JG1117 - Phillip Knight's JG bass.
JG1113 - Pete Zorn's JG bass
JG1117
It's funny how sometimes life stores things up and then
throws them at you in one big lump. Sometimes it's life's woes, sometimes its
blessings and sometimes it's just quirky little happenstances. It was only a
week or so after Martin Elliott had emailed me out of the blue about his
encounter with John Gustafson's JG bass that a post went up on the Wal Facebook
fan page. The post, from bassist Martyn Baker said that he was thinking of
putting his JG bass up on eBay as it was, literally, just gathering dust and
deserved to go to a good owner. The bass eventually sold for a tidy sum -
£7,400 to be precise! A hefty price tag but one that reflects the ownership of
a little bit of bass history.
This all caused not a little consternation and discussion
online but also brought a few other owners out of the woodwork to post their
beauties alongside it. More of those other JG basses (both from later in the
short-lived model's run) in a future post. However, JG1117, built in May 1977, offers a good
opportunity to look at what made up a JG bass before Wal and Pete slightly
refined the design after JG1118.
Martyn filled in a little background to the bass. He was
the second owner and had owned the bass since the late 1980s. "I have
owned the bass since 1988. After buying it in London I decided to take it up to
the Electric Wood factory in High Wycombe. Ian Waller picked me up from the
station, and set it up perfectly in one afternoon. Such a shame that he died so
so soon after that - he seemed like a really great guy."
The bass was originally built for Peter Knight of
Seahorse (no, me neither) and shows amply how well put together and forward
thinking even these early models were. This one features the dual jack/balanced
DI XLR outputs which were available on the JG series and the series/parallel
switches on the pickup mounting rings. It also features a small switch on the
scratchplate. This is an early version of the "Pick-attack" feature
which adds a small peak to the output in the high-mids. The idea was to allow
finger style players to emulate the attack which you get with a plectrum
without changing their playing style. This also has the beneficial effect of
acting as a presence enhancer, assisting the bass (however played) to cut
through in the mix. You can see the battery compartment for this feature on the back of the bass.
It also shows the simpler laminate structure employed for
the neck, missing the mukulungu layers which were added to the necks from
JG1119 onwards. The machine heads employed are the smaller enclosed type of
tuner rather than the more substantial half enclosed Schaller-type used on
later basses.
 |
| Finished in May 1977 and signed off by Ian Waller |
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| JG1117 in its new home hanging around with some Wal friends (thanks to new owner, Frank Zimmerman, for the photo of his collection and the label above). |
JG1113
A dozen years earlier, in 2004 another very early JG bass
turned up on eBay. This one, JG1113, was the fourth JG bass to be made (if one
includes John G Perry's short-scale JP1111) and had originally been owned by
bassist, session player, multi-instrumentalist Pete Zorn. The Wal orders sheet
for the JG basses lists him under his job of the time - bass player in Barbara
Dixon's band. When originally built the bass sported a natural finish, as did
all the other early "Mk 1" JG basses. However, when it came up for
sale, although it had clearly been through the wars and was in desperate need
of refurbishment, it wore a more eye catching colour. A beautiful translucent
blue burst. It sets off the dark brown leather of the scratch-plate
surprisingly effectively and the stain shows off the grain of the ash body
particularly effectively.
The JG clearly has a chequered history, as an old friend of Ian Waller and Pete Stevens confirmed in a recent blog. In another little
piece of JG bass happenstance Paul Phillips, best known for the 1970s hit
"Driver 67", published a piece about Zorn and his JG just a few weeks
ago on his blog at The New Colloquium . Paul takes up the story...
"...Ian, on the other hand, was a bit of an
electronics genius and also built guitars. Everyone called him Wal (his name
was Ian Waller). He made the legendary Wal Bass. The list above appears to be
of orders for the first run of the original bass. Notable names on there
include Percy Jones of Brand X, (Phil Collins’ jazz fusion side project away
from Genesis); ‘Paul’ of The Clash (obviously Simonon); Nigel Griggs of Split
Enz (who morphed into Crowded House); and Pete Zorn, my old music partner and
brother in law..."
"...Wal was a friend of mine since 1968. I
introduced him to Pete Zorn after Pete and I became friends in 1971. Later,
after Pete and I had our hit with Car 67, Wal sent Neil Finn of Split Enz and
the group’s manager down to Bexleyheath to ask me to produce them. Little did
they know: Pete and I were crazy fans..."
"...Anyway, back to Wal and his basses. Wal and
Geoff were part of an extraordinarily rich time in Manchester culture. They
came up alongside The Hollies, Herman’s Hermits (close friends with the group)
and Freddie & The Dreamers. Liverpool’s The Beatles were just another group
on the circuit.
When I met him, he had already built his own acoustic
bass guitar, the first I’d ever seen. It was huge, and beautiful. At one point,
George Harrison coveted it, but Wal wasn’t keen. I think he’d rather it went to
a bona fide and great bass player.
He started studying wood and how it aged, and dreaming up
the design of the Wal Bass. To me, wood was wood. But then Wal showed me some
birdseye maple and made me study it as he saw it. I never – to this day – looked at wood the same
way again.
When the Wal Bass went into production, Pete Zorn was
given a very early model, a massive compliment from Wal. The guitar was later
stolen from a dressing room on tour, never to be seen again. Pete bought
another, so entranced was he with the first.
Wal died shockingly young. Barely 43, he had a heart
attack as he left home one morning in 1988, headed to the factory he and his
partner, Pete ‘The Fish’ Stevens, had built with such high hopes for an
exciting future.
Well, the future came, and the bass lives on. Wal didn’t
get to see it. But the rest of us are proud to have known him."
For the full story and how this bass links to a later JG
bought by Nigel Griggs of Split Enz read the full blog here... http://thenewcolloquium.com/wal-bass-neil-finn-me
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