The Bass Guitars of Jackpot! Recording Studio
Holding down the low end at the studio! -by Larry Crane
As soon as I opened Jackpot! Recording Studio, I brought all the instruments I had at home down for clients to use. Since then, the collection has grown a lot. This is in a series of posts about many of these instruments.
Many of you reading this will know that from 1985 to 1992 (in Chico, CA) I was the bass guitar player in Vomit Launch, the band I formed with Lindsey Thrasher, Patricia Howard (née Rowland), and Steve Bragg (plus former members John McKinley, Toni Lee Smith, Tim Smyth, Gene Story (our accidental founder), and our occasional trumpet player, Doug Roberts). I also played bit of guitar, either swapping out with Thrasher or us doing dual guitar songs with no bass (live), like “Weird Song” or ‘Spinach.” But most of the time I was playing bass and writing quite a bit of our songs (the music) on bass as well. I jumped back on bass in 1996 or so when my Portland band Flaming Box of Ants morphed into Elephant Factory, and Dewey Mahood rejoined on guitar and I moved to bass. I’m very comfortable with the instrument, and musicians like Peter Hook (Joy Division, New Order), Barbara Manning (28th Day), Sue Harshe (Scrawl), Steve Garvey (Buzzcocks), Mitchell Rasor (Absolute Grey), John Blake (Abecedarians), Tony Levin (King Crimson, Peter Gabriel), and many others inspired the way I initially approached the instrument.
At Jackpot!, it might seem odd that we don’t have a large selection of electric bass guitars. I’ve only owned a few over the years, and many I would buy, try for a rehearsal or gig, and quickly sell off. One must understand that I had no money in the Vomit Launch years – nothing. I lived hand-to-mouth, as we all did, and a single bass had to do. I tried at least two Fender Precision basses that I absolutely hated for different reasons! I bought an Ibanez Roadstar bass that seemed great at the store but it sucked all the fun out of playing once I was in rehearsals.
My initial bass playing was actually on my pal Rob’s Rickenbacker 4001 when I lived in the college dorms. I remember Rob laughing at how rudimentary I was, but he was right! I still keep intending to purchase one of these Rickenbacker basses, but the necks always feel bit wide and flat in my hands so I always back out! When I moved into a house with Steve Valin in 1983 (we were the Ziplok band), he had a P-Bass knockoff with flat wound strings that played fairly well, and I used the bass on some of my solo recordings back then. When Vomit Launch formed in early 1985, that was the bass I borrowed since Thrasher already had a Memphis “Strat” copy electric guitar, delegating me to bass.
My first actual bass purchase was some no-name knockoff co-purchased with a girlfriend, but when I bought a new Arbor headstock-less fake Steinberg knock-off, I let her keep that first bass. Someone in San Francisco broke into my car and stole that Arbor and Thrasher’s Memphis in 1986, so I went to Sacramento to one of the Skip’s Music stores.
And found this bass below, which has followed me around ever since.
It’s an Aria Pro II RSB Straycat made in Japan. It came with the sorta-split bridge pickup you see here, and I added a $40 Carvin bass pickup by the neck. Eventually I removed all the internal passive electronics and hardwired the pickups in parallel output. You can still see the holes for the potentiometers. During our first PNW tour in 1987, all the guitar cases were stored in an unused shower in Steve’s converted school bus. As the grey water onboard hit a breaking point, all the cases got soaked and the bottom of this bass was damaged by water. It still has cracks and the wood around the 1/4-inch jack broke, so a piece of electronic breadboard is screwed in place there. It’s been re-fretted once at Eastside Guitar Repair. As far as the stickers all over this bass: “Swirl-O-Rama” was a phrase from our debut split 7-inch [with Idiot (The)] which was apparently “Recorded in Swirl-O-Rama Stereo” according to the cover. Ape Sex was the name of a fictional band in the Love and Rockets comix by the Hernandez Brothers. I read all those comix back then! All the little black rectangle stickers will be familiar to computer nerds from the ‘80s as the stickers used for floppy disc protection or something. On the back of the bass are the words “Butt-Sucking Poser Geek” – a description given to me by a dear friend back then who would likely wish to remain anonymous! This bass sounds amazing, with a clack-y, bright tone (round wound strings) and pushy but clear midrange. It was my bass on all the Vomit Launch records post Not Even Pretty. I’m pretty sure it’s on “Miss Misery” as played by Elliott Smith. It’s on “Cherry Area”, a Pavement B-side track that Stephen Malkmus recorded basics for at my original home studio, Laundry Rules. It’s been used on many, many sessions at Jackpot!, and I always recommend it when a player’s bass needs to cut through the mix more. I still love playing it.
Not long after we moved Jackpot! into the 50th and Division St. location (2007) I began to look for a second bass to keep on hand here. In one of my many trips to Trade Up Music, I found this Hamer bass. I plugged it in and liked the mellow, bass-y tone it had compared to the Aria bass above. Depending on how you set the knobs, it can also get a very soft midrange-y tone as well, but most of the time these knobs make no logical sense to me. A few years in, I decided it should remain the “flat wound” bass of choice, and it’s always nice to throw it on a track where any string squeaks are distracting or when someone wants a “vintage” ‘60s sound. I have no idea if this bass has a model number/name (“Cruise” maybe?), what year it was made, or anything. But it’s a nice addition to the studio!
Many years ago in Chico, my pal Lucian Tielens (who was obsessively collecting guitars), found an original Fender Bass VI. These had been made from 1961 to 1975, and were built to be an exact octave below a standard-tuned electric guitar. We did some jams with our pal Mark Evans, as Idler Arms, and we used Lucian’s Bass VI a lot. It’s a unique instrument in that the lowest 4 strings are technically the same notes as a typical electric bass guitar, but being that the string gauges are smaller it sounds a bit thinner in comparison. And then you have the higher 2 strings, so the player can get all chordal but in a deep frequency. When Fender issued a Squire version (their cheap-o sub brand) as the Squire VI, I jumped on it, and bought one via Sweetwater. I don’t think it gets a ton of use, but when it does there’s nothing else that sounds like it! It’s fun to use this to double an electric guitar part one octave lower!