Gear Shed
Strandberg
BODEN PROG 5-STRING By Jonathan Herrera
A S K T H E AV E R A G E C I T I Z E N T O picture a bass guitar, and assuming they know what you’re talking about, they’ll likely imagine something like the Fender Precision or Jazz Bass. The incredible staying power and ubiquity of Leo Fender’s original designs are extraordinary when one considers how long ago the first Fenders were loaded onto a Ford panel truck from a Fullerton loading dock, Chuck Berry gleefully shouting from the mono tube radio. Sure, there have been occasional stabs at wholesale innovation — Steinberger’s très ’80s L-series new-wave rectangles come to mind — but most manufacturers generally follow in Fender’s footsteps. There’s no arguing that the Fend-
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er formula works; it is the definitive bass for a reason. But it undeniably has some inherent shortcomings, even if we’ve all learned to live with them. First, most bass guitars don’t balance well at all. The combination of the headstock, densely packed with large tuning machines and the terminal wraps of each string, and an inadequately long upper horn often place basses’ center of gravity too far up the neck, leaving us with necks that dive floorward. Energy better used for good fretting-hand technique is instead wasted holding the neck up. Basses are also hard to travel with, given their length. You might be stunned at the machinations I’ve employed to ensure my bass makes it into a plane’s cabin with me, and not
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underneath with the roller bags and insufficiently credentialed emotional-support dogs. Many are the times I’ve watched my bands’ guitar player breeze onto a jetway unmolested, while I dutifully ignored the piercing gaze of a ticket agent reaching beneath her desk for a gate-check tag, the way a liquor store owner furtively reaches for the baseball bat gathering dust under a carton of Camels at the first whiff of trouble. Further scrutiny of the Fender formula reveals limitations of more arguable importance. Some players prefer the timbre and feel of a longer-than-standard scale, like 35” or 36”, especially if they’re playing a B-string-equipped 5-string. Yet, when it comes to the sound and feel
