Ah… a blast from the past. I used to own an Ashbory bass. It is definitely one of the most unusual instruments I’ve ever had in my bass collection. It’s the tiny bass that thinks it is a giant upright. It does deliver that URB acoustic bass sound, but in a most unusual way.
In true upright style, it is fretless, but with frets markers and standard dot markers up the neck too. Because it has an increadibly short-scale (at 18 inches – compare that with a normal bass scale length!), it can be quite hard to get the intonation right – a little bit of a wobble puts you half a semi-tone out. I did use mine live, but I think that it is a rather brave soul that does. Have a listen to the clips here. [More…]
A bit more NAMM2009 bass news, with thanks to Alun Vaughan, who posted about the new Mark Bass pedals on twitter. Here is a YouTube clip about them, via Bass Guitar magazine, showing the new range. They look solidly built to say the least!
The music world is strutting its (new) stuff at NAMM 2009. Steve Lawson will be playing for Looperlative, Modulus and Accugroove, and around and about with Lobelia – I’m hoping we might get a few wonderful Steve-social-media video clips coming in!
A few picks from the new gear so far… I like to look of the all new tc electronic RebelHead450:
A very high tech, light weight bass head. The mail features (mentioned in the video clip) include:
Rehearsal input – plug in your mp3 player of sound source of choice.
Integrated tuner – with LED display.
Multiple user memories – for storing settings.
Tone controls.
TubeTone(tm) – tube sound.
SpectraComp(tm) – compression.
More on this “Bass Amp 2.0” (oh yes.. even Bass amps are going 2.0 now 😉 ) on the tc eletrconic site.
No big new gear bass news from Roland this show, but they do have couple of new tuners:
There are miles and miles of gear… Stroll though some of the NAMM photos here on flickr – worth it to see the Rob Allen Basses if nothing else. How about a spot the craziest bass competition???
Firstly, a very big hello to new readers – do have a dig through the archives where you’ll find posts on bass players, bass gear and all things bass. You can sign up to the blog either via the RSS feed (here or up the top via the RSS button) or via email.
For those reading via RSS you’ll notice that I’ve now switched the blog to a full feed, that should mean you can now read the posts with out having to make an extra click. Do still keeping adding your comments though! I’m still just an email away – Benjamin @ bassguitarblog.com – always happy to hear from you, especially with news, tips or pointers to interesting bass things. [More…]
I do, it has to be said, have a bit of a soft spot for single cut basses. So when I came across the home of Aquilina Basses (French site here, English here) I dug in.
Single cut basses have just one cut out, compared to the more usual double cut away model. If you can picture a classical guitar in your head, or an old steel-string acoustic, you’ll know what a guitar with no cut aways looks like. The guitar body near the neck on the top string half was originally cut away to provide better access to the high frets. I’m not sure when or why in the life of the guitar the second cut away became common, Leo Fender just made them that way, giving them their two distinctive ‘horns’. [More…]
Ever thought of playing without an Amp? The last set up in the Bass Amp Set Ups list is one that doesn’t use an amp at all – the ampless set up. Actually there is an amplifier, but it is just for some headphones, so it isn’t big and heavy to carry around. [More…]
