It’s not every day that you come across a Fodera bass just hanging around in your local music instrument store that you can pick up and start playing – much less a specific model like the Richard Bona 5 string bass.
That’s why the guys are Ultimate Basses are making these cool bass demo videos to showcase what these high end basses sound like for those of us that don’t happen to have a boutique bass guitar shop close by.
Fodera’s are extremely expensive and relied upon by some of the best of the best bass players on the planet; but are they right for you? Check out this video and see what you think of the Richard Bona 5 string model:
My takeaways on this video:
First up, it’s nice to see/hear that the volume was much louder in this video than in the introduction to Ultimate Basses video. You can hear Jason pretty clearly and you can definitely hear the bass when he’s playing. It sounds great!
Jason goes over some of the specs of the bass and then proceeds to play it flat and with different pickups boosted so that you can get an idea of the range of sounds. This is very helpful, but I think it would be even better if Jason restricted himself to a particular run or riff that he would demonstrate across all of the pickup settings – that would be the ideal way to hear the way the sound of the bass changes.
This caught my attention when he switched over to the bridge pickup and proceeded to play melodically higher up on the frets. Obviously, he’s a terrific bassist and started playing the way he does when he favours the bridge pickup, and it was a treat to listen to!
So, my only words of advice to Dave and Jason is – come up with a specific pattern, riff or heck even a boring old scale that is played across the various settings to use as a reference point for how the bass sounds. Attempt to use the same technique and hand positioning as well – i.e. don’t start slapping or switch to a pick from fingerstyle (not that they did that in this video).
You don’t have to do the whole video this way, just make sure that you take 30 seconds to a minute to play the same part across the different settings; after that go nuts!
That is my only criticism and I’m saying this only to benefit the listener. Aside from that, Jason, Dave and whoever the mystery guest was in the middle video all did their best to make the video interesting and added some lively humour in there as well – always a good thing in my books.
I’m looking forward to sharing more of these bass demo videos featuring Jason Raso and the lovely boutique basses available from Ultimate Basses with you!
Thanks for reading and let me know if you agree with my view point on how to improve these videos.