Kopo Lina IV Fretless - Beautiful French Luthierie

[xilddx]

This is made by a French Luthierie called Kopo, the model is Lina. Fred Pons is the luthier behind Kopo [url="http://kopo.fr/"]http://kopo.fr/[/url]

The craftsmanship is superb, the ebony fingerboard is wonderful. She has a very low action and plays really smoothly. This is a very versatile bass, with a wide variety of tones and sweet spots. The tone is warm, rich with harmonic overtones and has a lovely transparency to it. The sound of natural harmonics on this bass is to die for

The 34in scale through-neck is shallow, fast and made of three pieces of maple, has a subtly figured ebony board with offset face dots, and side dots for each "fret".

Body is flame maple, I would guess it's AAA, it shimmers and catches the light very nicely. The bass balances beautifully on the strap but it's a bit of a tombstoner on your knee when sitting.

Delano pickups from Germany are some of the best in the world. This has two: Delano MM style HB at the bridge, Delano SB4 twin coil soapbar in the neck position. They promise world class fretless tone, and they deliver. Passive electronics with volume pull pots with series/parallel for each pickup and a single tone control. Martin Petersen from Sei Bass routed and installed the neck pup as previously there was only a the MMHB in the bridge. This bass now goes DEEP. He decided the electronics format above was the way to go and I agree, it's got so many tonal variances now. I've included one pic of it before I had it modded.

I put on a set of La Bella Deep Talkin' black nylon tapewounds. They cost me nearly fifty meatballs! I just decided to try them on the Kopo. Took the DR Black Beauties off and polished the old girl up a bit, waxed the 'board which has really brought the ebony grain out and it's lovely and shiny. I took the shine off the neck with some wire wool and waxed that too. The La Bellas ARE FANTASTIC! They've transformed this bass for me. God knows what they put in those strings but the output has increased quite a bit and it's as loud as my Warwick Corvette $$ with the eq flat. It feels so much nicer too, smoooooooove, sexy, silky, it's like a new bass!

I'm really enjoying playing her with these new strings, I may use her exclusively in one of my bands. I use massive distortion and delay on some of the tunes and this bass can sound like a jet taking off!

SOUNDCLIP ADDED BELOW. Three sections: Soloed Bridge / Soloed Neck / Both on Full

Edited August 3, 2009 by silddx

[bythesea]

Beautiful - but you knew what I thought already

Which band are you thinking of - Kit? Let us know when some songs are added to myspace that utilise it.

Oh - and you seem to have aged... (and changed gender and race but we won't go there).... Was it the decision-making?

Edited July 24, 2009 by bythesea

[xilddx]

Hah hah! Yes the decision making and the process of trying to sell the old thing was a bit frustrating I'm just so glad I decided to put those tapes on, they feel and sound gorgeous! I had to give her another chance after that.

Yep Kit's band. She like a bit of prog, metal and hip hop, and on a couple of numbers she wanted distorted bass with delay. So I recorded a song like that and she really liked the sounds, so we're doing some other stuff using it. Sort of sounds like a ship's fog horn. The jet thing is hitting the fourth or fifth "fret" harmonics and finger sliding them up, from behind the nut, sounds cool!

We'll be doing studio sessions at some point in the near future, not sure when though. Interesting line up, piano, cello, violin, bass and kit. She's a fabulous musician, bit of a task master but really cool with it. I like that I'll certainly let you know when we've recorded. Thanks for asking.

Cheers mate

[xilddx]

Sound Clip added in the OP.