The Last Bass Outpost

When I saw DP a few years ago and Roger had a fresh knee operation, the guy from The Temperance Movement (Nick Fyffe) depped for him and although Nick is a fine player (as you would expect from someone who replaced Stuart Zender within Jamiroquai), DP didn't sound the same that night.

I've seen Fyffe once with the Temperance Movement, and he rocked a violin bass for 90% of the set, swapping it out with a '70s P bass for a couple of tunes maximum. He's a grand player, but he wasn't driving the bus like the guys in Deep Purple do.

Positioning of the sound hole obviously predetermined where the later mudbucker would go. 

Gibson refer to it as the 'mud hole' in early literature.

Ronnie Lane had a Zemaitis back in the day. He got it once the Small Faces were done. I wonder if this is down to the increased income he undoubtedly received once 'The Faces' were out from under the thumb of Don Arden, who basically kept them on schoolboy paper-round wages throughout their career?

my favorite Zemaitis player (everybody has one, right?) is Pete Cruickshank of The Groundhogs.

You can just about see it here:



Quite an interesting band, who fused a fairly authentic delta blues with a weird mix of Cold War-era paranoia and spacey fuzz. I'm trying to get into their DIY-recorded album 'Solid' at the moment, and it is very dense and experimental. I've seen a parallel made between the Groundhogs and Gang Of Four, which I think is fair enough, really.

Anyway, I'm also slowly trying to piece together a bootleg called 'Solid Live' which pulls together everything the Groundhogs recorded for the BBC in 1974. Unlike the actual 'Solid' album, the bass is quite pronounced and distinct on the BBC recording. Pete Cruikshank is using his Zemaitis bass and it has a really broad, twangy and punchy tone. Quite a modern tone for 1974, with a good balance and growl.

You can hear it here:

The elongated upper horn bothers me more in terms of period correctness.

All the installment trouble you describe wouldn't be an issue for me since it is already installed... 

The upper horn bothers me too, as it robs the outline of some of the gracefulness of the original.

The barrel jack is already installed, sure, but it will start to go wrong. It will slowly lose its grip, and you will lose signal continuity if the cable isn't at specific angles. I've had this in both the basses I've owned with these sodding things installed.

I'm not anti-progress, but this works:



The barrel jack gives you a slightly cleaner look as it doesn't need a plate, and can be recessed into the edge of your instrument. That is the only advantage I can think of.

Epi Vintage Pro Embassy/Thunderbird bridge set

That barrel jack is a bit disappointing!

I've screenshotted the bass for posterity:



It is an odd bass, with that large pickguard that doesn't cover a whole lot of the treble side of the body. If anything it reminds me of a Framus design:



Whereas the small boxy chrome bridge cover, chrome pickups and side-inlays on the neck match this Kay 5922:




The bass in the video doesn't seem to have a lower cutaway at all, simply a rounding away of the wood. The clownburst finish says 'Japan' to me.

Alright, rushed these photos on my phone this morning:

The good:



The not so good:



So, still a wee bit of work to do. The issues at the moment are:

1) That dark bit on the back! As a result of using a heat gun I had a wee bit of the back de-laminate, and a bubble formed accordingly. The standard procedure here is to cut a line in the bubble and press glue into the void, then clamp and let it dry. I've done this but I had to put down a few small holes to get the glue in. I've lost a couple of bits of finish here, so I've filled with a contrasting rosewood dust/glue filler. It will leave an obvious mark (all of an inch long), but I want it to be visible as it has a story behind it. Stupid as it is.

2) The back of the treble horn. Argh! There was no sanding sealer here for some reason. The black finish was in the pores of the wood. They deftly sanded through the sealer coat in the factory then sprayed the finish anyway. I'm building up the area here with superglue as a new sealer, and will have to level it out.

3) The treble horn is a bugger to work in, and the finish is thickest in here for some reason.

Lemmy must have had a few basses, right? I've found there to be a bit of ambiguity as to the basses he used, and when. There is a video of a tour around the Rickenbacker factory up on Youtube, and they show the carcass of one of Lemmy's old basses which was in for repair. From memory it looked like a very dead 4001S. Likewise a luthier posted photos of a rehab'd Lemmy bass or two on his website, including the half-dozen snapped strap button screws in the body. I've also seen it mentioned that Lemmy used at least one Rickenfaker, and that the 'Out to Lunch' bass might not be a real Rick.

Some things are consistent. From the early days in Hawkwind he was playing modified Rickenbackers, and his Hawkwind Rick was used in early Motorhead as well. This looks to be a 4000 or 4001S with a Thunderbird pickup in the neck and an odd control arrangement.