This is the Strat bass that Neil Murray had built by Roger Giffin. Although it is a fullsize fender neck the scale length is 32 with 24 frets. Neil kindly provided the following information: Hi, I’d forgotten I’d used it with Gary – I think only on the very fast track Hurricane, as the bass is easy to play but has rather a thin sound without much oomph. You can see it on the Whitesnake video for Long Way From Home, though I didn’t use it on the recording of the song. I used it on a track for Cozy Powell’s Over The Top album, because my main basses had already been shipped to Spain for gigs, but it didn’t sound great, and in fact Jack Bruce came in with his new Aria SB1000, which sounded a lot better, and overdubbed on the song, so I’m not on that album at all! The idea of the Strat bass is better than the reality: scaling up the body size to keep it in proportion to the neck means that the body is quite large (in fact a P-bass body is the same as a Strat’s, but with bigger horns), plus having a tremolo with springs and a medium scale length takes away a lot of tone from the notes. Originally there were 3 single-coil pickups (Schecter Jazz pickups, because of the rounded ends which look Strat-like) but I put two together as a humbucker at the bridge, because the single coil there was very weedy-sounding. Unfortunately I did that alteration myself, so it’s a little messy – I should have taken it back to Roger Giffin to do it! I ought to sell the bass, as it never gets played. Go ahead and share the pictures. All the best, Neil
Posted on: Thu, 27 Nov 2014 11:51:28 +0000