Playing The Low End...

 I am an active member of the worship band at the church which I attend.

Most of the time I play electric violin and sometimes guitar.

Recently, however, the church has been short on bass players, so the worship leader asked if I might consider playing that instrument once in awhile. 

The only caveat was that I did not own a bass guitar.

Fortunately, the church owns a bass which I was able to bring home for practice, then play during the services.

After doing this a few times, my wife suggested that I just buy my own bass instead of hauling the church one to and fro.

I heartily agreed!

So, I rang my good friend in Denver to find out if he had a good bass for sale. 

This gentleman is an avid music instrument collector, restorer, and luthier. Even though he specializes in restoring and refurbishing vintage tube amplifiers, he also rebuilds and repairs instruments.

Just turns out, he just so happened to have a couple of electric basses that he was willing to let go.

I settled on this one:

This is a Fender MB-5 five string bass.

These were manufactured for a short period of time, but were out-shadowed by the much more popular Fender P-bass.

The unique thing about this instrument is the body.

My luthier friend was not at all happy with the original basswood body, so he actually built a brand new one out of ash.

He explained that he didn't have a wide enough piece of ash to make the entire thing, so he laminated in some thin strips of walnut.

He told me there is a noticeable improvement in the instrument's tonal qualities.

As an added bonus, he threw in a small Ampeg bass practice amp that he picked up really cheap at an auction website.

Thus far, I have played this instrument at half a dozen church services, and enjoy it immensely.

Even though there is a bit of a learning curve for bass playing, I have easily learned the basic two-finger picking  and string muting techniques.

Bass guitar is fun!

Rock on...

An Awesome Fender Strat Guitar...

 16 months ago, I finally retired from my 42 years of working in the electronics industry.

My wife and kids pitched in together to purchase a really cool retirement gift:

This is an American made Koa top Fender Stratocaster.  Fender only made the Koa model for a couple of years, so this one is fairly uncommon.

The instrument features pearl pickguard and back panel, and American Standard Gold hardware.

A sweet axe, indeed!

More Music Stuff - My Go-To 'Pedal Board'

 When it comes to electric music instruments I am somewhat of a gear-head.

When I first acquired an electric violin and guitar, I subsequently began the process of piecing together an effects pedal board to give these instruments different voicings.

Eventually. I had a home-made board full of all kinds of effects pedals, including a Cry Baby Wah, a digital delay, distortion , an equalizer, phaser, chorus, etc., etc.

I found that such a setup had started becoming a bit 'fiddly' in terms of keeping it all hooked up and running. I also found that the board generated a lot of noise and unwanted hum.  At that time I was kind of new to the whole thing and didn't know about the art of proper placement of effects in the pedal chain. Additionally, I probably would have benefitted from the purchase of a noise gate unit and a compressor.

That all changed a few years ago when I acquired this piece of gear:

This is a Line-6 POD-HD500X digital processing board.

This baby is loaded with around 30 different amplifier models, ranging from the classic Vox, Fender, and Marshall boxes to the later 'boutique' amps (Hiwatt, Dr.Z, Soldano,etc.)

Also digitally modeled are a multitude of the most popular vintage and new pedal effects.

No shortage of distortion, delay, reverb, and others.

Also included is a built in expression pedal that can be set up as either a volume swell, or one of the many 'wah' model options.

The box has the capacity to set up hundreds of different presets, where a selected amp model and up to eight effects can be dialed in.

To date, I've only put together four presets. But these are carefully crafted in terms of amp and effects selections. One is for electric guitar, one for electric violin, one for acoustic/electric  mandolin and guitar, and most recently, a setup for electric bass guitar.

The board also includes such niceties as a tuner, a 16-second looper, input impedance selections, XLR outputs, stereo 1/4 inch jack outputs, a CD/PC audio input, and a USB connection for accessing some of those awesome online DAW recording sites. (I use Cakewalk by Bandlab).

Actually, I've only scratched the surface of all the things this unit can do, but it fully serves my purpose for on-stage performance, and at-home practice and experimentation.

Rock on...