Belated NBD: Custom Hart 5 String Bass

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Hi Interwebz

so new bass day was a couple of days ago, but with work and band stuff piling on at the moment I've not really had much time to post/take photos so here it is:

[URL=http://s1102.photobucket.com/user/Kristian_taylor1/media/2012-02-17115541.jpg.html][IMG]http://i1102.photobucket.com/albums/g448/Kristian_taylor1/2012-02-17115541.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

This was built by my good friend Steven Hart (I have also had a 7 string made by him as well as mods done by him to my other guitars and basses), he's a UK builder based in Manchester (which I am too)

his page can be found here: [url]https://www.facebook.com/pages/Harts-Wood-Crafts/149381271794044?fref=ts[/url]

Before I get into the Specs I will just talk about Pricing, so with the inclusion of the pickups this bass cost me around £1100. Steven works in a great way in that you pay in sections, so when you pay the first deposit of x amount he'll work on the body and neck, then the next deposit he'll do a little more etc and that'll continue till its done and you take the instrument home. I personally prefer this since I can raise the funds over time and get the bass I really want in the end. No project is ever scrapped with him so if you're struggling to pay then tell him and you can work something out with him (he's very easy to talk too and always stays in contact)


Stevens work varies from simple designs to some quite outrageous shapes (if you look on his page you'll see what I mean), I tend to lean more to simple designs, I've done the "metulz" shapes before and for me I kinda wanted to move to a bass that I can use in any genre and not look more like a muppet than i already do haha

so with this bass I wanted to kinda base it on my fender bronco bass (which was my first bass ever) but add more style and a string I guess, so it was simple but still stylish, I also took inspiration from Ikuo's ESP Long Way bass (check that out here http://www.espguitars.co.jp/artist/ikuo/index.html). I love his tone and some of his ideas on this bass were taken from his such as the fretless part and the pickup choices


Spec wise we went with an ash body with a Ziricote body top wood, and then we had a short scale birdseye maple neck, I personally like the ash maple combo as it gives a great mid tone and feels really smooth playing wise too

now the fretless part of the neck is from Ikuo's bass, I thought I could implement it to use for techniques such as slap and double thumb etc, it lets me do both techniques comfortably and it almost gives me a guide for where I should be going haha

the pickups I decided to go with 2 seymour duncan SMB 5D pickups (thanks Ikuo), many of you know that most basses have a singular music man pickup and sound amazing, so I decided to go with two (because why not lol) and this sounds huge, partnered with a Seymour Duncan STC 3m3 it sounds big, great lows and the mids to highs sound smooth which was important for me, I have a lot of basses that sounded great on the low strings but as soon as I got to the mid to high territory it became very brittle sounding and could feel very uneven so these were great choice of pickup for my style

I still need to calibrate the STC so that the slap mode really kicks in but thats just a matter of messing with the pre amp,

all in all its a great bass, more pics and a tech demo will be put up soon I hope, any questions just DM or post, or even ask Steven on his page or his personal page: [url]https://www.facebook.com/steven.hart.1840?fref=ts[/url]

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I like the look of that!!