Independence Day

Playing my new bass at Point Venture’s Celebration

Photo by Suna

It takes a lot to get me out of the house on a holiday. As Captain Flatulence puts it, “There are too many amateur drunks out there.” But I promised some people from church that I would play bass for their July 4^th celebration. So I was out and about.

Luckily, we played fairly early in the day. We started about 11:00 while the folks in Point Venture lined up their festive golf carts for a parade. As soon as the parade got going, we took a break to cram a couple of hot dogs down out throats. Then we played another set of patriotic standards before calling it a day.

This was my first opportunity to play my new bass in public. When you just play with yourself, you don’t know how an instrument will sound with an ensemble. Playing out doors adds another variable of uncertainty. I was very pleased with how well the instrument performed, even if I didn’t do as well as I would have liked. (We only had one short rehearsal, and I don’t read music that well.)

Afterward, the nice folks from church slipped me some “gas money” and took Suna and me out for a ride on their pontoon boat. We got home before anyone had a chance to become seriously drunk. Then we got to listen to fireworks for most of the night. The lack of sirens makes me optimistic that people showed more sense than I usually give them credit for.

About My Outfit

It was July Fourth. We were outdoors. It was hot. The t-shirt was a promotional item.

Suna said I looked like a “scary Highway patrol musician.” But I was only doing my part to dress for the occasion. The bass was handmade in Mexico city. The T-shirt was made in Haiti. The glasses came from Thailand. The hat band was hand woven from a horse’s tail—quiet, Flatch!—just outside of Tijuana. All to celebrate US Independence Day.

Oh, the hat was actually made in Conroe, TX.

Bombella BB00H6

The strings stay perfectly straight because the tuning pegs have been repositioned.

Photo by Suna

When I have taken Beccano to his guitar lesson the over the last month, I have studiously avoided eye contact with a new bass at the music store. All that ended today when Suna accompanied us to the store. “Look at this pretty bass, Lee. You should play it,” she encouraged.

So I did. That was it.

The bass is hand crafted in Mexico City by an acquaintance of the music store owner. Some of the other customers have also met the luthier, Bombella, is also reputed to be an excellent bass player and a very nice guy. He brought his first lot of basses to the US to sell, and Danny Rae got one because of their friendship.

The woodwooking originally attracted me to this beautiful instrument.

Photo by Suna

Bombella carved the instrument from a single piece of maple and inlaid two pieces of walnut on the body for dramatic effect. The fretboard is rosewood with what appear to be stainless steel frets. The instrument has incredible sustain in spite of a lightweight bridge—probably because the tuning pegs are offset so that the strings align perfectly from bridge to peg with no deflection.

The electronics are all active—the first time I have used this type. But after getting used to them, it will be hard to play my old ’72 Jazz bass again. And it did take a while to get used to them because there are no booklets to explain them. (This is, after all, a handmade bass, not a mass produced commodity.) Here is what I figured out:

• The tone controls are stacked on the left (looking down as you play). The bass control is at the bottom, and the treble is on top. Both lock into a flat position in the center and can either attenuate or boost the frequency range they control.
• The center knob controls the balance between the bridge and neck pickups. It also locks into the center or balanced position.
• The right stack controls the pickup volume. The lower knob controls the bridge neck and the upper one, the bridge.

Because of the active electronics, the string alignment, and the single-piece construction, the instrument has an extremely wide frequency response. Harmonics and slaps balance perfectly when playing through a Fender 250 2-10 combo using minimal compression. It delivers a wide range of sounds with the same attack, depending on where you attack the string. Varying the attack only increases the variety of sounds you can achieve.