There is also 14 years of funk on those strings. "The funk is in the funk" Go and listen to the PG interview with her from about 6 or 7 years back that was very recently re-posted. She is isolated and the tone is phenomenal. Even though she stresses that she likes style (ashtray covers, rings on hand, etc) you can see that her playing is in the pocket all the time. She may not be a virtuoso but she is very talented.
I picked one up the other day the full maple. Its beautiful! Plays like a dream, and you are right, it is used and abused but in the right ways that make it perfect.
My friend buys and sells musical gear. He knew I was looking for a P Bass and brought one of those by last night. It feels pretty nice and sounds good, unplugged anyway, I didn't have an amp to test it. I kinda like that weird head stock design and the thumb rest. The tuners have a bit of surface rust, the stings are ancient and there is a heavy dust patina/ protective coating on it but it's sharp. He said he thinks it may be circa 1985 and have a plywood body but is not sure. He said if it does not sell at the swap meet today he will give me a good price on it if I want it. What do you think it is worth if the pots are ok with a cheap gibson gig bag?
I got my bass before i found Khruangbin, its a fender jazzbass with rounded strings and some mics the owner before changed to it and I fell in love with that strangely woody and round sound in which is pretty much the same sound as Laura has in hers. i like to play it really soft and close to the neck. Beautiful!
This was my beginner bass in 1994, white finish, hockey stick neck. I paid $275 for it IIRC. It's way, way better than that price tag would indicate. I still have it, it ended up rarely used once I bought my first Rickenbacker and it ended up stored in a cool, dry place. I'd play it occasionally. It came out of storage, and, after minimal neck adjustment, plays pretty much like it did in 1994. Everyone I let play it loves it. Currently refitting it with flats and a foam mute for a vintage-ish sound. You're right about the stock bridge though: it's hard to set it for low action and you *have* to file the nut.
This was the first bass my parents bought for me, when I was 12 years old. I sold mine for 65 bucks back in 2000. I always regretted selling it. This week I was able to do a trade and got the same bass, same color, just no thumb rest. I'm about to wire up some Les Claypool EMG Pachyderm Golds in it
Thanks for this review. I just dug mine out of deep storage and am enjoying playing again. It was clear when I bought it that it was way better than the Squier. Everything is perfectly functional and it sounds fantastic.
Bought one of these (with the batwing headstock) in Kotva department store in Prague in 1995. Still going strong today despite the electrics having half rotted away in a cupboard in Malaysia for a couple of years.
Like most instruments, they are going up in value. They probably won’t be worth thousands like Fenders, but I expect they will appreciate in price. You usually see them for around $200 nowadays.
The Squire is nice, a bit lighter. The weight on my SX is 11.3 pounds. Back in the Seventies, the heft of an instrument was thought to be a sign of quality and to give good sustain. Today, many players prefer a lighter instrument. I sit to play most of the time so weight is not a factor. It does make the SX feel more solidly built, though.
I saw laura lee in an interview saying she only uses the front pick up and tone is wide open... and she plays chromes light and dimarzio ultra jazz pickups....so a lot of her tone must come from the amp settings... wich is a bassman tube combo if i recall correctly. Nice tone, no doubt.
Thank you so much, really useful. Especially the foam at an angle bit. I own this very same SX bass, only in a nice green color, and I'm trying to find my way towards this lovely Lee bass tone. The Fender Bassman amp that she's using is awesome as well, but a bit too big for me lol. (Edit: I'm currently using a Fender Rumble LT25). Apparently she also uses different pickups: "Laura Lee’s main axe is her 2009 SX Custom Handmade J-style bass that’s been upgraded with DiMarzio Ultra Jazz pickups and strung with D’Addario Chrome flatwound strings." From the rig rundown @ ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-hr7ScpVj1QY.html
I thought it was funny how you mentioned these would end up in closets and storage. My uncle actually had this sitting in storage for 23 years before it found its way into my hands.
Great review, and fantastic bass. just like you I was looking for some information about my Epiphone bass and came across your video. My one is slightly different to the one you reviewed. I think mine might be a later model. My headstock is more like a bats wing.
Thanks for watching the video. The Accu-Bass had three different headstocks over about a decade. The early ones were like mine with the “hockey stick” headstock. A few years later, they did. skinnier version of the hockey stick. After that came the batwing headstock. The bodies and electronics are basically the same. They are cool instruments and they have a really cool, aggressive sound.
@@GWGuitarStudio thank you for the Info, I’ve always been curious about them but I couldn’t find much information online. I completely agree with you about them. They are really cool Basses.
@@summerdiaz6252 Sorry for the long delay in answering. I hope you found a good solution in the meantime. The short scale strings are too short; the long scale too long. The extra 2 inches from the bridge to the tailpiece has to be included in the string length.
I'm glad I found this video. It's really insightful to see the mechanics of the Khruangbin bass sound. Mind you I'm hearing this from this guy and not Laura herself ..but.. I like this breakdown. It makes me respect all that Laura has accomplished..from learning bass initially to honing her craft and using these techniques and just evolving... her story is such an amazing part of Khruangbin. Thx for the video it makes me appreciate the band even more
Yeah, I’m a huge fan, even more so after seeing them live in December 2021. It’s hard to believe what a full sound they get with just three people. Mark couldn’t do what he does without Laura’s bass. It’s so melodic and solid. She’s not a flashy player, but she has great feel and is very disciplined. The secret to good funk is repetition and it takes a lot of concentration to keep the groove solid. Her live tone is perfect, deep, but not too deep, full, but not too loud, and it just hammers the beat.
@@GWGuitarStudio I saw them 11/5/2021 and it was amazing, absolutely amazing. The vibe created at that show with just 3 people.. it stole my breath. One of the things I was wondering about was Laura's sound. All of the notes were there, strong and proud.
@@carlosgoldstein1057 There was an opening act when I saw them. They were way too loud for the venue-the bass was so loud and EQ’d so deep that it felt like it was going to suck the air out if your lungs. It was so loud that there wasn’t really a sense of pitch to it. I thought at first that it might have been bad acoustics in the room. Then the Khru came out and the sound was perfect. Every note of Laura Lee’s playing was solid, pure, and present. I was so relieved that it wasn’t a bad sonic space. It was a super-enjoyable experience.
Saw them in Dallas on the 17th of December last year , I've never heard a bass tone cut through so perfectly afterwards picked up my bass for a few hours, all three of them make want to practice to get to a level of proficiency with bass guitar and drums
The Frankenstein P-Bass clone my dad brought back from Viet Nam had the foam in the cover of the tail stock as you described and those awful FLAT wound strings. It is a very strange thing indeed; the body's only 60% of the size of a normal P-Bass, with a large single coil pickup (it's occupies the same space as a humbucker) that has alloy steel set screws interfacing the magnets and the strings...but they seem too short for the job. It also has a Tele-inspired long scale neck, exactly like the neck on Sting's old war-horse. I learned how to do basic set-ups for the bass from that thing (as a young teenager). Those AWFUL flat wounds must have been sentimental to him; they were the "same" ones that came with the bass (ala Laura Lee) from wherever he bought it in SE Asia. Pa wouldn't let us kids change them. He "hated" the sound of round-wound bass strings and never bothered to get new ones (despite me maintaining it...and I'm really a drummer). After he passed away, of course, I pulled those horrible strings off and ritualistically melted them down into misshapen buttons of slag. I still do have the bass. The neck has always been rather thin and it can barely handle the lightest gauge strings without me having to unstring it, pull off the neck, and adjust the truss rod (even) more. "Now" it has a nice, punchy tone with the round-wounds--not sounding like a broken, uncurled inside out tuba under an ocean of methane. That is, if the head doesn't snap clean off (into my face...which some people would welcome). The 'moral' of my 'tale of woe'--if someone offers me flat wounds (thinking they're the sh*t), I just tell them, "No.".
To each his own. Flatwounds seem to be an acquired taste for experienced bassists. They are THE SOUND of hundreds of hit songs that pretty much define the role of the bass in popular music. I have heard some session bassists relate stories about going into the studio and laying down a killer track, only to have the engineers struggle to get it to sit right in the mix. Then, upon request, the engineers would ask the player to re-record the part with a P-bass, with flats. Then the “magic” happens. It just sits perfectly in the mix. Experienced players who use flats know that they sound better the older they get. Rounds have their uses, but all those hit songs of the past, especially classic Motown, Dub, and Reggae are the sounds of flatwound strings.
@@rorow3r That is why they should be banned on pain of death. They deceive the player to think them superior. No evil flat-wounds or blasphemous half-wounds.
Please can I ask, what you mean by Frankenstein P-bass clone? Is this as in, the original first prototype P-bass made by Fender with the Telecaster headstock, and the single coil pickup and funky pick-guard? As has been reproduced by Squier recently as the ‘Classic Vibe 50s’ precession bass? I assume this may be the style you refer to as Frankenstein bass? Ie, prototype? As never heard that term before. Many thanks
I never tried a neck wrap. The old-school way of the old Motown bassists was foam under the strings. Fender used to ship their basses with foam glued to the bridge covers.
I would think a neck wrap would only mute open strings - if you're pressing down on a fret it eliminates the effect of the neck wrap that's further down by the nut.
