EMG456

Also, by this time Alan had figured out the logistics of the body shape and control cavity conundrum and emailed me a rough sketch of the shape, which I liked very much... So he went off to make the template and crack on.

An email arrives from Alan - suggested fingerboards - here they are. Without seeing them against the top wood, I wasn't so sure but I reckoned 2 was a bit too figured for a fretless board, 3would be very black and plain, nice.. but probably 1 would have a bit of character without being too busy. So here it is against chosen top, brace yourselves... And a bit closer...

This year it was the big 60 for me. Since the big 40 (LOL) it has been my choice to mark these decades with a new instrument commissioned to my own, often niche, specification. The hole in my family of basses if there is one, is in extended range fretlesses - I've never had one so this will be the aim. Now I naturally would gravitate towards a Wal for this and that would indeed be nice but I have for many years been an admirer of the work of Alan Cringean at ACG. His woodworking is easily the match of any of the top makers and his development of the Wal philosophy of pickups and active EQ very much appeal to me. So a couple of initial emails later and off I go to Moffat to speak with the man. As a long term player of Steinberger basses, I'm not exactly hidebound by convention so my opening gambit is "Do you think a bass would work with the body shape of your Reiver Kompakt six string guitar?" For anyone who doesn't know, Alan also makes guitars under the Reiver name and his most popular model has been the Kompakt which is a headless guitar with a body vaguely reminiscent of the Strandberg Boden. Turns out that he had been thinking of it and so with the proviso that he would need to work out if that shape would give room for a control cavity big enough to take the preamp and still have a decent control layout, this is what we will move forward with. Here then is the spec. Krell Kompakt 6 string 32" scale headless Body Black Limba with ART Maple Burl top. Neck bolt on 5 piece maple/ wenge laminate with carbon rods Fingerboard at that time not chosen. Pickups MC6 multicoil Preamp ACG DFM I picked a nice piece of Black Limba for the body and after some deliberation, threw cation to the wind with the choice of top - it wont be to everyone's taste but I Think it will look stunning! Unfortunately, no pictures were taken that day so we need to wait till Alan offered me suggested fingerboards to see what we are talking about.

It's all very subjective too. Interesting you mentioning Warwicks- I like the look and sound of many Warwicks but have never enjoyed playing any I have ever tried. I know they're good but just don't seem to be for me. Fortunately, I'm only about an hour away from ACG HQ so I'll probably take a run down and spend some time with a couple of examples.

I've got a couple of pics of the rough body carve - I'll start a build thread for it so y'all can share the drama!

Can I ask what the odd exceptions might have been? This is the perennial problem with having instruments made - you can't try it before you buy it!

Thanks for the replies all - it seems you all like the flat board so I think I'll go with it - variety being the spice of life and all that! eude - it's going to be an Uber spec. 32" scale headless, with the multicoil pickups and the new(ish) DFM preamp. Body shape is the first of a new model, based on Alan's Reiver Guitars Kompakt model. Oh, and a completely mental ART top! ikay - Alan was saying that the neck carve he is doing now is less pronounced than he has done in the past so that will be interesting to me. Again, I don't have any with an asymmetric carve - brave new world!

Guilty as charged... thanks!

Big birthday year for me and being celebrated in the time honoured fashion of having a new bass made. So I have a build in progress with Alan Cringean at ACG. It's a six string fretless and I've gone with what is becoming a standard feature of ACG's - a completely flat fingerboard. Anyone using a bass setup like that and if so, what are your perceptions? Like/ dislike? All of my basses so far are radiused and I don't think it's too late to change my mind so any informed opinions welcome.

A “big strat” Fender bass with 24 (25 in the picture!) frets. I like that.

I remember that bass so didn’t even have to look at the video. It’s a Schecter from back in the day when they were a small US based custom shop.

Joni surely understands the importance of the bass. Bennet’s lines on Hissing of Summer Lawns are fantastic, for example In France They Kiss on Main Street and also Harry’s House/ Centerpiece. Inspirational and for me anyway, influential playing. Thanks for the music, Max.

You’ll never know till you try- just don’t trust the average dealer setup.

Yes, very pure, very little distortion and live used those Acoustic cabs with the big white HF horns in. It’s a shame that they never got their act together to reform. Three of them gone now, I think and Betty Thatcher, the poet/ lyricist. Saw Annie with “Renaissance” last year. Her voice still very impressive but the band, all very fine players, didn’t seem to have the grandeur of the classic lineup.

I’m all Ricked out now...

And here’s Jon Camp with Renaissance and the sublime voice of Annie Hallam.

And here is the guy with what I personally consider to be the best proggy ‘70s Rick sound- down tuned as well! The excellent Neil Brewer in Druid. If you can last to where the singing starts, you’ll see what I mean.

Since I’m propped up in bed with a bad case of sciatica I’ll bite on this. My first decent bass bought bought new in 1975 was a 4001. As I was into Yes/ Genesis/ Renaissance etc. It was the obvious choice. Also everybody else I liked could be seen playing them- McCartney, Lynott, Graham Gouldman, Dave Paton etc.etc.etc. At the time also, everyone had fallen out of love with Fender. The ‘70s baseball bat production were scorned so unless you could pick up a “pre CBS”, nobody wanted them. That bass had a great neck and sound and was soon joined by a ‘72 4001 and briefly a 4080 double neck! At that point, I was starting to play fingerstyle instead of plectrum and many different genres of music and I felt the Ricks didn’t work as well so they all went over the next few years. The thing is though, if you’ve had that connection with Ricks, I don’t think you ever lose it. So many years later when my mum died, she left me a modest inheritance and I figured a nice way to honour her memory would be to use some of it to get an old 4001 again- after all, she had signed as guarantor for the hire-purchase on the original one! I knew I would be unlikely to play it out much but hey, I like them. So for the last 20 years, I’ve had a ‘72 checker bound 4001. It has been on one! gig in all that time but I love it all the same. It’s also a thing of great beauty!

I’m impressed but the dog is obviously harder to please lol!

Not familiar with Vulfpeck but now away to find out some more- love it! Thanks for posting.

Never seen it but it could surely be done. Since you'd be spending a bit of money, to do it properly so the bass played well and consistently, the action would need to be the same over the transitions from fretted to fretless. so the fingerboard would have to be higher by almost the height of the chosen fretwire at the fretless section and lower at the two fretted areas. would pose an interesting luthiery challenge I suppose... I'd love to see and try it if you ever go ahead but on a practical note, anytime I've modded an instrument to fulfil some odd esoteric notion I had, it has always proved to be not as useful in the real world as I had imagined and ends up being sold off at a large financial loss. YMMV!

Well I just saw Jim’s show last night at the Edinburgh fringe and had no prior knowledge of his misfortune. We had seen that he was on and remembered him from about 25 years ago. The show was witty, enlightening, shocking and poignant and yes, I did laugh out loud quite a lot as he said to me on the way out. He can’t play at the moment- still working on making a fist with his left hand but ‘Bessie’ the bass does make an appearance on screen. His recovery, whilst nowhere near complete, is nothing short of remarkable so if your going to Edinburgh for the festival, turn up and give the man some well deserved support.

The Glasgow scene was a small world for sure - as you say, nodding terms for lots of musos in the gigs where every one went to see everyone else or in McCormacks Music on a Saturday to make your HP payments!! I'm Eddie McGlone - in that band were guitar - Bill Alexander, a man who follows no conventions, Iain Aitken - Keys, sax, flute, Sandy Walker, our barefoot singer and Mick (memory fails me for his surname) on drums. Paul (now likes to be known as PJ) Moore was keys for the previous version of that band and so I did also go to see them performing their "cabaret" sets in Nico's as White hats and also a terrific showcase gig they did in the Dial Inn as Macintyre. If you don't know me from all that, I worked for a few years at the start of the 80s in Jimmy Grant's music shop at the top of Byres Road.

That band was Chaconne - pretentious? Moi? Lol. We had a keys player who looked a bit like Catweazle and played the flute and sax as well. a singer who sang in his bare feet and me flailing around on assorted Rickenbackers and fenders whilst trying to balance on my fx pedalboard and bass pedals! We were Yes/ Genesis wannabees. Used to gig in the usual pub circuit of the era - the Amphora, Burns Howff, the Maggie, Dial Inn etc.

Consider yourself struck! Yes - Celebrate rings a bell too. I was playing kind of prog- ish rock at the time so as you can imagine, this was all a bit of a revelation to me! Happy days indeed!