Another one for Stanley Clarke fans

[Clarky]

One of a kind Flying V bass made by Ken Smith for Stanley Clarke. A cool £10k (give or take) at the Bass Gallery. Like the Spellbinder, this unfortunately does nothing for me aesthetically

 

 

 

https://thebassgallery.com/products/ken-smith-bespoke-b-bass-1981-ex-stanley-clarke

Edited November 1, 2022 by Clarky

[Sandypjb]

That is an abomination which I can't now unsee. 

Edited November 2, 2022 by Sandypjb
Spelling

[Baloney Balderdash]

Absolutely horrendous bad taste.

[BigRedX]

Proof that just because you have a great deal of talent for working with wood don't necessarily mean that your design skills are up to scratch as well.

 

IME the best luthiers are nearly always ones who initially trained in some other creative arts.

[bloke_zero]

Wow! I don't know how I'd feel on stage with that in my hands. Loving the electronics - multimode envelope filter!

[Mokl]

It's aesthetically horrific, IMHO.

[visog]

With the man himself... and dog (animal not the bass). It's not my favourite in his collection TBH...

[Rich]

If that was the last bass on earth, I would play harmonica instead. Properly hideous.

[Reggaebass]

Call me boring but that would not step foot inside my front door  

[songofthewind]

FUGLY.

[ped]

3 hours ago, BigRedX said:

Proof that just because you have a great deal of talent for working with wood don't necessarily mean that your design skills are up to scratch as well.

 

IME the best luthiers are nearly always ones who initially trained in some other creative arts.

 

It's not Ken's fault

[Grahambythesea]

I’m not surprised Stanley’s got rid of it, what was he thinking about ordering it and what was Ken Smith thinking about accepting the order and building it 😖

[Guest]

Thanks! Now I have to clean up this pool of sick to add to my woes 🤢

[OliverBlackman]

4 hours ago, BigRedX said:

Proof that just because you have a great deal of talent for working with wood don't necessarily mean that your design skills are up to scratch as well.

 

IME the best luthiers are nearly always ones who initially trained in some other creative arts.

I’m going to assume you haven’t seen his regular designs? Plus he was a bass player first, bass maker second. 
 

it’d be interesting to see how easy it is to play and how it sounds. It’s definitely of an era. 

[Rich]

It's of something, that's for sure.

[Beedster]

3 hours ago, visog said:

With the man himself... and dog (animal not the bass). It's not my favourite in his collection TBH...

 

So Stanley owns a Marcus sig, interesting 🤔

[Cato]

It's growing on me.

[Jean-Luc Pickguard]

Just the thing for churning out Mustang Sally at the Dog & Duck

[Baloney Balderdash]

1 hour ago, Cato said:

It's growing on me.

Then I'd suggest calling a Doctor and getting it removed ASAP!

[BigRedX]

15 hours ago, ped said:

It's not Ken's fault

 

In what way is it not his fault? He could have always tried to gently persuade Mr Clarke to pick one of his standard design basses instead, and if that didn't work just say: "no".

 

I can never quite understand the thinking behind getting a luthier to build you something that is wildly different from their normal style (c.f. the Alien Ant Farm Fender bass). Surely you pick your luthier because you like the style of instruments they are already making? And this one appears to have Alembic electronics shoehorned into the design rather than the standard pre-amp you'd get if you ordered a Ken Smith bass. Mr Clarke was already a well-known Alembic user so why not get them to make this bass? It's far more in keeping with their design ethos.

[ped]

5 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

 

In what way is it not his fault? He could have always tried to gently persuade Mr Clarke to pick one of his standard design basses instead, and if that didn't work just say: "no".

 

I can never quite understand the thinking behind getting a luthier to build you something that is wildly different from their normal style (c.f. the Alien Ant Farm Fender bass). Surely you pick your luthier because you like the style of instruments they are already making? And this one appears to have Alembic electronics shoehorned into the design rather than the standard pre-amp you'd get if you ordered a Ken Smith bass. Mr Clarke was already a well-known Alembic user so why not get them to make this bass? It's far more in keeping with their design ethos.

I don’t think Ken’s style was so well

established back then and he more than likely did it to make a name for himself. Having heard Ken talk about how the innovators like him and Carl Thompson evolved it seems like it was largely by getting basses into the hands of equally innovative bass players who were themselves quite a small and tightly knit community. A ‘no’ from Ken could easily have been a fatal mistake, and he might have thought it would strengthen his brand/relationship with Stanley and others. I think lots of those early innovators have designs they’d be fairly ashamed of nowadays!

[ped]

The preamp is designed by HAZ labs for Smith. Again as Alembic were also innovating at this time it’s quite hard to separate who was copying whom but here’s the manual for that pre. I don’t think Alembic ever made a preamp with built in envelope filter (obviously they had and still have filter based preamps)
 

 

[Lfalex v1.1]

19 hours ago, Beedster said:

 

So Stanley owns a Marcus sig, interesting 🤔

I reckon Marcus probably owns a Stanley sig, for what it's worth...

[Sonic_Groove]

21 hours ago, Beedster said:

So Stanley owns a Marcus sig, interesting 🤔

He apparently used it too on His Album The Message (Track: Last Train To Sanity) according to the 2015 article from Bass Player (From which that pic came)

Edit to say: I think that Album is actually called Up in the UK

Edited November 3, 2022 by Sonic_Groove
Album Uk name

[Cosmo Valdemar]

If may take a moment to quote Edward Woodward in The Wicker Man;

 

"Oh God! Oh Jesus Christ!"