Partners | By Jim Roberts
John Patitucci & Yamaha
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Jim Roberts was the first full-time editor of Bass Player and also served as the magazine’s publisher and group publisher. He is the author of How The Fender Bass Changed The World and American Basses: An Illustrated History and Player's Guide (both published by Backbeat Books/Hal Leonard).
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hen he was invited to play in Chick Corea’s Elektric Band in 1985, John Patitucci decided it was time to move from four strings to six. “Anthony Jackson inspired me,” he says. “And I felt like the new music we were playing with Chick would benefit from having a low B string. At that time, the synthesizer players were trying to take over the world, playing lower notes than the bass players, so I thought, I need that B. And also, because of my interest in becoming more flexible as an improviser, the high C string would give me some tenor saxophone range.” Patitucci went to Ken Smith’s shop in New York City, played a 6-string bass, and ordered one, which he played on three Elektric Band albums and his first two solo albums, John Patitucci and On the Corner. Patitucci’s growing mastery of the instrument caught the ear of legendary Yamaha artist-relations man Takashi Hagiwara, who contacted Ken Dapron, a guitarist who was working as a Yamaha product manager, and told him to go see John. “I went to a show — I think it was in Irvine [California] — and went backstage,” says Dapron. “We met there for the first time, and I invited John to come to Yamaha.” Patitucci and Dapron connected immediately. “Ken is an amazing guy,” John says, “and we just hit it off.” Dapron told Patitucci that Yamaha was developing a TRB 6-string and invited him to visit the company’s facility in Buena Park, California, to check it out. He did — and quickly decided to work with Yamaha going forward. John remembers, “What appealed to me was that I would have a lot of say in the design
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of the instruments, and they would work with me and make things for me.” It wasn’t long before Patitucci had an array of Yamaha basses for his touring and studio work. In my May/June 1992 Bass Player cover story about John, he told me, “All of my electrics are Yamaha TRB models; I’ve worked closely with the company on their development, and my basses are prototypes.” At the time, John had three 6-strings, including one with a whammy bar, and a 5-string with a body modified to facilitate string popping. Those prototypes led to the first John Patitucci signature model, the TRBJP, which was introduced in 1994. While Yamaha had favored a neck-through-body design for its initial TRB 6-strings, Patitucci encouraged Dapron to use bolt-on necks for his instruments. “At one point,” John recalls, “I said, ‘What is it about the old sound that we like?’ It’s the bolt-on.” Dapron confirms that John’s input was influential in product development, and that thanks to his request, Yamaha eventually created a new bolt-on system that has been used in a number of models. That’s just one example of the ways that Patitucci and Dapron have collaborated over the years to refine and improve Yamaha basses. Another key project was their development of a new onboard preamp. “Yamaha had come out with this digital parametric EQ,” says Dapron, “and we were in John’s studio one day for a good eight or nine hours, trying to dial it in and get the right sound.” That painstaking research led to the new 3-band preamp that was incorporated into Patitucci’s improved signature model, the TRBJP2.
