. It was with the idea of making the ultimate glassy, sustainy, graphite-y fretless bass, in contrast to my more woody-sounding basses with rubbery TI flats or papery/velvety tapewounds. With that in mind, I decided to diverge from my devotion to Thomastik-Infield strings and try the Kalium nickel roundwounds. John Brown is also putting together this bass.
So bass number six. I ordered two triple-guitar stands on Amazon to accommodate them.
Whew, all this after just wanting to switch out a fretted for a fretless neck initially.
The bass obsession had subsided, the gear had been updated/upgraded, but I still found pleasure in lurking on Talkbass while having my morning coffee.
And then I came across the Wishbass contingent.
Only in the age of the internet could such a fascinating cult arise, I thought. I went through several extended threads reading up on everyone's mods. Really cool. So I put out a feeler on Ebay. The next day, a JB model was posted with a Sapele and Cherry body, Walnut five-piece neck with Maple and Persimmon stringers, and a Jatobá fingerboard. I liked the combination of woods quite a bit. Crap, just like the Tacoma Thunderchief, it's almost like I'm being led to these basses. So I bought it instinctively.
It showed up cracked, with one of the body pieces almost coming off the neck-thru. The fingerboard was a mess, buzzing all over and way too flat for my tastes, and the crooked nail fretmarkers were a joke, off by 1/8" to 1/4" in places. But I just loved the look. I call it my 'Picasso' bass. I can't believe I bought a bass just for the look. Before a few months ago I had never thought much about looks or components. And unlike the other basses that I had or had put into production, the Wishbass didn't really serve any sonic purpose, jamming-wise. It didn't sound particularly good or unique and it was unplayable.
So I took it to my luthier Ron at Hoffman Guitars again. He told me I had actually gone crazy with this one. So did my jamming drummer, and he's only seen the Ebay photo, and he's actually crazy. However, by then I already had a plan. Besides fixing the crack and truing and radius-ing the fingerboard, I wanted to have a walnut nut and a walnut bridge made, to match the walnut in the headstock and neck-thru by the bridge. Plus I found the original white Corrian plastic nut and bridge unsightly. I'll put a Pick-up-the-World piezo pickup under the new bridge, and replace the KA MM mag pickup with a walnut-covered Häussel MM pickup (bought from a great German company called Bassparts--it's where I got my Delano pickups for the Warmoth projects and the six-string), put in some John East tone controls (mid stack for the mag, bass/treble stack for the piezo), and a Bartolini mag/piezo preamp/blend. That, combined with the massive neck-thru, should give the bass a unique but controllable sound. The knobs will also be walnut, made by Archipelago Glass (you can find him on Ebay). The walnut components should nicely frame the lighter woods of the body and fingerboard. I've also tapped the nail position markers into the wood and covered them with putty, then made new, accurate side fret and position markers using an online chart, a file, a drill, and more putty. Hey, my first lined fretless! How many tribal boundaries have I crossed so far?
So bass number seven, and I blame most of it on Talkbass GAS!
When all the basses are ready, I'll post some pics of the fleet. Each bass should sound and play differently, so each one is kind of an big effect pedal.
I just posted my first post this morning, on the Wishbass forum, but then I thought I should provide a proper introduction.
I began playing bass in my high school jazz band in the late 70s, played in bands in college (my avatar) and after college, then traveled around the world for 10 years, played bass in Japan for a few years during that time, and then continued to jam sporadically after I got back from traveling, including some jamming in Mozambique when I was doing fieldwork there 10 years ago.
Six months ago an old jamming guitar buddy asked if I wanted to jam with a drummer he's been playing with for 5-6 years. I said yes. The jams have been going really well, so I decided to get some new gear. This led me to Talkbass via a DuckDuckGo search, I think.
Anyway, that was a few months ago. I've learned so much here! I just want to say thank you for all the great advice and info I've been able to gather from everyone on Talkbass. I've never really thought too much about gear, although I like to jam with effects. So it's been a steep learning curve, somewhat obsessional at times.
As far as my bass bio goes, it's something like this:
My first real bass was a 70s blonde Rickenbacker (in the avatar), under the influence of Chris Squire (Yes). Then I got a used, white 60s or 70s Fender Precision fretless, under the influence of Jaco (Weather Report), who I had the pleasure of seeing live while I was still in high school (a Joni Mitchell tour). After college I traded in the Rick for a 70s Fender Jazz fretted. I don't regret getting the Jazz, but I do regret having traded in the Rick. I didn't realize the sentimental value it would have for me later, and that Rick neck was super fast and I loved the gnarly sound.
Anyway, in the early 80s (or was it the late 70s?) I put in active EMG pickups in both Fender basses and added a J bridge pickup to the Precision. The PJ fretless has been my go-to bass since then. I also bought a Juzek upright in high school, under the influence of Glen Moore (Oregon), but I had to sell that once I started to travel around the world in 1985, as I had no way to maintain it while I was gone. Chris Squire, Jaco, Glen Moore, those early influences, and a little later, Robbie Shakespeare (Black Uhuru), are still with me and go a long ways towards defining my eclectic style. Basically, I play sounds and shapes just as much as notes, with a sort of Miles Davis impulse to always try to find something new to play (among my repertoire of sounds are the "goo drip," "muddy toes," "wailing whale," "too-late foghorn," "rapid rubber mallet," "drunk Haden," "dying goose," "wandering wave," "slimy slippers," "recurring nightmare," "frozen wind," "baffled buffalo," "Jacocaine Novocaine," "dubstep bathtub misstep," "Prisoner thunderclap," "clawing casket cadaver," "whiteout," "loose chainsaw," "split-rock avalanche," "pouting hippo," "submerged submissive fridgemate," "quiet quaalude," "leaky rowboat," "lurid lava," "falling brick," "timeless uptempo trot," and "spit splash").
My amp has been a Peavey two-channel Mark IV series. I bought the amp head used in high school and made two cabs with 15" speakers and tweeters in the garage. Having two separate channels and running effects in parallel has always been an integral part of my jamming sound.
Anyhow, after a few successful jams this last December and January, my new jamming trio really started to click, so I decided to have my fretless neck redressed. I have always liked roundwounds, but they eat up the fretless's rosewound fingerboard, so I thought about putting a tougher, ebony fretless fingerboard/neck on my fretted Jazz bass, since I never really play fretted bass anymore. That way, the PJ fretless could have flatwounds and the Jazz could have roundwounds. My trusted luthier, Ron Tracy at Hoffman Guitars in Minneapolis (the same guy who worked on my Fenders back in the 70s/80s), mentioned Warmoth as a good neck option, and that opened the floodgates.
I ordered a stock neck, and was ready to put it on the Jazz bass, but then I thought, well, for some more cash, I could get a custom body configured just the way I like it, maybe even try one of those newfangled five-string basses I've been hearing about for a few decades. So I returned the Warmoth neck and began putting together my dream bass. That's about when I found out about Talkbass, probably while doing a search on Warmoth or woods or something.
Around the same time I came across a YouTube video of a guy playing a fretless Tacoma Thunderchief, and was amazed at how much it sounded like an upright. Even more amazingly, I found one used on our local craigslist a few minutes later.
So, bass number three was added, which got me back up to my old pre-travels assortment of one fretted electric, one fretless electric, and one (fretless) acoustic--all 4-string.
I then spent a lot of time on Talkbass obsessing over Warmoth options. I settled on a Wenge G5 body, a Wenge Deluxe 5 neck shaft, a Bocote fingerboard, Delano SBC HE/S-4 quad-coil pickups, a John East preamp, a Hipshot bridge with Graph Tech Ghost piezo saddles, and Gotoh res-lite tuners. After I had ordered the neck and body from Warmoth I changed my mind about which Delano pickups to get, but by then Warmoth had already routed the body, so I'm putting in a Bocote ramp to hide the mistake (I've always thought ramps looked kind of odd, but now I'll have to convince myself they're cool). The bass will be able to switch between series, parallel, and single coil as well as having piezo and midi options through the bridge pickup. My trusted luthier, who's more of an acoustic guy than an electric guy, didn't feel comfortable with the complex electronics however, so more Talkbass searching and I located John Brown's Guitar Factory in a suburb south of Saint Paul. John makes his own fretted/less custom bass with almost exactly the same electronic configuration I was after. Perfect. He got it immediately.
So, bass number four (still in production).
Then I set about upgrading my rig. More Talkbass. I settled on a Genz Benz Shuttle 6.2 amp. I had always wanted a really modern, transparent and accurate amp sound. My Peavey amp added too much of its own sound, although that sound isn't necessarily bad, and had worked pretty well with the old Rick bass in a Rock/New Wave/Post-punk context. My homemade speakers also kinda lacked definition so I decided to become a fulfledged Genz Benz man and got their 1288 cab as well. Then I bought a few rackmount items from Talkbass members and got a proper pedal board for my effects so that I wouldn't have to spend 20 minutes connecting everything before each jam. (I'm not sure about this last idea though, because part of my jam performance is stumbling across new effects configurations by accident.)
Unfortunately, inadvertent Talkbass searches during all this had gotten me intrigued by the six-string option as well. So I bought two used on Ebay only to return them--a sweet Ibanez Portamento and a Ken Smith Design. I didn't like the Ibanez's flatish neck and narrow string-spacing and the Ken Smith was too noisy. Then I found out about the Steve Bailey six-string Fender Jazz, which has a compound radius starting at 9.5" at the nut, and traditional 3/4"/19mm string-spacing at the bridge--perfect for my Fender-habituated hands. As luck would have it, I found one used on Reverb and bought it up without bidding (the bids were already within 100-200 dollars of the Buy Now price). The single coil pickups were also noisy out of detent, however, so I put Delanos SBC HE/S-4 quad-coils into that as well, ruining its resale value, and switched out the preamp for a Glockenklang. It sounds awesome now through the Genz Benz gear, although the C string still confuses me. I like how six strings screw with my perceptions (which one's the A again?), kind of makes the bass a new instrument deserving a fresh approach. And I like being able to do some three-finger chords instead of just double-stops as well.
Bass number five.
But I still didn't have a fretless bass for roundwounds. On the three fretless basses I already had (Fender PJ, Tacoma Thunderchief, Fender Jazz 6-string), or the Warmoth G5 that I'm having put together, I'm either going with TI (Thomastik-Infield) jazz flats or nylon tapewounds. I don't want roundwounds wearing down the fingerboard on any of them. I put on TI Power Bass strings on the Fender Jazz fretted, and really liked the sound and great sustain, so I went back to thinking about a fretless bass I could put that kind of string on.
More Talkbass, a Michael Manring video, and eventually, a Moses Graphite neck with a 7.25" radius. Then more Warmoth, leading to a Z4 walnut body (for brightness and sustain), once again with Delano quad-coil pickups, but MC FE/J-M2 style instead of SBC style, and a John East preamp. I also decided to try a different style bridge, the 2TEK bridge on the Warmoth site. It was with the idea of making the ultimate glassy, sustainy, graphite-y fretless bass, in contrast to my more woody-sounding basses with rubbery TI flats or papery/velvety tapewounds. With that in mind, I decided to diverge from my devotion to Thomastik-Infield strings and try the Kalium nickel roundwounds. John Brown is also putting together this bass.
So bass number six. I ordered two triple-guitar stands on Amazon to accommodate them.
Whew, all this after just wanting to switch out a fretted for a fretless neck initially.
The bass obsession had subsided, the gear had been updated/upgraded, but I still found pleasure in lurking on Talkbass while having my morning coffee.
And then I came across the Wishbass contingent.
Only in the age of the internet could such a fascinating cult arise, I thought. I went through several extended threads reading up on everyone's mods. Really cool. So I put out a feeler on Ebay. The next day, a JB model was posted with a Sapele and Cherry body, Walnut five-piece neck with Maple and Persimmon stringers, and a Jatobá fingerboard. I liked the combination of woods quite a bit. Crap, just like the Tacoma Thunderchief, it's almost like I'm being led to these basses. So I bought it instinctively.
It showed up cracked, with one of the body pieces almost coming off the neck-thru. The fingerboard was a mess, buzzing all over and way too flat for my tastes, and the crooked nail fretmarkers were a joke, off by 1/8" to 1/4" in places. But I just loved the look. I call it my 'Picasso' bass. I can't believe I bought a bass just for the look. Before a few months ago I had never thought much about looks or components. And unlike the other basses that I had or had put into production, the Wishbass didn't really serve any sonic purpose, jamming-wise. It didn't sound particularly good or unique and it was unplayable.
So I took it to my luthier Ron at Hoffman Guitars again. He told me I had actually gone crazy with this one. So did my jamming drummer, and he's only seen the Ebay photo, and he's actually crazy. However, by then I already had a plan. Besides fixing the crack and truing and radius-ing the fingerboard, I wanted to have a walnut nut and a walnut bridge made, to match the walnut in the headstock and neck-thru by the bridge. Plus I found the original white Corrian plastic nut and bridge unsightly. I'll put a Pick-up-the-World piezo pickup under the new bridge, and replace the KA MM mag pickup with a walnut-covered Häussel MM pickup (bought from a great German company called Bassparts--it's where I got my Delano pickups for the Warmoth projects and the six-string), put in some John East tone controls (mid stack for the mag, bass/treble stack for the piezo), and a Bartolini mag/piezo preamp/blend. That, combined with the massive neck-thru, should give the bass a unique but controllable sound. The knobs will also be walnut, made by Archipelago Glass (you can find him on Ebay). The walnut components should nicely frame the lighter woods of the body and fingerboard. I've also tapped the nail position markers into the wood and covered them with putty, then made new, accurate side fret and position markers using an online chart, a file, a drill, and more putty. Hey, my first lined fretless! How many tribal boundaries have I crossed so far?
So bass number seven, and I blame most of it on Talkbass GAS!
When all the basses are ready, I'll post some pics of the fleet. Each bass should sound and play differently, so each one is kind of an big effect pedal.
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