Current bass gear

The advances that have been made in bass guitar amplification in recent years are quite staggering. I am not one of those guys who always want “the latest thing”, but (now) I go for quality since it will give me a lot of joy for a longer period of time.

The first and most important element in getting a good sound is the bass guitar itself. I am currently playing a hand-made Ferdinand Rikkers 5-string fretless bass. I had this beautiful instrument built in 1996 (I ordered it almost a year before in 1995) after playing on a fretless FR 4-string for several years. The body is made of avangkol with a burl maple top, the neck consists of wenge with laminated ovangkol, the fretboard is a strip of ebony, Armstrong pick-ups, triple active circuitry.

I usually play D’addario Slowound strings (0.45-0.130) and change them after about a year. I have heard good things about Thomastik Infeld strings (“TI flats”) and I will try them out as the Slowounds are no longer available. I always play through a Korg AX30B effect processor board.

In 1998 I was forced to have a flight-case built as I was flying to Portugal and they wouldn’t let me take the bass with me in the aircraft cabin. It’s as solid as a rock but also brings back memories of the early days when we were hauling equipment down three flights of stairs at 3 a.m. and the lead singer was collecting the money and chatting up buxom blondes at the bar.

In 2003 I believed to have the best bass rig for my musical purposes; a Hartke 3500 amp head and 2 Eden speaker cabinets (2 x 10" and 1 x 15"). But I was blown away when I tried out an Epifani 4 x 10" cabinet, the clarity and punch was absolutely amazing. More than that, it seemed as if the true soul of my beloved bass was finally blasting through the speakers unobstructed.

In order to be fair towards Eden I put this to the test in a direct comparison with an Eden 4 x 10" cabinet (the sound of a 10" speaker is very different from that of a 15" speaker). The sound from the Epifani was much more to my liking so I traded the Eden cabinets for the Epifani.

Not a bad word about Eden though, they make excellent bass gear, but it is not exactly to my taste. I tried out the Eden WT-400 amp head but I finally decided on a Glockenklang Soul amplifier. Again, a natural sound was what I was looking for and Bass Player magazine described this amp as follows: “Many high-end bass builders use Glocks as a reference standard because they reveal an instrument's nuances and character in microscopic detail”. It delivers 440 Watts into 4 ohm, there is talk about diverting air traffic when I power up this stack.

The only regret was that I had to take a step back with regard to portability; the Epifani 4x10 weighed about the same as a small car and help was needed when transporting it. So in September 2004 I traded the 4 x 10 cabinet for a combination of 2 x 10 and 1 x 12 Epifani Ultra Light cabinets. With the Glock in one hand and the 1 x 12 (only 30 lbs.) in the other I waltz my way to smaller gigs. Playing through both cabinets with my Rikkers and Glock is the ultimate that I have experienced so far.

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