A History of Wal Basses - The Movie

Of all my favourite memories of 2015, one of the longest lasting will be a Saturday in September spent at the "Basschat South East Bass Bash 2015". This was a gathering of members of the fine discussion board, Basschat - a fine place to hang out and talk about all things bass. And indeed, it was a fine day to hang about with some like-minded bass players, shoot the breeze, check out each others' basses and generally geek out. I'm not going to blog about the day itself because that job has already been done brilliantly by the music blogger, Bluejay, also a keen Basschatter.

Here are the quartet which were there that day...

But I wasn't just there to shoot the breeze. The main reason that I as there was that I had been invited to give a talk about Wal basses - a run through the history of the brand. Alongside my own two Wals a number of other attendees had brought theirs - a lovely Wenge Mk 1 Custom and a Reissue Pro bass which had been retrofitted by Wal with Custom Series bass pickups and controls - a truly unique bass. The talk gave me the perfect opportunity to tell those assembled about the history of the brand and to demo a few of the qualities which make Wal basses so unique. 

Fortunately, Bluejay also video'd the talk and posted the it on YouTube for posterity. So here, for your viewing pleasure, a trilogy in four parts of "The History of Wal Basses". Here is the first of the four videos...

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

The slides I used for the presentation, including a suggested Wal Bass listening list can be downloaded from this link (open in your web browser)... or downloaded from this link...

Finally, if you want to see more Wal basses in action you can watch a YouTube play list of some of the best of Wal performances here...

There is also a Spotify playlist here...