Hi, all! I have finally typed up something for the gear page on the Fennario website about my Phil bass. I wrote it a while ago but am just getting around to revising and shortening it. Yep. It was even longer before. 
Let me know what you think, both as a knowledgeable Dead gearhead and also for my extended family, my Dad's pretty proud of having built it so they might be reading about it, too.
Let me know what you think, both as a knowledgeable Dead gearhead and also for my extended family, my Dad's pretty proud of having built it so they might be reading about it, too.
While listening to the first Fennario recording, I wasn't happy with how my Sadowsky sounded - it's too bright and aggressive compared to Phil's gentler sound, especially when played with a pick, and emphasizes higher-mid frequencies that get in the way of the rhythm guitar. I found ways to work around it but it always has that Maple-necked J-bass tone lurking in the background, sounding more like Geddy Lee than Phil. After pondering the problem for a while I woke up one morning with an idea - my dad is a fantastic wood-worker, why not design my own bass with a custom Dead-inspired body?Here are pics of the bass in question for those who haven't seen it: http://www.flickr.com/photos/danfcrea/s ... 940563012/
I knew right away that it would be a "hippie sandwich" (a nickname for instruments with many layers of different wood) and have the Irwin horns from Jerry's guitars, Tiger & Rosebud. I fell for those guitars when I first saw them, it was so cool that he had instruments that were unique to him and expressed the Dead's personality so thoroughly. And I wanted it to be a 5-string, that's my preferred number, inspired by Mike Gordon. I feel confined on a four, but never really liked six.
With those parameters in mind I sat down with Adobe Photoshop and the internet and proceeded to research and design the bass. I like his mid to late 70's sounds the best, so I decided to try and copy the sound of his Alembic prototype, nicknamed Mission Control. I started with the approximate dimensions of a 5-string Fender P-bass, narrowed the string spacing for smoother pick playing, shifted the neck and bridge towards the player's left for more comfortable access to Phil's preferred higher frets (an idea I stole from the only Alembic I've ever played), and added the Irwin horns, stretching the upper horn out a bit to avoid any issues with the bass being neck-heavy and echo the lines of the Warmoth headstock.
Choosing woods for this project was a slow but enjoyable process. I started with a neck from Warmoth that matched my specs. They had one in stock that I liked with birds-eye Maple with Purpleheart laminates, so I carried these through the body. Both are very bright woods so I was reassured that the bass would have nice tight low frequencies even though I was choosing very warm-sounding Mahogany for the majority of the body. The crowning piece of wood is the Coco Bolo for the top and back. It's a beautiful wood and gives a nice rich midrange, and is also the same wood that was used for the top of both Tiger and Rosebud.
Hardware and electronics required almost as much debate as the wood. I'd really liked the bridge and nut on my first professional-quality bass, a 1995 Warwick Fortress that I bought in college, so that was easy. The bridge is both infinitely adjustable and rock-solid, and the adjustable-height nut is a big bonus. I found a site in Germany where you can order them, and they were the first pieces to arrive. For pickups I chose a set of classic Bartolini humbuckers, similar to what Phil would have had in his first Modulus basses in the mid 80's. For electronics, I found a company in England called ACG who makes sweepable filter-based bass preamps similar to Alembic's higher end electronics, and very much like the controls on Phil's 70's basses. It had a much steeper learning curve than the usual two or three band onboard EQ that I'm used to using, but the flexibility is great and the sounds are endless.
All in all I'm very pleased with this bass! I was concerned about how it would be playing a homemade instrument after spending so many years of playing nothing but my world-class Sadowsky, as well as not really knowing how this configuration of parts would all sound together, but it has exceeded my expectations in every way! The Hippie Sandwich wood construction seems to be exceptionally stable since it has required very infrequent and minor adjustments after the initial settling-in period, and the sound is exactly what I had hoped for - warm and round, but still very distinct and clear. It fits in very well with the rest of the band, settling in the overall mix just perfectly, and even does a pretty good imitation of John Kahn's P-bass when played fingerstyle for those JGB tunes. I can't imagine having a better bass for this band!
