It all started when I began playing bass, as soon as my fingers started wiggling the strings I became fixated on getting tone and playability out of off-the-rack instruments. Some of these basses cost good money, however, they played and sounded terrible. To my surprise one or two very low cost basses played and sounded great. To solve this mystery I would catalog the things I liked about each instrument noting the woods, neck shapes and hardware that might have contributed to the tone and playability.  For better or worse I started to tinker with these basses, over time replacing pickups, bridges, and the electronics. This has led to the refining of my component choices and getting closer to the sound I had in my head. Oh that sound in my head!

About 15 years ago when the recording industry was still an industry, I had the opportunity to go to a world class studio in Connecticut to lay down some tracks on a friends recording. Knowing nothing about the process, I was led to the control room, had my bass plugged into a direct box and from there to the mixing board.  For monitoring they put my basses output into the giant monitors mounted up, over and away from the mixing console as opposed to using headphones.  I hit my first note and that was the sound I had been searching for. I loved the full range hi-fi sound, it was a sound filled with highs and lows, clarity and dynamics. Since that moment I’ve tried to recreate that sound. Granted I knew that taking the electronics, amps and speakers that are found in those studios to gigs would break my back as well as my bank. So the search was on to find a way to approximate that experience into a usable instrument that could sound that way live and in the studio.

My instruments are designed for the way I play. I’ve been told by other bass players that it’s the lightest touch they’ve ever witnessed. I’ve learned that to play a fast line you have to pluck the string close to the bridge to catch the string quickly while it vibrates. This light touch technique also allows me to set the strings on the neck so they are very close to the fret board just to the point of severe fret buzz. This setup enables me to just about remove all of the neck relief, setting the relation of string to fret board fairly evenly throughout the scale length of the instrument. Another contributing factor to this low action on the neck is the use of a 35-inch scale length this requires that you must add more tension to your strings to bring them up to pitch.

Part of getting that sound is the active pick-ups and electronics; to be precise EMG pickups and the internal tone shaping circuitry that they provide. I’ve tried about every pickup on the market and I always go back to EMG’s.

I have wooden necks on some basses and graphite necks on others. The graphite necks are supplied to me from Mosses Graphite. Graphite is not for everyone and they are hands down the biggest departure from the tone of any wooden neck bass. What I like about them is the broadness of tone they offer. A little more in the higher frequencies and a tighter focused low end that will make the low B in extended range necks as prominent as any other note. I feel it’s always easier to remove a tone trough EQ than to try and find one that is not there on an instrument.    

Knowing that the graphite necks aren’t everyone’s preference, I’ve endeavored to create a line of wooden necks. All these necks are made of laminated woods. The laminated necks allow me make a shallow profile on the back, therefore it’s easier to wrap your hand around it. To help keep the necks stable under the diverse atmospheric conditions like we have in Vermont I put in lengths of graphite reinforcing rods under the finger board adjacent to the truss rod. I make both neck-through as well as bolt on necks.