Phil Richardson AKA Phil the Hat, who underwent some truly uncomfortable moments as the star of the recent Burnt Belief video for Dissemble, is also a professional photographer who has recently taken some great pictures of a selection of my bass guitars.
The reason for taking all these shots is primarily that I have been tasked with making a bass sample library from my bass guitar collection, which for anyone unfamiliar means basically recording each instrument with variety of different velocities to make usable recordings of bass sounds that other musicians can use in their own productions.
I hope to have more news on the sample library soon, but in the meantime, I thought I would share some of the photos and write a bit about each instrument.
Phil's cradle set up for photographing the basses.
No particular order, but first up is my Basslab Soul IV. (NB. Click on the pictures to enlarge)
Basslab from Germany, make some truly unique and individual designs, but I chose their most conservative model, the Soul, which is based on a traditional Fender shape.
Bridge Detail.
D tuner is just visible behind the headstock on this shot.
Fretboard detail.
I have to confess that initially, I wasn't sure what to make of the Soul, it felt so different from the usual wooden basses I have, that I wasn't sure if I would get on with it.
Any doubts were quickly pushed aside as soon as I recorded with it, it has a very clear low end, and if I am sometimes working on a track and searching for a sound, it's usually the bass that will make further searching unnecessary. I find it works particularly well with distortion.
It has proved to be very reliable, tonally flexible and very comfortable to play. Being a hollow body, it's also very light.
I first used this bass on the Ex-Wise Heads track Accidental Design and it's also on the title track of Porcupine Tree's Fear of a Blank Planet album, as well as "Normal" from the Nil Recurring EP, to name a few.
More to follow…...
