Lonnie got into a groove and this bass came together pretty fast. On Thanksgiving morning (a non-work day) Lonnie was up at 6:00 am working on the final set up. He had in his head he wanted the bass ready for our Friday night jam and nothing was standing in his way…not evening Thanksgiving dinner. We ran right to the wire, by mid day Friday Martha was a thumping gal. And true to form, the Velvet Garbo’s did not work well on this bass. I don’t like the “boing-boing” sound from the Garbo’s. They did not make the 1950 AS bass sound good and the same sound came from Martha…so it must be the strings and not the bass. We chose a string combination I had in reserve for a special bass, a Gamut gut G & D and a Thomastik steel Dominant A & E. I like this combo on this bass.
I played it Friday night and also had another bass player play it for an hour while we listen…sounded really loud in a large jam. When the bass player handed Martha back he said “you did it again…this is ANOTHER good one!” We love to hear that, it made Lonnie smile. The extra effort was worth it. He spent a good deal of time on repairing the edges, which was one of the first things the other player commented about. The bass really looks good for it age, it had a caring owner for a long time before it came into our hands. So Martha is now completed and living along side by side with all the other basses.
The Kay S-9 is a nice sister bass to my Kay M-4…basically the same bass but renamed M-4 to S-9 in 1940. A nice pair to have and compare.
On to the next project...don't blink...it has already started!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment