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Life
With An Ibanez Musician Bass |
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Having owned 3 of these instruments and having a friend that still owns one, I suppose you could say I’m a bit of an authority on this particular instrument. I’ve been the owner of two Polar white fretted instruments and one fretless instrument with a lacquered natural finish that shows off all the various timbers that went into its construction. The Instrument is a 24 fret 34 inch scale neck through body design sporting active electronics, is a very sturdily built (more about that later) ergonomically designed and very well balanced bass. When I first picked one up at a music fair in the Olympia exhibition hall in west London I couldn’t put it down. Only a few weeks before, I had bought myself an Ibanez 8 string bass, which was an absolute beast, compared to this ‘heaven sent’ instrument. The first thing that hit me was the price – only 350 pounds – and this was 1980 – your average Fender P.Bass was much more expensive and felt so primitive compared to this axe. I came over to South Africa in 1982 and picked up my first brand spanking new Musician bass from a music store in Eastgate called Music House in June of the following year. This bass never stopped amazing me – the sound was great, it looked great and felt absolutely marvellous to play. I was so impressed with the bass that I bought a second hand fretless one from S.A. Entertainment in Hillbrow in 1986. I gigged extensively with these two basses for a number of years but the first one to leave my hands was the fretless model. I used roundwound strings on the instrument all the time and eventually the fingerboard looked like a ploughed field and I didn’t have the confidence in any of the local guitar repair men to replace the fingerboard so I traded it in. I carried on with the Polar white one but eventually traded it in for my Warwick Streamer bass. We’d done a lot of miles (kilometres?) together and the time finally came for us to part company. The bass has a rear entry cavity (sounds disgusting!) and has a separate compartment for the battery. The covers are both flush mounted and are held in place by chrome cross head screws. The control area at the front is a little outdated with three knobs of one type and three knobs of another type plus a toggle switch but that’s probably the worst bit of design about this amazing instrument. The truss rod is adjusted at the head end of the instrument as is the norm on neck throughs. The strength of the instrument’s construction is not to be sneezed at. One morning I accidentally knocked the instrument off its stand and it went crashing to the floor – being a pro muso at the time I saw my livelihood disappearing before my eyes as gravity started doing its thing but to my surprise and absolute relief the instrument took the fall without sustaining even the tiniest scratch – I was sure the head was going to come off but my fears were unfounded. For the first and only time in my life I actually fell in love with 7 pounds of wood!!!!! Funnily enough the musician bass I used at the photo shoot for my Bass To Bass album - a fretted, lacquered natural finished model belongs to a friend of mine.
I owned another Polar white Musician
that I bought from a friend of mine in the mid nineties but traded it in a
few years later for my Cort Artisan 5 string bass which I will tell you
about some other time. |
