Cort Introduces the New Artisan C4/C5 Deluxe Bass Guitars…

Cort Guitars creates instruments that musicians love to play. The Artisan Series is for the bass player who knows the value of playing a tone-rich, affordable bass guitar that can hold up the back end. Cort Guitars launches the next phase of the series: The Artisan C Deluxe.

The Artisan C Deluxe was created with the serious bass player in mind. It is a bolt-on beauty made of lightweight poplar that allows for ease of playability with all the robust tone Cort basses are known for. The Artisan C4 and C5 Deluxe boast a pristine Hard maple neck with jatoba fretboard, 24 frets with White Dot inlays, and a 34” scale length. One more feature is the 18mm string spacing at the bridge on the C5 making playability a breeze for all styles.

This workhorse of a bass guitar comes in an array of gorgeous colors: Candy Red, Candy Blue, and Black, all tricked out with black hardware to easily stand out on stage and in front of the crowd. Bartolini® MK-1 pickups pack a punch with unparalleled clarity. A Markbass® MB-1 preamp controls Bass, Mid, Treble, Master Volume, Pickup Balancer, and an active/passive switch to manage all of the grooves and low end. The MetalCraft M4 Bridge offers better body contact and transfer of tone. Its dual-string loading system makes for easy string changes, either from the top or through the body. D’Addario® EXL165 strings complete this stellar instrument.

The Artisan C Deluxe is the go-to bass for any bass player looking to upgrade their instrument in looks and playability. No matter the genre, the Artisan C Deluxe outperforms the competition. To see the Artisan C4 Deluxe and Artisan C5 Deluxe, visit www.cortguitars.com.

Artisan C4 Deluxe Street Price: $449.00 USD
Artisan C5 Deluxe Street Price: $499.00 USD

Here is episode 4 of WCZ, we discuss boutique and vintage basses in the working-class gig world, as well as navigating the heat and dress code for outdoor summer gigs. Plus another installment of ‘Sure it’s awesome but, is it necessary?’

“These stories from the front are with real-life, day-to-day musicians who deal with work life and gigging and how they make it work out. Each month, topics may include… the kind of gigs you get, the money, dealing with less-than-ideal rooms, as well as the gear you need to get the job done… and the list goes on from there.” – Steve the Bass Guy and Shawn Cav

By David C. Gross & Tom Semioli 

“I’ve never heard of Yolanda Charles…who is she?” 

Such was the retort I received from my Notes From An Artist co-host and dear friend David C. Gross upon my suggestion that we invite Yolanda Charles, one of my favorite players, on our podcast – radio show. Two bass players with a seven-year age gap can sometimes forge a world of difference, which our listeners detect from time to time from our on-air banter. 

Cover Photo Courtesy, Giuliano E at Graphik Vision

I have learned much from my partnership with my elder David – who looks, thinks, dresses, and acts much younger than I do- such as; the hidden merits of the six-string bass, why Mile Davis’ Bitches Brew is indeed monumental on levels I was not aware of, and the best entrees at Mamoun’s Falafel on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. 

Oftentimes I educate my homie on the players who came to prominence in the 1990s – the decade wherein Brit Pop was my writer’s beat. I received my review copy of Paul Weller’s Live Wood album in late ’94 or thereabouts. First move every bass player makes when receiving said product is to check the bass credits! I didn’t recognize the name.  A compendium of performances in support of the Mod Father’s then latest Wild Wood album, I’d never heard of Yolanda Charles either. I became a fan after the first listen – the combination of rock and roll and soul never fails to captivate this writer. 

Yolanda is that rarest of players who fortifies her bandleader and simultaneously makes you aware of the instrument regardless of the supportive role. Dig Ms. Charles cutting through the beautiful bombast of Robbie Williams’ Live at Knebworth (2003). Her work with Squeeze on The Knowledge (2017) rendered a new coat of (ph)funky paint on the pop purveyances of Messrs. Chris Difford and Glen Tilbrook. Nice work if you can get it, and she does.

My choice Yolanda deep tracks/albums make for a fine playlist: Aztec Camera “Sun” (Frestonia), Deep MO Funk in the Third Quarter, Marcella Detroit “Boy” (Feeler), Mick Jagger & Dave Stewart “Old Habits Die Hard” (Alfie soundtrack), Mamayo The Game, Workshy “Finding The Feeling” (Coast), B.B. King & Friends with Roger Daltrey “Never Make Your Move Too Soon” (B.B. King & Friends 80), Misty Oldland “A Fair Affair”(Supernatural),  Project pH “No ID,” “It’s Not a New Thing,” and “Hey Now,” to cite a select few. Get to work!

So, who is Yolanda Charles? 

She’s a bassist, composer, bandleader (Yolanda Charles’ Project pH, pH Instra-Mentals), band member (Jimmy Summerville, Hans Zimmer…), educator/mentor (East London Artist & Music, Institute of Contemporary Music Performance, Royal Northern College of Music, Trinity Laban Music Conservatory), entrepreneur, musical collaborator, poetess, novice gardener, and recording and performing artist. Impressed? In 2020 Yolanda Charles was awarded the MBE – Member of the Most Excellent Order of The British Empire for her services as a musician in the United Kingdom.  Bass Guitar Magazine crowned Yolanda as the “High Priestess of Funk.” 

Here are select excerpts from our conversation which can be heard in its entirety on Notes From An Artist podcast available on Apple, Amazon, BuzzSprout, Spotify, and wherever podcasts are podded! 

TS: David, we have royalty in our presence, tell us how you came to be recognized with an MBE.

YC: I love it, it’s great. I accepted the award – you’re asked first if you would like the award, and some people do turn it down because of the political connotations. At the time, I was confused as to why I was being given the award, because I thought those sorts of notices are given for public deeds and charities – and I’m not known for any of those things. I have had quiet activities that no one would know about that help local communities…and someone thought that I should receive an MBE! I guess they did a search on me, to see what my presence is like online – to see if there are any associations or incriminations… and I came up clean man! (laughter)

TS: Your solo project works under the moniker of pH – as in ‘pH’ which is the measure of acidity in water. Explain the origins… 

YC: The name is representative of balance. There are lots of ways you can view it. I was looking to spell ‘funk’ but I wanted to avoid the ‘f-u-n-k’ spelling. And I like people to wonder what the ‘PH’ stands for. It also gives me material to find titles for my songs. For example, we have a track called ‘Acid Test’ and stuff like that. 

DCG: Back in 1961 George Russell had a tune and an album titled Stratusphunk – and he used the ‘ph’ spelling. 

TS: Let’s talk about Project pH – a jazz, funk, soul, fusion collective which includes Nick Linnik (guitar), Hamish Balfour (keyboards), Nicholas Py (drums/percussion); and vocalists Paris Ruel, Adeola Shyllon, and Carmen Olivia, among others. You’ve supported more than a few notable bandleaders – tell us about your approach.

YC: Creatively, I write a lot of the material. I explain to the band how I want it to go and I welcome their input. I don’t usually bring in a finished piece of music because I think if you’re going to work with a band its important to have their voice in the sound. 

Sometimes we have a little bit of a tussle over chord changes – but we don’t fight over the basslines! 

DCG: The chord change doesn’t change until the bass player makes it so! 

YC: That’s right! (laughter) Recently I wrote a ballad on the bass, when I compose that way, I write the bass and the top line and I give them space for a bit of color. It’s fun to hear their ears take them, sometimes it’s not always where mine are and I like that. I get a fresh angle on something I thought I knew really well. 

I think my reputation is a bit of a ‘whip-cracker.’ I’ve worked in the pop world, and everything in that realm is restricted. Sometimes you have musical directors that are listening to every little bass fill. And often they don’t want to do anything apart from what is on the record. If you play one extra note you’ll get a stern look, and if the keyboard player slightly changes the harmony – put the 6^th in or even worse does an extension, a 9^th or 13^th they get fired. 

I’m more lenient than that, we’re freer because pH is jazz-flavored. I make the band work on various sections of a composition until I’m happy. Sometimes I like the music to be really tight, other times I want the ebb and flow – so I use my body and my bass to conduct. 

DCG: In a way, the bass player should be the band leader and the musical director – we are connecting the rhythm and the harmony. 

YC: Absolutely. The role of the bass player in a band is the connection between harmony and rhythm. There is also something about the character of a bass player. Some of it is funny, like in ribbing someone or ‘taking the piss’ as we say in England. In a real sense, I think your character attracts you to the qualities of the instrument.  

Or maybe, your character takes on the qualities of the instrument. Maybe all those guitar hero ego monsters – if they exist – get turned into that by the nature of the instrument! Who knows which comes first? 

TS: When you were working for Paul Weller, he gave you ‘advice’ on how to position your bass – how did you adjust to the adjustment? 

YC: I held the bass way up here (Yolanda positions her instrument beneath her neck, bow-tie fashion) because it’s easier to slap. When you drop the instrument down, you have to alter your technique. 

I had to agree to be in Paul ‘The Modfather’s space with my 1980s tastes because he was definitely more of a 1960s guy. Luckily, I didn’t have to slap on the job – imagine doing that on a Paul Weller gig! (laughter)

TS: I would love to do that!  

DCG: And you’d get fired!

YC: Check me out, I was 22. I was a kid. It was quite intimidating. I think I would handle how to hold my bass and position the instrument differently today! 

DCG: On that topic, Billy Sheehan said to me, and it made more sense than anything; when you are sitting down and practicing, why would you change that because when you stand up – you have to physically reevaluate all of what you learned sitting down. Sit in position, get a piece of leather, cut it and that’s all you need. 

TS: You use different muscles when you change positions.   

YC: Yes. I also recommend my students to use a guitar footstool. Get the bass in the space that is right for you, sit with your knees akimbo, put the bass where it should be if you were standing, then stand up, and see where the bass should be on your body…  

It’s a very personal thing. Getting back to Paul, that’s the thing about session work – it involves letting go of certain aspects of your character and personality. You have to allow yourself to be molded into the thing they want you to be. That goes for being a musician – stylistically. Even looks to a certain extent. 

I had complaints from one female artist I worked for. From her management, not from her, that the most flattering colors that I wore … were banned! (laughter) 

(Yolanda imitates artists management) ‘Er, could you just wear a sackcloth, please? And perhaps a bin back over your head?’ (hysterical laughter)

That’s why I advise my students ‘are you sure you want to be a session musician? Have you got the character for it?’ You have to be a team player and respect that you’re not the boss, it is a hierarchal situation. It is not a level playing field. You are hired help.  

You have to kind of do things that people ask of friends. But you are also being paid a salary. And it’s really confusing. And you can get it wrong, and you can get fired because you overstepped. 

You have to understand the politics of this stuff. Also, are you an argumentative type of person? Do you push back because you were told something by someone who does not have the best personal skills in the world and who might be making a demand of you in an unfriendly voice or using language you don’t like.

You sign a contract and the contract does not have a clause that reads ‘if they don’t speak to me nicely, I can leave…’ 

TS: The era of specialization on one instrument is over – how do you guide your students?

YC: They know. It’s funny, I made my first record in 2002, and I did it college industry style then. I created a website, and my own record label, but I did it with a few of the tools we have now. And I understood at that point I needed to have those skills. If you just make a record – you’ll be like all the musicians who think they’ve made a record because it never leaves the hard drive, or they press it and it’s in boxes for years and years. 

I was determined to not have that happen to me. I kept the costs down by using friends’ studios, we produced ourselves… I was able to pay my musicians because I was touring with other artists. I pressed a thousand copies and I used the disc as a business card – like the way people use the web now. 

Yes, it is entertainment for others and a way to make money by selling them at gigs, but for a musician, and other creatives, it is the way we tell people who we are, and what we do, and let them know that we are available. 

Some people see social media as showing off, or being a narcissist, but it’s to let people know we are here, that we exist, and that we are available. 

If you look at the artists I’ve worked with in my career, they are all in the kind of pop-rock territory. If I just stayed in funk and soul, I would have had a narrower career. 

I was in a session with Dave Stewart, and he said, ‘so who is Yolanda?’ And I said ‘What do you mean?’ I told him I made a record and he asked me to bring it in. And I would never do that, some people are always hustling. A few days later he told me that he’d listened to it and he gave me a bunch of pointers. We were just talking as musicians. 

When I first handed it to him, he said ‘Oh, so you’re not just a bass player…’  And I didn’t really understand what that meant at the time. He perceived it as me being an all-around musician as opposed to an instrumentalist purely. He saw that I could arrange, write, record and I could organize. Later, he hired me as a musical director for his band. It was because I had proof that I could do all these things. That qualified me, as well as the fact that we got along in the studio. 

Making records is important if you want to put yourself out there – you can’t expect people to know who you are unless you tell them. How you tell them about yourself isn’t bragging. The gig with Dave Stewart led directly to me being in Hans Zimmer’s band. To me it’s kind of like chance and luck, however the opportunities for chance and luck only arrive if you create the conditions. 

DCG: And now you can just give them a thumb drive! 

YC: Yes, or you can simply send a link and they can see everything you do. People waste their time on social media showing, ‘This is what I had for breakfast… these are my new shoes…’ Don’t bother with that stuff, you don’t know who is looking. And most times they’re not looking at where you bought your shoes, they are looking at what you write, what do you sound like, what are your lyrics, what is your creative space? 

TS: How do you mentor for success? 

YC: People ask me for advice in the form of ‘Can you help me.’ My first response is ‘What do you want? What do you want to achieve? What are you actually looking for?’ And very few can answer that question straight away. Is it ‘you’ with a top-paying gig? Is it ‘you’ with a certain amount of recognition? Or sales? Or followers? Is it about making the best record you could have made? Look at where the compromise has to happen. 

Maybe the best music you can make does not equate with a huge following. You have to hone it down to what is your actual core. You can’t have it all. If you want to make a great record, what does that entail? 

If you really like atonal music – okay. But I’ve got something to tell you about that. Large followings do not come from artists who create atonal music! If you really want to make a record that’s a bit out there – okay! But you have to let go of some other ideas you have at what success looks like. 

True success might mean you make records that don’t sell a lot. But you’ve identified what your actual real ambition is. And once that is acknowledged, once that is said out loud, strangely what happens is that kind of peace settles in. ‘Oh, I get it! I know what I want now!’ 

With that approach, it’s easier to not be envious of a kid who can play five chords and has ten million followers. You don’t have to bother with that because this thing you’ve created fully focuses your attention. So, what’s going on ‘out there’ does not really matter anymore. 

A big part of happiness is really knowing what you want. 

For all things Yolanda Charles, check out https://g4dz.com/

I first started playing an acoustic guitar in my band but now find myself working as the custodian of the groove in the bass department, plus keyboards, amplifiers and effects pedals akin to the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. What happened?

When I started off playing musical instruments as a child, life was simple.

There was the harmonica, my favourite sound to inspire random dogs to ‘howl’ along with a simple tune. Then followed descant and treble recorders, my friend Jill’s piano (and anybody else’s come to think of it), the school organ at lunchtimes and a brief awkward dalliance with a cheap violin. Finally, through Hobson’s choice, I settled on the last instrument standing in the school’s musical armoury – an old, unwanted and completely battered French horn. C’est la vie!

I really enjoyed this unusual curly-belled instrument and had lots of fun playing in the school orchestra and brass band, learning a lot about parts and how all the other instruments wove in and out of each other and the incredible melodies and emotions that followed. I was also a member of the school choir in the ‘alto’ department and fell in love with harmonies – it’s just the best!!

Sadly my dalliance with the world of brass had to stop with the installation of fixed ‘cheese-grater’ dental braces. Subsequently, I moved on to the acoustic guitar which allowed me a good deal of independence enabling me to sing and accompany myself with some cool chords. It also ignited my passion for songwriting. 

Being heard

In the early 90s I moved to the north of England to study Media & Performance at Salford University and after singing some of my original songs in a lunchtime concert under the moniker of a band called I Never Used To Like Brussel Sprouts I ended up as one of the founding members of a contemporary folk band called Megiddo with some great guys off the degree course in Popular Music and Recording – namely John Smith, Tim Allen and Alan Lowles.

We wrote and performed all our original songs, self-recorded and released an album called On The Outside and toured the UK folk circuit. In those days if you wanted to test out new songs, a good place to go was our local folk club which was based in a pub in a slightly dodgy area in Higher Broughton.

There were no microphones or amplification of any kind – nothing electronic. Everything was acoustic and au natural. You listened to everyone else playing and when it was your turn – you stood up where you were sat – that was your stage.

Of course when we were booked for the bigger gigs we needed amplification for the instruments and vocals to be heard in these vast spaces – but we didn’t use any overt effects or added jiggery pokery with our instruments (two acoustic guitars and a fretless bass – we sounded natural – like us, but louder.

Credit: Steph Magenta ©1995
Megiddo (L-R Suzy Starlite, Tim Allen, John Smith, Alan Lowles)

A few years later, touched by the hand of fate – in a happy, groove-laden serendipitous happening – everything changed and I accidentally got hooked on playing the bass guitar.

I hadn’t been playing that long before my first professional gig, which happened to be with my husband Simon when we toured the UK to promote his second solo album, The Knife.

Credit: Stuart Bebb, Oxford Camera ©2023
Myself and Simon onstage at the Ramsbottom Festival 2015

Simon is a pro and I was in the band because he loved my playing.  

As you know I didn’t start out playing bass as my first instrument and the funny thing is, a lot of other bass players didn’t either…

• Lemmy had just joined Hawkwind as a guitar player when he found out he was surplus to requirements due to Dave Brock deciding he was going to play lead guitar instead. But when the band’s bass player didn’t show up for one of their free gigs because he wasn’t getting paid, he had also inadvertently left his bass and amp in their van. So, Lemmy stepped in, and played bass for the first time live on stage at a gig! (That does make me laugh…)
• Flea from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers started out playing the trumpet and was pretty good at it too by all accounts.
• The Who’s thunderous John Entwistle started out on piano, then moved onto trumpet and French horn before he picked up a bass guitar. (Yey I played French Horn at school)
• Jaco Pastorius was first and foremost a drummer and only stopped playing after a wrist injury on the soccer field made it more difficult to play – that, and a better drummer had rocked up on the scene, so he stepped aside for this guy to take his place in the band. It was only because the bass player left at the same time that he picked up the bass!
• Carol Kaye played jazz guitar and by the knock of opportunity, moved onto bass when she filled in for a recording session when another musician didn’t show up!
• Tina Weymouth – who provided the bass-bedrock of Talking Heads signature sound, started out playing handbells – which has slightly freaked me out as I used to play them when I was a teenager too. Apparently, she taught herself guitar before picking up the bass when she formed the band with David Byrne and her now-husband, drummer Chris Frantz.

It’s all about the sound

Moving forward to today – music is not just about being heard anymore. I’m on a new and exciting trajectory, this time experimenting with my bass guitar making different sounds. From pedals to amplifiers to the big cabinets that house the speakers – you could say I’ve become a ‘cosmic explorer of the sonic palette’!

It sounds extra-terrestrial / inter-dimensional – and sometimes feels just like that!

In the beginning

My first bass guitar set up for the tour with Simon back in 2016 was simple: Mike Lull M4V bass guitar – plugged directly into my Sonic Research ST-300 TurboTuner (a guitar tuner) using the Supertone Mincap ‘A’ guitar cable then with a second cable to the back of the stage where it was plugged straight into an amplifier and speaker cabinet provided for me by the gigs/venues.

Since then I have had two different setups and have gradually added a few more bass guitars to my stable… Oh, and some stunning keyboards too.

What’s all the fuss about pedals?

What are guitar pedals and why use them?

This whole saga began in 2018 when we were touring our debut Starlite & Campbell album ‘Blueberry Pie’. Simon and I had formed a new band and had co-written and produced our first album together.

During the recording process, I played two different bass guitars. A Mike Lull M4V and a black Gretsch ThunderJet, both fitted with flat-wound strings.

You may not be familiar with these two beauties (check out the photos below) but as you would expect they have different sounds (aka tonal characteristics) and volumes (output levels), one being lower (quieter) than the other.

In the studio, you have time to set up each sound and when recording our first album together, Blueberry Pie, I needed a gritty, dirty, fuzzy sound for the solo section of You’re So Good For Me.

For this purpose, I employed the kickass assistance of the Supertone Custom Bass FUZZ by DWJ pedal – which I’ll explain more later – just know that I love it!!

FUZZ!!!!!!!

DWJ Supertone Bass FUZZ pedal
Photo credit: Simon Campbell 

On tour, however, I needed to use this fuzz and swap between two different bass guitars for certain songs. This is where the wonders of technology, pedals and effects start to help you out.

Watch this video of our Starlite Campbell Band concert at The Met in Bury, Manchester to hear the ThunderJet in action. Geek alert: bass solo at 01:56 minutes.

Bass guitars

It’s probably a good place to give you some information on the two basses in question.

Gretsch ThunderJet

This was my first ever bass, chosen because I’ve got really small hands and it has a shorter neck – hence the term short-scale (shorter scale = smaller distance between the frets). I also wanted to have that short thumpy 60s sound, similar to Jack Bruce (Cream), Andy Fraser (Free) and Paul McCartney – (I think you may know which band).

The ThunderJet has a semi-hollow body so it’s not too heavy and has a big fat distinctive and punchy sound.

It’s also one of the best-looking sexy basses Gretsch has ever produced with a throwback to their vintage models and often people will ask me about it after gigs… upstaged or what?

Technical stuff

• Mahogany body with arched maple top
• Ebony fingerboard
• Semi-hollow body
• Dual TV Jones® Thunder’Tron™ pickups
• Space Control™ bass bridge
• 30.3-inch scale
• Thomastik-Infeld Jazz Bass – JF324 – flat wound strings

Gretch ThunderJet bass guitar
Photo credit: Simon Campbell 

Mike Lull M4V

This guitar is ultra-special to me. Not only was it my wedding present from Simon but it was also made by the late great Mike Lull himself.

This is my old friend, the guitar I had imagined, which has been with me from almost the beginning, through endless hours of learning, making mistakes, jumping around with me when the music takes you high. We recorded most of the songs on Blueberry Pie with this bass and have played many a festival stage together, flown on planes and travelled around the world and back again.

The low end has a big attitude for rock and an elegant versatility that lets you slide up the neck as if you were on your knees sliding across a well-oiled floor! Sometimes I close my eyes and imagine it’s an upright double bass too, the sound and thud of the strings taking me to that smoky downtown bar.

The M4V evokes a fantastic classic vintage vibe with all the wonderful attributes of a 60/70s Jazz bass combined with passive electronics, all in a slightly downsized body shape.

Technical stuff

• Fitted with Hipshot Ultralite tuners with drop D
• Custom Wound Lindy Fralin Single Coil Pickups
• Hipshot Aluminium Bridge
• Mahogany Body
• Graphite Reinforced Maple Neck
• Rosewood fingerboard
• Thomastik-Infeld Jazz Bass – JF344 – flat wound strings

Mike Lull M4V bass guitar
Photo credit: Simon Campbell 

Technical terminology/gear

At this juncture, I also needed to get my head around a few basic technical terms and learn about how things work.

What is that saying: It’s not easy because I haven’t learned it yet.

The guitar pick-up

Have you ever wondered how electric basses make sounds in the first place? It’s a fascinating process and the most important part of your electric guitar’s plugged-in tone. Below is a simple explanation:

• Guitar strings are made out of a magnetic metal.
• Underneath the strings sits the ‘pick up’ which is fitted into the body of the guitar.
• The pick up consists of a coil of wire wrapped around a magnetic pole piece (or pieces).
• When you pluck/hit a string – it vibrates which generates a voltage in the coil.
• In a passive bass (more of this later), the pickup(s) are directly connected to volume and tone controls which are then sent to the output of the instrument.

The signal chain

The signal chain is the order in which you place any effects/pedals. At first, I put my tuner first in the chain after the bass guitar the signal can be easily muted for silent tuning.

The pre-amp

This electronic device amplifies a weak signal, such as that from a passive bass.

These are found in bass/guitar amplifiers, studio mixing consoles, domestic HiFis, sometimes within the bass itself (referred to as an active bass) and as external units in the format of a pedal.

There are many different specifications but some are capable of driving a power amplifier (the second stage which amplifies this intermediate signal level to one which can drive a loudspeaker) and/or can be used before the amplifier to modify the sound, volume and tone of the instrument – I will explain more about this in the next instalment.

This brings me to the third pedal I owned.

Lehle RMI BassSwitch IQ DI

Photo credit: Simon Campbell 

The Lehle RMI BassSwitch IQ DI was the centrepiece of my first pedalboard (a metal frame where all the pedals are organised). It was exactly what I needed at the time to help me sort out the technical challenges of playing two different basses with different sounds and volumes

The unit had two channels with separate volume controls enabling me to set the level for each bass by using a foot switch to select channel A or B.

Channel B also has very natural sounding tone controls (or equalisation – EQ) which allowed me to change the tone of the bass in channel B to complement the bass in channel A.

Two effects loops

The unit also has two effects (FX) loops, one switchable and one in all the time for both channels. In the switchable loop, I placed the FUZZ (so I could switch it in and out using the button on the Lehle) and my rarely used Ernie Ball volume pedal in the unswitched.

If you want to see the possibilities of routing and an explanation of FX loops, check out the manual.

The all-important mute switch

My tuner is connected to a dedicated ‘tuner output’ and the Lehle’s output can be muted via another footswitch.

As I mentioned at the beginning of the article, this mute is critical which enables me to tune up between songs silently as there’s nothing worse than someone audibly tuning up on stage – it’s messy and unprofessional.

The Direct Inject output

There are two outputs from the Lehle, one for the amplifier plus a very high-quality Direct Inject (DI) output which is compatible with mixing consoles, allowing the sound engineer to take the signals right from your pedals before they get to the amplifier.

My bass tone comes from the amplifier and speaker cabinet combination and I always insist it’s miked up for a performance.

There are some instances however that you need the signal to be sent to the live sound system (PA). For example, my Fylde King John acoustic bass is better using this direct method rather than going through the stage amplifier and again, more of this in the next edition!

It is a high-quality piece of kit that you come to expect from Lehle (although now sadly discontinued) and has never let me down. The only thing I have to watch out for is operator error when I’m wearing my big kickass ‘Boots of Rock’.

And finally…

I hope you enjoyed this article – if you have any questions or feedback, it would be cool to hear from you. 

Next up in Walking the Bass Line – I’ll talk a little more about the role of the bass guitar, amplifiers, cabinets and another pedal.

British-born Suzy Starlite is a multifaceted artist known for her work as a bassist, singer, multi-instrumentalist, composer and multimedia artist. She co-owns Supertone, an independent record label and vintage analogue recording studio with her husband, guitarist and music producer Simon Campbell, based near Lisbon, Portugal. Their band, Starlite & Campbell, has released six studio albums and two live albums to date. Visit online at starlite-campbell.com/suzy-starlite, vibes.starlite-campbell.com/ and youtube.com/@starlitecampbell

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The definitive book for lovers of the low-end. Willie G. Moseley, Senior Writer for Vintage Guitar Magazine, profiles more than 100 historic and unique electric bass models from such makers as Alembic, Danelectro, Fender, Gibson, Gretsch, Guild, Hamer, Kramer, Rickenbacker, and many others.

Rare and legendary instruments, from the earliest attempts at amplified basses in the mid-1930s to the cutting-edge instruments of today, are presented in more than 250 color and period photos.

The main feature of this book is the exclusive coverage of historic and one-of-a-kind basses owned and played by such famed musicians as: Bill Black (Elvis Presley), Tim Bogert (Vanilla Fudge), Mark Egan (Pat Metheny Group), John Entwistle (The Who), Paul Goddard (Atlanta Rhythm Section), Bruce Hall (REO Speedwagon), Greg Lake (Emerson, Lake & Palmer), Benjamin Orr (The Cars), Tom Petersson (Cheap Trick), Carl Radle (Derek and the Dominos), Gene Simmons (Kiss), Steve Wariner, and others.

The Bass Space: Profiles of Classic Electric Basses is available online at Amazon.com