I have one ordered. They expect it on Dec 17.
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Yamaha Peter Hook Signature Bass
- Thread starter TNCreature
- Start date
In one of the many YouTube videos that appeared a few days ago, one of them has clips of PH working with the Yamaha luthier (forgot his name). Most of that bit was about the lack of neck-through and how PH was ultimately convinced by the miter bolts, but they also briefly talked about the preamp and suggested it was tweaked from the stock BB734a to sound more like the 1200S. What exactly that really means is anyone's guess.
i asked someone at yamaha and they did say the bbph preamp is different than the 734a
yamaha bass, peter hook and yoda mug. doesn't get any better!
My BBPH arrived this afternoon and after about an hour of playing and 20 minutes of tweaking I thought I'd give a few first impressions.
The fit and finish is superb. A typical Yamaha in that respect. No sharp fret ends, a lovely gloss finish with satin for the neck and headstock except for the face which is gloss. The back of the neck feels great to play and won't get sticky even on those hot and humid days I guess.
I initially thought, urghhh, steel wounds and I immediately ordered some nickels. I hate the coarse draggy feel of some steel wounds. The action was okay, quite playable but I could see room for a little setup work.
Fitting the supplied battery was interesting. The battery door is quite flimsy and thin and isn't attached by a ribbon. The battery pops in and immediately pops out again as it's sprung from inside. You have to hold it in place and use the door (that's now on the floor) to secure it properly. If the flimsy door were to fall off the battery would jump out.
The tones available - awesome. I was completely blown away in passive and active doesn't add a huge boost but it gives greater control to sculpt the tone from the single pickup. I'm not sure what modifications have been made for Peter Hook's preference but bass and mids are very useable with extremes I wouldn't use and treble more so. The chosen frequencies seem great for what I do, pop, rock and blues covers.
When tuning up I get a feel for neck stability as say my Fender will waver a little on the tuner while settling down with the one piece neck. The tuner was bang on, it's a lovely stable 5 piece neck!
It's slightly neck heavy but nothing that a forearm on the body doesn't address.
The tuners seem robust and function well.
I initially found the centre detents on the EQ controls difficult to find but after adjusting the pots a few times the centre position was much more distinct.
After playing for an hour I was finding the strings becoming pleasant to use. I realise that another UK forum member has identified them as D'Addario nickels (strung through body) and I can go with that now and they are actually great. I won't change them now they've bedded in a little.
The bass came with very little neck relief (a smidge) and a reasonable action, in itself a good sign. The saddles had been adjusted to follow the radius of the fretboard, a pointless exercise that can cause issues. I flattened them out and wound down the saddles a good deal. The action is now spot on, quite low, no buzziness and still only a tiny amount of neck relief. So the fretwork/neck is great.
I'm very impressed. A couple of minor issues went away with playing and the quick setup I did took the bass in a very positive direction. Maybe stick a ribbon to the battery door?
Oh and the proper Yamaha badge (no decal this) on the headstock is a nice touch for this motorcyclist.
A thought added on. This bass isn't neck through. It does have a 6 screw neck fixing with two of the screws angled to pull the heel of the neck firmly into the socket. With a 5 piece neck and a 3 piece front to back body sandwich of alder/maple/alder plus the aforementioned fixings I suspect that this structure neck to bridge (or especially if through body attached) is pretty damn close to neck through and engineered with that in mind. A mids tone monster.
Peter
Bass shed:
The fit and finish is superb. A typical Yamaha in that respect. No sharp fret ends, a lovely gloss finish with satin for the neck and headstock except for the face which is gloss. The back of the neck feels great to play and won't get sticky even on those hot and humid days I guess.
I initially thought, urghhh, steel wounds and I immediately ordered some nickels. I hate the coarse draggy feel of some steel wounds. The action was okay, quite playable but I could see room for a little setup work.
Fitting the supplied battery was interesting. The battery door is quite flimsy and thin and isn't attached by a ribbon. The battery pops in and immediately pops out again as it's sprung from inside. You have to hold it in place and use the door (that's now on the floor) to secure it properly. If the flimsy door were to fall off the battery would jump out.
The tones available - awesome. I was completely blown away in passive and active doesn't add a huge boost but it gives greater control to sculpt the tone from the single pickup. I'm not sure what modifications have been made for Peter Hook's preference but bass and mids are very useable with extremes I wouldn't use and treble more so. The chosen frequencies seem great for what I do, pop, rock and blues covers.
When tuning up I get a feel for neck stability as say my Fender will waver a little on the tuner while settling down with the one piece neck. The tuner was bang on, it's a lovely stable 5 piece neck!
It's slightly neck heavy but nothing that a forearm on the body doesn't address.
The tuners seem robust and function well.
I initially found the centre detents on the EQ controls difficult to find but after adjusting the pots a few times the centre position was much more distinct.
After playing for an hour I was finding the strings becoming pleasant to use. I realise that another UK forum member has identified them as D'Addario nickels (strung through body) and I can go with that now and they are actually great. I won't change them now they've bedded in a little.
The bass came with very little neck relief (a smidge) and a reasonable action, in itself a good sign. The saddles had been adjusted to follow the radius of the fretboard, a pointless exercise that can cause issues. I flattened them out and wound down the saddles a good deal. The action is now spot on, quite low, no buzziness and still only a tiny amount of neck relief. So the fretwork/neck is great.
I'm very impressed. A couple of minor issues went away with playing and the quick setup I did took the bass in a very positive direction. Maybe stick a ribbon to the battery door?
Oh and the proper Yamaha badge (no decal this) on the headstock is a nice touch for this motorcyclist.
A thought added on. This bass isn't neck through. It does have a 6 screw neck fixing with two of the screws angled to pull the heel of the neck firmly into the socket. With a 5 piece neck and a 3 piece front to back body sandwich of alder/maple/alder plus the aforementioned fixings I suspect that this structure neck to bridge (or especially if through body attached) is pretty damn close to neck through and engineered with that in mind. A mids tone monster.
Peter
Bass shed:
Last edited:
A couple of days ago I realised that my polite TRBX was made by the same company who created the RD350. When I was 19, used to rising pillion on a ZZR, a friend of a friend offered to give me a lift on the back of his RD350. That was a educational 10 minutes through city centre traffic
I'm a finger style player. I've been practicing with a pick recently. It has strong mids available and for finger style players who find themselves trying to emulate pick played songs I think it works well. A P bass with a 3 band EQ is rare I think. It gives extraordinary versatility. I'm inclined towards a 'middy' tone anyway so it's all good. Passive is great too, really useable and I may end up preferring it in passive?
I'm not claiming to have golden ears, and it's certainly possible that the sound on PC&L is the result of running the 1200 through outboard EQ. But I do hear more pronounced upper mids on Age of Consent that sound to me more like the glassy sound of the 1200S than the rounder sound of the 1200. PC&L was also their first album without Hannett, so it makes more sense to me that the difference in sound is due to a new instrument rather than Hooky's studio magic, but that's just a guess on my part.
Thanks for this. A lot of what you describe is right on the money for my BB734a, which makes sense since they're obviously close to the same thing.
And yes, the standard D'Addario strings take some breaking in. Pretty much the same as EB Slinkys. I actually have GHS Pressurewounds on my BB, which means I have to turn up the treble a bit to hit that PH kind of sound.
The problem is that there are hardly any photos at all of them in the studio during that time period. Have you found any photos of him in the studio with the 1200? It doesn't help that the live stuff is very dark and Hooky was still in the habit of playing with his back to the audience, and then started using the EB-2 around then (and half the songs are on the Shergold as well).
There's a website with a New Order timeline with the months of the studio sessions for the different albums, but I don't know what their source is or if it's accurate. But if it is, then Movement was April-May 1981, PC&L was Oct-Nov 1982, and Low-Life was Oct-Dec 1984.
That is true, and that's the problem with determining this. Hooky is an unreliable narrator, and the evidence of the time is scarce. What we do know is the release year of the BB1200S, and rough recording dates of the albums, as well as live performances. It's not on Movement for sure (unless he owns a time machine), PC&L is debatable, and Low-Life is definitely the BB1200S since we know for sure he had it by July of the year of the recording. I'm not disagreeing with you, I think it's definitely possible he had it for PC&L, but I also feel like it would have shown up in a live show at some point in those 2 years before Low-Life was recorded. The BB1200 and EB-2 make regular appearances until it shows up mid-84.
I can see where you're coming from with Age of Consent, it does have that BB1200S sound to it, but like you also said it could just be down to messing about with effects and EQs in the studio. It's possible he found something similar to that sound through a combination of various things earlier on. He latched onto the 1200S so quickly for a reason, because it was exactly how he wanted to sound. This is all just speculation though.
Our best bet for really finding out probably lies with Steve or Barney since we can't get it from Hooky, but I'm not sure they'd be too happy answering a question about Hooky either, even if they remember.
Also, a possible answer to the BB600/BB800/BB1200/BB1200S issue.
In this video, at about 1:25, Hook is talking about how the BB600 was used to write and record LWTUA, and he looks back and does sort of a little half gestured point to the BB1200 in the background, the same one modified to have bridge pickup he recently sold at auction.
Later in the video, he talks about how he went to Manny's in NYC to replace the bass that was stolen in 1980, and again gestures to the BB1200, only this time he actually calls it a BB1200 and specifically says it was that bass. He says he bought it with two pickups, which isn't true as shown earlier in this thread, as the same bass (evidenced by the grain matching up) can be seen in it's stock form (just a P pickup) in the Movement collector's edition book, meaning it was modded at some point.
So he acknowledges here that he had a BB in Joy Division, unlike the story he's been telling recently where he bought the "BB600" after having their gear stolen in NY as his introduction to Yamaha. Only the BB600 he's talking about was actually a BB1200, but then what was the bass he bought in NY? Was it a BB800, as he's seen with in a picture from late 1980, or another BB1200? If it was another BB1200, wouldn't he have recognized that he just bought the same model he just lost? I'm thinking he's gotten the BB800 and the BB1200 mixed up over the years, (also mistakenly calling the BB800 the BB600), thinking he lost the 800 in NY instead of losing the 1200. Then when he returned to Manchester, he couldn't have bought the BB1200S as it didn't exist yet, so he likely just bought another BB1200 and has confused the time when he did eventually buy the BB1200S with that.
In this video, at about 1:25, Hook is talking about how the BB600 was used to write and record LWTUA, and he looks back and does sort of a little half gestured point to the BB1200 in the background, the same one modified to have bridge pickup he recently sold at auction.
Later in the video, he talks about how he went to Manny's in NYC to replace the bass that was stolen in 1980, and again gestures to the BB1200, only this time he actually calls it a BB1200 and specifically says it was that bass. He says he bought it with two pickups, which isn't true as shown earlier in this thread, as the same bass (evidenced by the grain matching up) can be seen in it's stock form (just a P pickup) in the Movement collector's edition book, meaning it was modded at some point.
So he acknowledges here that he had a BB in Joy Division, unlike the story he's been telling recently where he bought the "BB600" after having their gear stolen in NY as his introduction to Yamaha. Only the BB600 he's talking about was actually a BB1200, but then what was the bass he bought in NY? Was it a BB800, as he's seen with in a picture from late 1980, or another BB1200? If it was another BB1200, wouldn't he have recognized that he just bought the same model he just lost? I'm thinking he's gotten the BB800 and the BB1200 mixed up over the years, (also mistakenly calling the BB800 the BB600), thinking he lost the 800 in NY instead of losing the 1200. Then when he returned to Manchester, he couldn't have bought the BB1200S as it didn't exist yet, so he likely just bought another BB1200 and has confused the time when he did eventually buy the BB1200S with that.
You don't create mythical heroes by citing verifiable facts.
When the legend becomes truth, print the legend.
Yeah, I'm not arguing, it's genuinely confusing. Has Hooky ever told the story of how he got his Yamahas the same way twice?
I doubt Barney's memory is any better. He once showed up at an airport hungover, threw up in a shopping bag, couldn't figure out what to do with it, panicked, and put it through the X-ray scanner.
Pretty much everytime he tells the story it's different. There's always one constant though, the nonexistent BB600 being his first Yamaha.
Given that his memoirs includes things like "The thing with crack is that it's better than coke while you're doing it. It's much smoother, warmer and not as edgy. But then afterwards you'd happily slit your own throat." who's going to be surprised?
