Kiwi

any tips for writing the arrangements and finger patterns?

...OK so the tunes may not be cool and right on but I'd still like to learn a few songs like this (fast forward to 0:52):

[quote name='SpinalTap' post='484183' date='May 10 2009, 09:45 AM']Exactly. Chris told me once he never used swamp-ash beceause the wood is so soft, and it just destroys the tone. His basses with ash body's are just to heavy for me, so I prefer the ones with Alder. Great tone, and not to heavy.[/quote] As I hinted at in the public thread, Chris has been working on something that will address that weight issue. The orange bass on the wall in this photo was the lightest bass I've ever picked up. I'm guessing it might have weighed something like 4-5kg even though it didn't have any hardware fitted. If Chris fitted titanium hardware onto it (light but strong) it would be truly standard setting and probably a god send to anyone with back problems.

Hi Brummie - Ped's already offered but they're all coming with me. (I'm dreading the container contents shift around or get flooded with seawater). Thanks for your wishes though. Hi Urb - I'll drop you a PM Prose - not sure where I'll end up at the moment. I'm going to Christchurch in the first instance, where my family are and taking a view on things. The inside money says I'll most likely end up in Auckland (which is no bad thing) but need to do some face to face meetings with prospective employers first.

[quote name='BigBeefChief' post='490386' date='May 17 2009, 10:55 AM']You've somehow come to this conclusion, and for some reason people have taken it as fact. My issue with your ammended post is far more superficial.[/quote] Then it's probably something you should have taken up with me via PM instead of jumping in on the thread in a very public, distracting and unwelcome manner.

Fair comment Steve, I know you've had issues with Chris and I deliberately didn't make enquiries because it wasn't any of my business. I also don't know how much of Chris's personal situation contributed to his state of mind last time you both spoke. All I'll say is that Chris spoke with me about his dealings in the US. You didn't come up in conversations until much much later on (weeks later) and even then only in passing. I didn't get the impression that Chris felt bitter about his dealings with you. However, that's just my impression and nothing more.

I'll [i]make[/i] you a squier for £4k. Seriously though, if the cost of an instrument is too much then there's nothing to stop you from going the DIY route apart from time. Most of the stages of building an instrument can be broken down into easy to manage stages. For example, fret dressing isn't magic and even I can do it. Its mostly about attention to detail and patience. I've decided I'm gonna build my own bass some day. I'll probably start with retrofitting bodies before I tackle the fretting but the thing is its not rocket science at all.

[quote name='BigRedX' post='490179' date='May 16 2009, 09:52 PM']Wonderful informative stuff. And hardly advertising - in fact CK may have 'harmed' his mysterious persona with this report.[/quote] Mysterious persona? I swear I've never worn a mask with a cape and I don't like opera that much either. [quote name='obi 2 kenobi' post='490202' date='May 16 2009, 10:29 PM']Thank you CK for the details. Do you know if it is possible to order a bass or if he has basses for sale in his workshop ? Funnily enough I was in Copenhagen 2 weeks.[/quote] Its definitely possible to place an order. But Chris can't give any guarantees over the delivery times. They're likely to be very long because he has a massive backlog to get through in addition to the quick turn around repair work that he does for players in Copenhagen. I guess you need to decide whether you can wait a long time for an instrument or not. Chris won't be taking any form of deposit from you until the build is ready to begin though. [quote name='Born 2B Mild' post='490219' date='May 16 2009, 10:54 PM']It is your destiny CK.[/quote] LOL kiwi, I am your father... ...well we did discuss his own frustrations with what he called misinformation appearing on the internet surrounding his dealings with customers. I could see that he felt he'd been burned (without wishing to go into any further detail) by a few extremely vocal individuals in the past. He has a great reputation in Copenhagen, and nothing is too much trouble for the local players who own his instruments (and there are a number of them who play nothing else). So I sat down with him in his lounge and took him through Basschat, showed him some of the threads, and took him for a tour behind the scenes. During our discussion I did suggest there may be potential for Basschat, as a community, to play a part in helping to restore his faith in human nature...but its up to him to make the call. So for what its worth, I've sent him a link to this thread and I suspect that everyone's posts on this forum will be of great interest and encouragement to him (and perhaps emphasise some of the points that I raised with him about how he's perceived by the bass playing community at least in the UK). He's also said that he only accesses the internet twice a week so if anyone wants to talk to him all they need to do is call if they have questions about the instruments.

might be worth posting a pic of the front of the amp as well...I'm sure you've checked the obvious but we've all been there regardless mate

Its an old and modified Status Matrix 1, the Status geeks will confirm one way or another I'm sure.

[quote name='Happy Jack' post='489855' date='May 16 2009, 03:11 PM']I have to ask, Steve: Did you get the story behind the Hofner Violin Bass leaning casually against a work-bench in one of your photos?[/quote] Yes I did Jack, the bass is a genuine '64 Hofner and was brought in for a restoration job by one of Chris's customers. It needed a pickup rewinding and the electrics needed looking at. I plucked a few of the strings and it seemed to be a very resonant instrument. I didn't dare pick it up in that state though just incase something fell out and rolled under a cabinet. [quote name='liamcapleton' post='489861' date='May 16 2009, 03:20 PM']I must say that I do find it endlessly frustrating that he's taken down the website now[/quote] He does have plans in place to put the site back up. There's a lot going on in his mind at the moment and I think he's very worried that he will get so sucked into spending all his time managing the backlog orders and customer relationships that he won't have any time for his first love which is building the instruments (which is what actually brings in the money and makes the business viable). He doesn't want to delegate the building of instruments to anyone else because they don't have his experience or skill. I should have asked him why he doesn't get someone in to manage the customer side of things and leave him to deal with the instruments but I think he might feel there's no point if everything comes back to getting the basses out the door and maintaining a reputation for quality. I think he's in a very similar situation to Jon Shuker where he doesn't have a wide pool of skilled labour to draw on and he doesn't have the time to spend training someone up so ultimately he takes on 100% responsibility for producing the instruments.

[quote name='thisnameistaken' post='489796' date='May 16 2009, 01:40 PM']So did he invite you over because you've ordered a bass from him? If so, what are you getting? [/quote] Oh god I could have spent a fortune in that place. Chris's instruments are around the £3200-4500 mark and he doesn't give the instruments away, not even to Victor Bailey or Marcus Miller. I think it's going to be a long time until I own one brand new. But I'd probably have a fretted/fretless pair of those Victor Bailey basses in a heartbeat if I had £9k to chuck at Chris.

Thanks for your comments guys. Chris keeps a very low profile these days and I have an interest in bass guitar design myself. So this was a very rare opportunity to get to know a lutheir who makes some of the most widely regarded jazz variant instruments on the planet and to try and gain an insight into what makes his instruments different to similar models out there. I've already visited Roger Sadowsky's workshop too but that was about 16 years ago and I didn't have a camera or the understanding to make the most of my visit back then. If I do make any other visits in the future, I'll definitely post them up here.

lol, the exterior of the building was very different!

...and Chris is seen here at the electronics station playing one of his Aura 6 basses. The Aura bass is a mahogany bodied instrument with a maple set neck. Chris prefers set and bolt on neck joints because he feels they're help the instrument be more dynamic and responsive. He's also constantly experimenting with new woods and construction. I witnessed a prototype J Update which is without any question the lightest instrument I've ever picked up. He's sworn me to secrecy over how he's achieved it but he reckons it will emulate a lightweight pre-CBS jazz like no other on the market. The former Meshell Update has made its way back to his workshop and he let me have a go on it. Its a stunning instrument. Extremely responsive, no dead spots anywhere and the notes leap off the fingerboard. Chris told me the story of how BC'er Eubassix discoverered it was her instrument despite being in an unrecognisable condition. There was also another longer story going back that relates to how the bass left Meshell in the first place (lets just say she didn't sell it). He also pointed out that this instrument features 50 year old Brazilian rosewood which he managed to obtain from a contact of his as new old stock. There's more of it stored in the roof space here: He's only got a limited supply of it so it will only be used on premium instruments, such as the Victor Bailey inspired fretless that I would happily sell my soul for. With a mahogany body and an epoxy coated Brazilian rosewood fingerboard, it had all the sustain and mwaaah of my Pedulla Pentabuzz but with more warmth. It belongs to a local player now but it was utterly utterly lush. And to finish off, here's the man himself activating the LED's on one of the basses that has been in for servicing. As a footnote, I'll just mention that Chris's time and energy have been drawn away from bass building by some extremely serious personal issues over the last 2 years (which I can't really go into any detail on out of respect to his privacy). Chris was open and extremely candid with me about these things and to be honest, if I was in his shoes I would have probably become a depressive wreck under the same stresses and pressures that he's had to endure. Despite all this, he still cares deeply about making some of the best bass guitars on the planet and this is essentially what has seen him through the last couple of years. I was left in no doubt whatsoever about his commitment to customer satisfaction and the quality of his instruments.

I met Chris a couple of weeks ago at his invitation while he was stopping over in London. We ended up talking so much that we lost track of time and so Chris invited me to come over to Copenhagen and visit his workshop. It was an offer too good to resist so I went over on Thursday and came back yesterday. I took some pics while I was there and thought I'd share them with the forum. Chris and I talked non stop during my stay with him and our discussions covered a massive range of topics including comedy (he's a big Eddie Izzard and Blackadder fan), airports, airlines (esp. Air NZ vs Aeroflot), youtube, and the circumstances surrounding his meeting some of the famous players who have bought his instruments. I also met his kids and he called a couple of local players in Copenhagen who graciously made their instruments available to me. So here's the tour: Chris has a multi roomed workshop and the thing that struck me most was the wood and the numbers of bodies in various stages of completion. I estimated there were at least 40-50 bodies in various stages of finishing. He sources his wood locally where possible and knows a forester who supplies him with the danish alder that he uses as well as obtaining European sycamore from local suppliers. Other woods he uses such as mahogany, spalted maple, purpleheart and koa are imported. Chris hand selects the wood and does all the carving himself in this room: It hasn't been set up properly yet since the move to new workshop (which happened basically because his former landlord there almost tripled the rents). The finishing is carried out by Chris's brother Stefan and they use a spray booth across the yard in a furniture manufacturing workshop. Chris does have the facilities to do it himself but installing the extraction fans has proved to be trickier than they originally anticipated because of the low ceiling height in the workshop. This is the room where they do the final buffing and polishing of the bodies. This is the final assembly room In this room is a set up table... ...a fret dressing station... (BTW this table is really neat, it flips upside down when the jig isn't in use to present a flat work surface. )

Visit Chris Celinder in Copenhagen for £22 if you book far enough in advance.

[quote name='obi 2 kenobi' post='489314' date='May 15 2009, 08:53 PM']He was also a Warwick user. When I saw him w/TTD In 87 at Glasgow Barrowland, he played a pink Warwick most of the nite - great gig btw. Later did he not switch to Musicman Cutlass ?[/quote] He did and he has been an avid MM Cutlass collector. He was checking out my first Cutlass on consignment at the Bass Centre for a while apparently.

[quote name='dood' post='488170' date='May 14 2009, 06:57 PM']BK Electronics [url="http://www.bkelec.com/Pro/Amplifiers/MXF1200D.htm"]http://www.bkelec.com/Pro/Amplifiers/MXF1200D.htm[/url] - This is a great company who supply lots of OEM stuff, so you're unlikely to know the name, but their amps go into a lot of PA gear for example.[/quote] I spoke to them last week about it and BK have discontinued that amp because the power modules they use are no longer available. [quote name='crez5150' post='489455' date='May 16 2009, 01:12 AM']Yeah.... Cheap crappy DJ sh*te![/quote] I bought one of these, a Technical Pro DA-B3000, last week and its turned out to be an excellent purchase! Great sound, very clean, super flat response and hi-fidelity, bringing out a nice firm midrange in my basses. If you paired it up with a decent preamp that wasn't too scoopy (like a Demeter or Alembic F-1X), you'll have an outstanding value for money system. Looked too good to be true but it wasn't. [url="http://www.audiosavings.com/index.aspx"]The company[/url] also shipped it very efficiently and someone monitored progress of the shipment every day. Ped's got one that is the same design but a different brand name...so these amps get the Basschat Mods Choice seal of approval!

Hi Jeff, welcome aboard.

I would go for a Celinder (for a bolt on) or a Shuker (for a through neck) personally. I've just come back from visiting Chris Celinder in Copenhagen and some of the instruments I played, like Meshell's J Update, were truly magical. I've had my understanding of what constitutes a well made bass guitar totally redefined in the space of 24 hours. But the instrument you choose needs to suit your playing style, the music you play, the sound you want etc. I mean, there's no point in buying a Fodera Beez Elite if you're going to play thrash metal is there? Asking other people for spontaneous recommendations on an instrument is like asking them to try on your clothes and tell you if they suit you or not. So: What sort of music do you play and what other musicians do you play with? What kind of playing style do you have? Where do you play? What sound do you want?

I heard that Cass was considering a career in photography for a while. Obviously if Skunk Anansie are back then all power to them. Awesome, awesome rock band.

Hey Tony, thanks OK, this bass won't be a stranger to most of the members of this forum but its now mine. Now I've given it a fret dressing and a set up it plays really well. The sound is warm and full in the lows and mids with some nice compression to the highs - the nicest sounding Spector I've ever played. I'm going to try a set of bassline soapbars out in it to see if it will help the bass sound a little more dynamic and I have the U Retro to reinstall too.

Definitely one for the die-hard collectors I think. The neck on Nick's was superb though.

Hey if we're talking about a gorgeous competition, then I've got bigger breasts than anyone else on this forum and I look good in a swimsuit.