Blackbird

“As light as a feather” is an epithet rarely used to describe bass guitars, but Blackbird is indeed that rare beast. With a body carved from a perfect singular slab of curly-figured California redwood, it tips the scales at less than 5-1/2 lbs (2.5kg).

This redwood was salvaged from long-vanished logging operations. I treated it by the Shou-sugi-ban method to enhance the grain, and to darken and harden the surface. Between the touchable texture, ergonomic design, and careful contouring, it is an exceedingly comfortable bass to play.

With so much string tension, the neck on a bass must be carefully considered. I used torrified (carefully roasted in an oxygen-free environment) hard birdseye maple for the shaft, supplemented with a dual-action truss rod, and topped with a ziricote fretboard. This 30” scale fretboard is unusual in that it only has 12 jumbo stainless steel frets; beyond that the surface is ramped up and unfretted, for a seamless transition to fretless soloing in the upper registers. The fret plane is prepared by Plek machine. This revolutionary technology allows the frets to be dressed accounting for true string tension, for absolute perfection in playability.

The tuners, bridge, and headpiece are Hipshot’s rock-solid units, supplemented by ball-bearing thrust bearings under the knobs for finger-tip-precise tuning action. The two pickups are Lace Alumitone bass bars. Apart from being light weight and noise-free, these pickups have an incredibly broad and smooth frequency response, allowing huge scope for tone-shaping at the amplifier.