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Phil Lesh's New Ritter Bass
- Thread starter Brondle
- Start date
So I saw this bass in the recent issue of Bass Player magazine and this morning, I see that ebay is SIEGED with KTone knockoffs... Now's everyone's chance to own a cheap, fake Ritter!!!
You guys are too much...
Phil and his new bass are the cover story on this month's Bass Player Magazine
It is a Ritter Jupiter 6 with the Eye of Horus inlay
the pick up is a custom 4 coil Quattrobucker pickup with custom made electronics (Ritters' master parametric PL). It is strung with Ritters' swordsteel custom strings (.032, .042, .062,.082, .102, .122)
the body is Mahagony
the neck is Limba
Gotoh Tuners
Schaller Strap Locks
Ritter 3D Bridge
Mammoth Ivory Nut (10,000 years old)
Blue LED's front and side
very nice work but, when it is being played it reminds me of someone strangling a swan....
apparently Phil was just surfing the net and found Jens website...sent him an E-mail and Jens thought it was a joke and initially ignored it.....until he called the included phone # and got Phil on the other end. finally at the 2007 NAMM show they cemented the deal. Jens actually flew it to San Francisco in person....apparently there are two of them (one as a back-up i suppose), but apparently he is also playing a Steling DeMars Long Trail as well.
Phil and his new bass are the cover story on this month's Bass Player Magazine
It is a Ritter Jupiter 6 with the Eye of Horus inlay
the pick up is a custom 4 coil Quattrobucker pickup with custom made electronics (Ritters' master parametric PL). It is strung with Ritters' swordsteel custom strings (.032, .042, .062,.082, .102, .122)
the body is Mahagony
the neck is Limba
Gotoh Tuners
Schaller Strap Locks
Ritter 3D Bridge
Mammoth Ivory Nut (10,000 years old)
Blue LED's front and side
very nice work but, when it is being played it reminds me of someone strangling a swan....
apparently Phil was just surfing the net and found Jens website...sent him an E-mail and Jens thought it was a joke and initially ignored it.....until he called the included phone # and got Phil on the other end. finally at the 2007 NAMM show they cemented the deal. Jens actually flew it to San Francisco in person....apparently there are two of them (one as a back-up i suppose), but apparently he is also playing a Steling DeMars Long Trail as well.
Those things are HUGE. I didn't really get the jist of it from just pictures of the bass but watching a guy hold it is kind of scary.
Quadzilla
Supporting Member
He had 4 Eden 4x10s in Worcester. I also saw a SWR Redhead combo that he seemed to be using as a monitor of some kind.
I love Phil's playing, but that bass reminds me of the creatures of the id in Forbidden Planet.
On Phil and Friend tours in the past the SWR Redhead served as monitors. Ususally it is a monitor for someone else on stage. It gets a direct feed from Phil's wireless. Whoever uses it can dial in as much Phil as they woud like. Yeah, I saw the Eden 4x10s in DC, which is a swtich from the MEyers he was using. I didn't get a look at it, but I think there was 1 odd non-Eden 4x10, but I am not certain. What is the speaker cabinet on top of his rig?
As a big fan of Phil and the Dead, I must recommend the outtake from their boxed set released a few years ago. It's a recording of Phil playing Unbroken Chain (which he had just written) on a 12 string guitar as he teaches it to the rest of the band. Priceless. One of their greatest musical poems IMO, and the song that opened my eyes to them as being so much more than players of Cali beach tunes. Back to the thread-it's a coll looking bass. After reading the BP article, the coolest feature to me was taking the string gauges into consideration and ensureing equal distances between EDGES of adjacent strings. Brilliant.
Comments?? I saw them twice in Chicago. HATE the new bass! Sounds like poop through a huge system! No definition, bad tone, no clairity. It was the size of a small elephant!! E-Gads what the H
ll was he thinking.... Just my humble bass playing opinion... Oh yea, the show on Monday was pretty good, the show on Tuesday (May 5th) was not that great. Sloppy, missed ques, dropped lines - bass and guitar, just not together..
ll was he thinking.... Just my humble bass playing opinion... Oh yea, the show on Monday was pretty good, the show on Tuesday (May 5th) was not that great. Sloppy, missed ques, dropped lines - bass and guitar, just not together..
Hmm..the shows I have been listening to lately have sounded pretty good....nice jams etc
As far as the bass, it is Phil Lesh, he has always had crazy-made basses.
As far as the bass, it is Phil Lesh, he has always had crazy-made basses.
Now admittedly, I know nothing about Phil or the Dead, never got into them. But why would anyone assume that just because his tone was bad at a show that the bass he was playing was bad? Depending on where you were sitting, you were hearing more from the PA than his actual backline rig. Just seems to me with all the threads on here about bad soundmen, bad rooms, etc. that it might be something other than the bass. Plus, maybe Phil changed something else in his signal chain. And I've never even been in the same room with a Ritter, but I've always admired them.
