Ken Smith BSR5GN fretless (2005)

[Kiwi]

[i][b]Features:[/b][/i]
This 34” scale instrument was made in 2003 at the Smith manufacturing facility in Perkasie, Pennsylvania. I bought it from Bass Northwest in 2005, secondhand in mint condition. The bass has 24 “frets” and 5 strings with laminated facings of unfigured walnut front and back. The fingerboard is a thick pieve of ebony and is unmarked with fret lines making it very necessary to have clean sounding monitoring on stage.

The bass has a preamp and the controls include volume, which can be pulled for passive bypass, pickup pan, bass, mid and treble, with series/parallel switches and the pickups are Smiths own passive humbuckers. The body features a flamed maple core and the neck is a 5 piece graphite reinforced laminate of 3 maple and 2 bubinga pieces.

The bass is finished in a soft oil finish and the body style is a modified precision inspired shape with bigger cutaways. The bridge is made from brass and is a fairly standard quick release type with two dimensions of movement. The tuners are Smith monogrammed but internally geared and almost identical to Schaller M4 in design.

The neck dimensions are probably my favourite part, typically fairly chunky in depth with a pronounced C profile. This feels great to me because my hands tend to cramp up on thin profile necks. The bass came with a hardshell, leather trimmed case and case candy including dust cloth, Smith strap, polish, brochures and guarantee card.

[b][i]Sound:[/i][/b]
I guess the sound of this bass could be best described as warm and sweet. The lows are very full and open, the mids scooped and the highs sweet without sounding brittle or muffled. It’s pretty much the ultimate bass for any styles of music that require a full, rich tone such as RnB, hip hop, latin, house etc. At the moment I use the bass with Gallien Krueger and Trace valve amps through Gallien Krueger and EBS neo 2x12 cabs. Generally the basses have a prominent upper mid-scoop. This character is emphasised by many hybrid heads already coloured with a mid-scoop to sound best with jazz type basses making the mids so scooped that its difficult to tell what pitch is being played at performance volumes.

Therefore I ended up going for a solid state and other wise fairly aggressive sounding GK amp to go with the Smith basses because the amps preserve most of the mids meaning that any tonal changes I make are more effective. After countless gigs I’ve been able to hear myself superbly in a variety of situations ranging from acoustically dead marquees to echo chamber type narrow halls with nothing but hard, reflective surfaces. The relatively neutral sound of the amps means that I can use them with other basses as well.

In terms of the variety of sounds, the bass is fairly versatile but maybe not for all kinds of music. For example, the neck pickup is very warm with a little bit of a upper-mid/low treble bite which is OK for ballads while the bridge pickup does more than a passable status bass impersonation. For fretless basses, the important thing is sustain and, for a wood necked bass it has good sustain but my all-maple Pedulla has considerably more than the Smith. The series/parallel switches add a subtle fullness difference to the sound of the pickups in series mode but nothing that would influence how I would approach finding the right sound for a song.

I’ve tried the bass in both live and recorded situations and its performed superbly. It doesn’t do jazz or precision interpretations very well at all but this doesn’t mean it can’t find a place in the mix. Comparing this bass to a jazz bass would be like comparing a Gibson Les Paul to a Stratocaster. What I like most about this bass is the huge warmth, growly mids and sweet highs, the bass can be plugged in with no eq and still sit in the mix superbly.

In situations where the bass has been subject to extreme gain, I have noticed some microphonic characteristics with the pickups. I wouldn’t recommend this bass to be used in situations with hi gain distortion.

[i][b]Action Fit and Finish:[/b][/i]
The action of this instrument is pretty good, but Ken Smith deliberately builds some flexibility into the necks of his basses as he feels it adds to the quality of the sound. This means that I’ve not been able to achieve Status/Alembic levels of low action, but the bass is still very playable. The finish of components is superb and flawless, the fit is also excellent and faultless.

[i][b]Reliability/Durability:[/b][/i]
The bass has proven very reliable in live situations, the hardware is robust and the neck stable. The finish has proven to be very thin and probably doesn’t do a very good job of protecting the bass as such. The bass takes even fingernail marks easily and a sharp belt buckle could probably cause irreparable damage to the back of the bass over one gig.

I have found that the Dunlop strap-loks haven’t been 100% reliable. In situations where diagonal strain is placed on the strap-loks, they do tend to pop off. In normal playing situations I haven’t encountered any problems and the bass has never fallen off the strap while gigging on stage.

[i][b]Customer Support:[/b][/i]
I have dealt with Ken Smith and have found him to be curmudgeonly at times. He has come across as defensive when I’ve raised my varied experiences of his basses with him. Other Smith owners appear to share my experiences. I get the impression that he’s not that interested in offering support unless it leads directly to a sale of some kind. This stands in stark contrast to the friendly service offered by some companies such as Alembic.

[b][i]Overall rating:[/i][/b]
I own a range of other bass gear including a Smith BSR5GN, Musicman, Alembic, Celinder and Pedulla plus more stuff I’ve sold on, including a Smith BSR6GN. I’ve been very satisfied with the bass since owning it, its managed to hit the right spot every time I’ve used it. Generally this is my No 1 fretless when needed and its usually taken along with its fretted sister. Originally I bought this bass to match the Smith BSR5GN. Because this bass has a maple core, the mids sound a little firmer and the bass a little tighter than on the fretted Smith 5 when played in the studio. However live on stage, the differences are negligible. There’s nothing out there on the market which sounds like a Smith. Having said that the Peavey Cirrus comes close and does have some Smith characteristics although it lacks the sweet treble and deep bass.







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