Hello from Denver, Colorado. I’ve been a lurker on this board for a long while, I post every now and again, figured it was time to introduce myself. I’m a lifelong bass player, took the instrument up as a teenager in 1974, went on the road in 1975 and have been performing in some capacity ever since then up until retiring from performing 2 years ago due to age and arthritis affecting my back, shoulders and fingers. I learned my playing style from the masters (Entwistle, Bruce, Cassidy, Lubahn, etc.) when I was a youth and it carried me through my adult years in dozens of bands and thousands of gigs. I never learned to tap or slap, I play with a pick only when I have to, can’t sing or dance to save my soul, but the first two fingers on my right hand are dancing fools and lefty can still fly up and down the neck even at my advanced age.
Decades of bass playing has taken its toll on my body – I’m almost deaf from 45 years of standing between my stack and countless numbers of heavy-handed drummers. Due to my right-hand technique, I stressed the tendons in my right hand to the point where I couldn’t open my hand any more, requiring hand surgery a couple of years ago. My shoulders and back have deteriorated from years of supporting various heavy instruments to the point where I really can’t play standing up any more and I can only tolerate about 90 minutes playing seated until I gotta stop. But yet I soldier on, still play every day and have zero regrets.
I started playing Alembics in the late 90’s. I’ve had about 9 of them pass through my hands over the intervening years – a couple of Essences (both fretless), a Europa, two exploiters (one of them an 8-string), two series I’s (one of them fretless), a Series II and an Elan. I also had amplification to support these instruments consisting of various conglomerations of FX-1, F2-B, Ampeg, Bag End and Mesa-boogie components mixed and matched together. I gotta say, nothing can touch the sound of a Series II going through a full stereo tube rig into big speaker cabinets turned up loud enough to make your pant legs wave in the breeze.
Due to life circumstances, divorces and other misfortunes, my past collections have been scattered to the 4 corners of the earth, occasionally I’ll see one of my old instruments turn up on this board. However, hope springs eternal and my current stable consists of a ’90 5-string Elan and a ’95 5-string fretless Essence. When people ask why two basses when I can only play one at a time, I say I go both ways – my playing time is evenly split between the two. The Essence has what I think is a walnut top, unlined ebony fingerboard, brass hardware and it just looks outstanding. I’ve owned various fretless basses and I always string them with Thomastic flatwounds. This one growls like no other fretless I’ve ever owned. I put a FretFX LED strip on it so I can play it in the dark. Not sure if I like it or not yet.
The Elan is a tone monster. It comes as close to sounding like a Series II as any bass I’ve heard. It’s the only Alembic that I’ve owned that didn’t have a mahogany core. I think it’s a maple core with a cocobolo top. Whatever it is, it’s dense and heavy as hell. The woods, fatboy pickups and rotosound strings combine to give it that tear-your-face-off tone that I’ve lusted for ever since I had a full head of brown frizzy hair. I’d like to find something with a smaller body that was more comfortable to play but I really don’t think I’ll find a smaller body bass that roars like this one does. But I continue to search because ya never know.
I’ve teamed these basses up with an Ampeg 1x15 combo and a Phil Jones 2 x 4 practice amp stacked together. There’s no hiding bad notes or crappy intonation with this rig. Since I only play in my living room these days, this generates sufficient volume for me to hear my playing over my tinnitus without bothering the neighbors too much. I figure this setup will carry me to my final days.
Cheers!
