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Steve Swallow's basses?

R

RiseOfTheWooten

Jan 4, 2006
755
4
Australia
#1
Hi all,

I just got around to purchasing John Scofield's CD "enroute [live]" with his trio a couple of weeks ago, with Steve Swallow on elec bass and Bill Stewart on drums. Love the CD!

My bass teacher and I were talking about Steve Swallow's sound/tone on this CD and she mentioned that he might be playing a hollow-body elec bass. We both don't know what's in his gear setup though.

Does anyone know?
 
#3
His current bass is a custom Citron AE5: tuned EADGC, 36" scale, narrow string spacing (the neck is P-bass width), piezos-only. He uses La Bella strings, Dunlop copper plectrums, an old Walter Woods head and whatever cabs are provided.

www.citron-guitars.com

When he first switched to EB, he used a Gibson EB-2 with custom pickups and electronics before switching to a Fender Precision for a few years in the late '70s. In the '80s, he used a pair of custom basses by Froc Fillipetti (one tuned E-G, the other A-C). He moved on to use his famous Parker Fly prototype for much of the '90s before getting together with Harvey Citron.

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#5
Thanks for the info. I just did a google search, them's nice basses! Interesting choice of tunings though. Does anyone here have one of those Citrons? I'm assuming the hollow body is predominantly for tone and not volume?

I love that sound he's got in the 'enroute' CD, couldn't quite work it out but it makes sense now that we have confirmation that it's probably a hollow body.
 
#6
Just remembered that Steve is actually pictured holding the Citron in the liner notes of 'En Route':
johnscofieldtrio_300.jpg


He's on his third or fourth Citron AE5. His first also had a magnetic pickup which was later abandoned. With each version, the acoustic cavity inside the body has got larger. I think the AE5 can be called a true hollowbody since it doesn't have a centre toneblock. The body is fairly shallow though - perhaps only 3" or so.
 
#11
I am sad to report that the Gibson EB2 pictured in the top picture was purchased by me in the mid 90s when I was doing a lot of riding around in a van, jumping around and crashing into guitar players who were doing the same. Said instrument met an untimely demise one night when I tossed it high in the air, got a light in my eye and completely missed it as it went past my outstretched arm and hit the ground- shearing the headstock clean off, smashing the top of the body and spilling some of the custom electronics across the front row. I solemnly polished the remains and put them in my bass case. Bits of teh bass hang in several Boston area repair shops as a reminder of my stupidity.

It was a great sounding bass and it took me a long time to find another instrument that I had such a personal connection with. I would have liked another 60s Gibson, but couldn't afford one. All of Steve's modifications devalued the bass and I actually bought it for $500 originally.
 
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#12
brianrost said:
Dig the pickguard on his Citron...Steve uses copper picks which scar the top of the bass easily (see photos of the Froc and Parker).

I met Froc around 1981, anyone in the CT area know if he's still building basses?
Click to expand...

Last I knew he was still associated with Furlanetto over at F-bass. I met Froc a bunch of times as well. I was taking lessons over at Integrity in Wethersfield and they usually had a few of his instruments on the wall. I was admiring a guitar and this guy was asking me what I liked and ... it was Froc. One of my friends has a Froc guitar and it is sublime. It will also peel the paint off the walls. Great stuff and he was a real pioneer in custom axes.

Another weird one is a bass player in CT who has a Froc "custom" based on a Musicmaster bass body, single Bart pu with single volume control, and the Fender neck has a retrofitted fretless board. The neck is like a baseball bat, but it sounds fantastic.

And yeah, that copper pick thing is kinda freaky but Swallow gets a huge tone from it. When I use a pick I use the thickest Dunlop I can find and choke way up on it. I'd guess that Swallow uses a similar technique where you get the attack from the pick and the roundness from the finger/thumb in the grip.

Totally a guess on that, but I think that it is accurate.
 
#15
I went through a huge Swallow phase, and tried the pick, but to do the chordal things he does, triple and quadruple stops in bass talk, I needed to use my fingers. Ended up developing a weird banjo bass technique, but I can hit triples all through Carla's "Sing Me Softly of the Blues".

I used a 5-string E-C tuned carvin, all koa with 5 piece koa-maple neck, got a very swallow like sound, even with my fingers.
 
#16
I dig the pic above, of the early Scofield trio with my boy, Nussbaum, on drums.

Of all the basses Swallow has recorded with, my favorite tone is on the Home record. I think that was that Fender parts bass, with Bartolini (Hi-A, maybe) pickups. I saw him play with Gary Burton around the time Easy as Pie was released, he was using that bass. (Longshore Country Club in Westport, speaking of CT.)
 
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#20
Does anyone have more pictures of Steve Swallow's F-Bass or know anything about it? Is it a medium or short scale bass?

Maybe I'm imagining this but did he play that Parker for a while with the top horn broken off. Someone told me that Swallow's Fly Bass protoype didn't have the outer shell that Ken Parker typically uses.
 

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