Wizzard/Richard Price's modded Jazz Bass

[Grafen]

I was watching an old Wizzard video when this weirdly modified Jazz Bass turned up on the screen. Looks to me like two slanted Musicmaster pickups in some sort of extreme P-bass configuration coupled to four pots.

I can't find any more info on the net, like who made it or maybe more interesting: why! Anyone out there in the know?

[Grafen]

And the video in question:

 

[grayn]

Love that video.

Great pantomime and probably my fave Xmas song, with Greg Lake's.

Oh yeah, ridiculous pickup positioning but fun.

[Beer of the Bass]

This thread is an annual Basschat tradition, every December!

[Maude]

That third pickup's doing nothing! 

[EMG456]

On 06/12/2019 at 22:34, Meddle said:

 Why so many weird mods?!

You see a lot of questionably modded guitars and basses in the old Beat Club videos. Stripped finishes, hacked up pickguards, horns lopped off or filed shorter, crude refinishes... you name it! I'm surprised any vintage guitars have been left unmodded. 

The unmodded ones were either the unloved ones or owned by players who had no interest in experimenting with different sounds etc. If you thought you were going to improve it in some way, you changed it. Everything was hacked!

Or was that just me...?

[BigRedX]

On 06/12/2019 at 22:34, Meddle said:

You see a lot of questionably modded guitars and basses in the old Beat Club videos. Stripped finishes, hacked up pickguards, horns lopped off or filed shorter, crude refinishes... you name it! I'm surprised any vintage guitars have been left unmodded. 

Because back then there was nothing especially important about any of these instruments. 

If you had something that played well but you didn't like the way it sounded or looked then it got modified until it did sound and look the way you wanted it to. 

[GuyR]

1 hour ago, EMG456 said:

The unmodded ones were either the unloved ones or owned by players who had no interest in experimenting with different sounds etc. If you thought you were going to improve it in some way, you changed it. Everything was hacked!

Or was that just me...?

It's surprising that only the 100% unmodified original-finish ones seem to come up for sale.

[EMG456]

26 minutes ago, GuyR said:

It's surprising that only the 100% unmodified original-finish ones seem to come up for sale.

Mmmm… are you suggesting something fishy going on? 🤨

[obbm]

It could, of course, be that these highly modified instruments were just stage props that never worked.  They were created  for use when the groups mimed which is evident by the lack of microphones and guitar leads.

[ped]

1 minute ago, obbm said:

It could, of course, be that these highly modified instruments were just stage props that never worked.  They were created  for use when the groups mimed which is evident by the lack of microphones and guitar leads.

Yes maybe like a sort of 'in joke' between musicians who notice these things - for example if I was asked to mime on TOTP I'd have a custom Vigier made with no strings or pickups. 

[Stub Mandrel]

A gloriously ordinary precision in this vid. An excellent bassline to make up for the lack of a string quartet too.

 

[NikNik]

There was a lot of whacky stuff going on in the '70s with regard to bass experimentation. There was an Edinburgh band back the called Ignatz, and I remember International Musician published an article on a modd that was done to the bassist's Jazz Bass. Four Jazz pickup were installed parallel to the strings and fed into some electronic hardware that provided a true pan of the strings across a stereo field. Sadly, back then, there were no audio samples.

Spoiler

 

 

[Stub Mandrel]

2 hours ago, NikNik said:

There was a lot of whacky stuff going on in the '70s with regard to bass experimentation. There was an Edinburgh band back the called Ignatz, and I remember International Musician published an article on a modd that was done to the bassist's Jazz Bass. Four Jazz pickup were installed parallel to the strings and fed into some electronic hardware that provided a true pan of the strings across a stereo field. Sadly, back then, there were no audio samples

 

In the seventies I had the idea of a pickup split into six single coils to allow each string to generate a separate signal for extreme distortion without intermodulation.