As mentioned elsewhere, I’ve just bought myself a new bass. It came about by accident because I was in a music shop looking for a guitar tuner for my dad – maybe my girlfriend is right about not allowing me into music shops on my own…
I’ve never spent very much on my previous basses, a couple of hundred quid was about all I could ever scrape together at the same time, but recently I’d been thinking that my main bass was a bit lacking in the tone department. So while I was buying the aforementioned tuner, from Hickies in Reading I inquired into pickups which might help me get the sound I want. The conversation went something like this:
Me: “I’m thinking of buying some pickups to make my bass sound a bit punchier and fuller, get rid of the ‘fluffiness’, improve the…”
Shop guy: “What bass have you got?”
Me: “Dean Edge”
Shop guy: “You need a new bass”
Now, I like Hickies and I’ve bought a couple of basses and my Trace Elliot from them over the years, and they gave me lots of advice, asking lots of questions and I tried most of the basses they had in stock, but although I found a few I liked the sound of, they were Fender Precision an Jazz basses of some description and for some reason I just hate the way the Fenders look – especially that headstock and machine heads – ugh. The other thing I knew I wanted from my new bass was five strings, and Hickies didn’t have any five string Fenders in stock. My Dean was bought to see if I liked playing a five, and having owned it for a few years now I find the extra space of a fifth string really useful – especially when you turn up at a gig with a dep singer and they need to drop the key of something which you usually play in E…
Feeling a bit superficial for dismissing the Fenders, I admitted to the guy that maybe I should stop thinking about the looks and concentrate on the sound. The Fenders sounded and played right, and although I didn’t feel a connection or obvious ‘rightness’ to any of the basses, they did sound very nice. Either way, they were going to cost me a lot more than I’d ever spent on a bass before, and we agreed that I should try some more basses and take my time before committing. They suggested I take a look in Dawsons in Reading for some different stock. I’d like to give thanks to the two sales assistants who spent a couple of hours with me, but I’ve lost the card with their names on so I can’t. (When I checked the Hickies site to confirm the price of their basses I saw this, so don’t feel too bad for forgetting their names):
So I popped into Dawsons to see what they had on offer. Similar story really, the assistants were knowledgeable and helpful, but again the top runners were the expensive Fenders, and the top of the range Ibanez basses. Even then, I wasn’t convinced that I was going to be happy for the next 10 or 20 years with one of these basses, and I was going to have to spend a fair wedge of wonga to find out. After some time playing basses and chatting to the guy about how it’s frustrating to walk into a guitar shop, head to the bass section, immediately dismiss the “budget” range, then find you’ve only got about 8 to choose from, a couple of those will be left-handers, one or two fretless, then before you know it you’re down to a choice of one or two… he suggested I needed to go to a bass specialist, and gave me the address for Bass Gear in Twyford.
Next weekend I was at Bass Gear and everything was different – if I’m honest, I was a little taken aback, as I had been saving money for a while and thought £700 would be enough… there wasn’t one bass under a grand! But there were a lot of very nice basses and Phil was friendly, enthusiastic, extremely helpful and let me play anything I wanted for as long as I liked without making me think I was wasting his time.
After a few hours trying and re-trying a lot of very expensive and gorgeous basses, I kept coming back to the same Zon Sonus bass. Clean looks, comfortable to play, lovely sound with a really nice mix of bass and growl… and £300 more than I had in my pocket! As the evening drew to a close (and Phil wanted to go home!) he mentioned that he had a review of the actual bass I was interested in: Zon Review in Bass Guitar Magazine it was a pretty good write up which certainly didn’t put me off. Still, I didn’t have enough money and went home to think it over and work out how I was going to get the rest of the money together.
After a few days had passed I could wait no longer, so I called Phil and put down a deposit to hold the bass while I went off to sell one of my kidneys.
Couple of weeks after that (I had to wait for the kidney scars to heal…) I returned and this is the result:
The more I play it, the more I like it. It sounds lovely, looks lovely, plays… er, lovely! Book me for a gig and hear it for yourself(!)