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Custom made 5 string fretted bass guitar for Franc O'Shea
£1200
Brighton area UK

Franc O'Shea

By Franc O'Shea,
in Basses For Sale

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Franc O'Shea

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A unique custom made 5 string neck-through fretted bass guitar. This was a one-off bass made by the Brighton luthier Jeff Chapman for the well-known virtuoso bassist and composer Franc O'Shea who has worked with many artists including Steve Howe (Yes), Lisa Moorish, Bah Samba and Beverly Martyn (John Martyn), has released two solo albums, wrote the advanced theory column for Bass Guitar Magazine for nearly a decade and is the Principal Lecturer for Bass at the BIMM Institute in Brighton. 

Jeff Chapman was an expert guitar luthier who made two basses and customised another bass for O’Shea, and also made a bass for Bass Guitar Magazine contributor and Jazzwise magazine Editor, Mike Flynn. 

It features a flamed maple body and ebony 24 fret fingerboard with a laminated burl face on the headstock, an EMG 35J single coil bridge pickup with active equalization, and wooden heads on the machine head mechanism to aid instrument balance. The active equalisation provides not only bass and treble control, but also sweep-able mid-range eq. There is also a pick up selector knob and a volume control knob. 

The neck pickup is a wooden dummy as O'Shea only uses the bridge pickup. However, there is a cavity in the body should the new owner wish to add a neck pickup. Both the dummy and the bridge pickup have scallops to allow the maximum pickup height without the strings rattling on the pickup covers. The EMG bridge pickup has a piece of wood laminated to it to allow for the scallops. The camber radius of the fingerboard is slight and is matched by the tops of the pickups to aid right-hand and left-hand coordination should the player play over the pickups. The height and angle of the pickups are fully adjustable as they sit on metal plates that can be adjusted from the rear of the body via four screws for each pickup. 

It comes with strap locks and the strap fixing for the bridge end of the body is located at the rear of the bass to allow for maximum playability when standing but could be relocated to the edge of the body if required. 

It has a solid 22 carat gold plate embedded in the headstock with makers name, ‘Chapman’, engraved on it. 

The bridge is a fully adjustable Wilkinson bridge. The string spacing, which can be adjusted with this bridge, is currently set at 60mm from the B string to the G string at the bridge end, but could be adjusted to around 70mm maximum should the player require wider string spacing. 

It is currently strung with Bass Centre Steel Elites which are extra light (30, 50, 70, 90, 110) but heavier gauge strings could be used with this bass. 

It has two carbon fibre rods set next to the truss rod on the inside of the neck to strengthen the neck. The nut is made of bone. 

Overall the bass is in very good condition and has had no other owners since it was built for O'Shea in 2001. 

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