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Weird & Wonderful Basses


BigRedX
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The Born To Rock sound clips were rather ordinary, or at least they are via my laptop speakers. Will have to give them a blast through the full studio system with the MotU and Tascam DAs later in the week. Doesn't help that the playing is somewhat pedestrian.

I also managed to find a video of Tetsu 'playing' his F4b which you can download from [url="http://tetsu.wolfwitch.com/downloads/pvs/TETSU69%20-%20shinkirou%20(PV).mpeg"]this link[/url]. The music and video are fairly standard J-Rock pretty boy PV stuff but it shows off the bass rather nicely...

I guess you could have whatever pickups you wanted fitted if you had a bass custom made, provided that there's room on the 'body' section between the 24th fret and the bridge unit. Electonics-wise you'd be limited to whatever will fit in the control cavity 'pod', although according to the maker it would be possible to fit a second 'pod' in the upper bout as well.

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The next pair of basses come from [url="http://www.lakidwell.com"]LA Kidwell[/url]

This one's the Manta


and this one's the Phantom


Produced by Lyndon Kidwell these two designs feature sculpted 3D hollow body shapes, with a through-neck design that fits inside the hollow body. This design allows easy acces right up to the 24th fret without the construction looking like a traditional through-neck design. The sculpted body shape allows a tapering profile that's comfortably thin at the edges but 2" thick in the middle.

One of these will set you back about $2500-$3200 depending on the woods and finishing options.

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Todays basses come from the [url="http://www.littleguitarworks.com/"]Little Guitar Works[/url]

This is the Torzal:




No there's nothing wrong with the neck on these basses. It's designed to be twisted like that!

This design, initially conceived by Jerome Little has the bridge at a 15° angle to plane of the body and the nut rotated 20° in the opposite direction giving a total twist of 35°. This allows for a more 'neutral' wrist position for both the freting picking hands. The twist concept was developed in conjunction with Xavier Padilla, bass player with the Gipsy Kings who would have been unable to carry on playing due to DeQuervain’s syndrome in his arm until he got his twisted bass. Have a look at his even more extreme custom model on the Little Guitar Works web site.

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[quote name='BigRedX' post='65069' date='Sep 24 2007, 11:07 PM']The next pair of basses come from [url="http://www.lakidwell.com"]LA Kidwell[/url]

This one's the Manta
[/quote]

Oof! The wood is gorgeous, not so keen on the body shape though. Speaking of body shapes, what about this bass from Hellrazor?



RAWK!! Possibly the greatest iconic contribution to bass photography since Larry Hartke's [url="http://www.flyingmuellerbrothers.com/contact_images/hartkemess_1.gif"]sunglasses[/url]? :)

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[quote name='Crazykiwi' post='65633' date='Sep 25 2007, 11:31 PM']Oof! The wood is gorgeous, not so keen on the body shape though. Speaking of body shapes, what about this bass from Hellrazor?



Quite possibly the greatest contribution to bass photography since Larry Hartke's sunglasses and hairstyle.[/quote]

My arachnophobia is cured! :)

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[quote name='OldGit' post='65709' date='Sep 26 2007, 09:33 AM']... snip ...
:)[/quote]

Ah, fair point.

To take the idea further, I have to wonder if anybody has ever uses stone to make a cap (obviously not a whole body) for a bass?

Edit:
This Roscoe might be yes! Although I couldn't find any more info on it.

Edited by Alpha-Dave
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[quote name='Alpha-Dave' post='65722' date='Sep 26 2007, 10:03 AM']Ah, fair point.

To take the idea further, I have to wonder if anybody has ever uses stone to make a cap (obviously not a whole body) for a bass?

Edit:
This Roscoe might be yes! Although I couldn't find any more info on it.

[/quote]

Stone cap? What for playing "Rock"?

" Flintsones, meet the Flintstones ..... "
:)

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[quote name='Crazykiwi' post='65729' date='Sep 26 2007, 10:14 AM']There was a Polish company making 'hollow' bodied basses and guitars (ie two facings bolted together and no core) at the last LGS. I'll upload a photo this evening.[/quote]

Yep - also there is a company who use granite necks on their basses...

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Currently I have just over 100 luthier/manufacturer sites bookmarked. However some of these are guitar only, and some for EUBs (for when I get around to looking seriously for one again) and of course some simply aren't weird enough for this thread. A lot of the bookmarked sites were for when I was looking for my ultimate fretless bass, so there's a fair amount of nice looking but reasonably ordinary 'boutique' bass guitars.

However to answer your question I have around 20 or so still worthy of this thread.

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Alpha-Dave, any more info on that Roscoe? Is that real marble or just a finish? Ritter do marble finish basses but it's just (just?) a paint job and normal wood underneath. Someone posted a pic of a supposed marble bass on TalkBass a few weeks ago. I'll see if I can find some more info...

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[quote name='BigRedX' post='65781' date='Sep 26 2007, 11:32 AM']Alpha-Dave, any more info on that Roscoe? Is that real marble or just a finish? Ritter do marble finish basses but it's just (just?) a paint job and normal wood underneath. Someone posted a pic of a supposed marble bass on TalkBass a few weeks ago. I'll see if I can find some more info...[/quote]

No sorry, I just googled 'Stone bass' and didn't come up with anything useful, so tried 'Marble bass' and that popped up. It looks like it's just someone's pics from the Namm show so it has no other info attached. There's nothing on the Roscoe site that I found after a quick look, and Google didn't help with the terms 'Roscoe marble bass'. I figured that it may be a relatively new thing (Summer Namm perhaps) that hasn't had a full update yet.

I'd email Roscoe if you're really interested.

The idea is quite appealing to me, but I wonder if it might be a little cold to hold/play, and I think it would chip quite easily if you knocked it as it has so many edges: I reckon that a 1 cm across, 1mm deep knock on an ash/alder body would equate to a 2cm square chip off of the marble as it would fracture rather than dent.

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