JG Special Pt 5: Gallery - JG Basses and their players

A gallery of JG bass owners...

Finally, let's just indulge ourselves with a gallery dedicated to some of the great players who have played JG basses over the years. Given the very short production run it's quite a remarkable roster that reflects how well known and well respected Ian Waller and Pete Stevens were with the musical elite of the 1970s, even in these early days.

John Gustafson

JG basses are pretty rare beasts so, of all those made, only a small proportion of the basses are represented here. The photos come from a wide variety of sources... internet pages, screen grabs from YouTube videos and the like so apologies for the variable quality. I promise that, as more and better photos turn up this page will be duly updated... 

So here are a few of the faces who queued up to order their own JG basses from Electric Wood...

JG Bass Special Pt 3: Gallery - "Mk 1" JG Basses - the earlier models

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."

JG Bass Special Pt 2: A tale of two basses

John Gustafson's original JG bass (JG1112) and Martin Elliott's solid ash Custom Series basses

John Gustafson in 1978 with the Gordon Giltrap Band

A few weeks ago I got a very interesting email quite out of the blue. It came from a bass player who is notable in his own terms but even more so in the inextricable links he has with the history of Wal basses. During the 1980s and 1990s Martin Elliott was a session player working on the London and wider UK session circuit. To carve out a successful living in that tough world one needs a range of skills – the ability to read accurately from a chart while simultaneously injecting real life and emotion into the notes rendered, the ability to come up with original and inventive bass lines on the spot time and time again and the ability to be the sort of person that people want to spend many, many hours shut in a claustrophobic environment with. In short, you need incredible playing skills and a winning personality.

Martin Elliott with the Michael Nyman Band
Forli, Italy, July 2016 (Photo by Francesca Lelli,
Kframe fotografia Bologna - www.kframe.it)

Across the course of his career he has played with many artists – from Petula Clark and Helen Shapiro to the Jesus And Mary Chain. However, since 1983 it is with the classical composer, Michael Nyman, that he has been most closely associated. And let’s face it, Nyman is hardly renowned for writing simple, basic bass lines. 

Elliott also has strong links with Wal basses which reach back to the early days of his session career. This has led to him owning two unique Wal basses, including being the original owner of one of the most notable Wal basses in existence – the solid ash Mk 1 which is now used to great effect by Colin Edwin of Porcupine Tree.

However, his email wasn’t about his playing experiences or his basses (more of that later). No, it was about something much more intriguing…

JG Bass Special Part 1: A masterpiece of design...

Every so often something comes along in life that forces you to reevaluate. Sometimes it's something foundational and Earth-shattering and sometimes it's a tiny tweak in perspective. Over the last few weeks I've had a series of revelations about the nature of one of the early Wal bass designs. I'll leave it to the reader's discretion to decide which camp they fall into.

I have a confession to make. Having never actually had an opportunity to play a JG series Wal bass I had always considered them a bit of a homespun, stepping stone bass. A simple work in progress towards a more sophisticated, complete design - as embodied in the Pro Series bass. I now realise that assumption was very, very wrong.

Over the last few weeks there has been a strange coincidental domino effect of emails popping into my inbox and social media feeds. First an email arrived from a bass player I have long admired and whose playing with Michael Nyman scales pinnacles I can hardly dream of. In it a fascinating anecdote was related and photos of the first true JG, number JG1112 were produced. Then a JG bass suddenly turned up being offered for sale on eBay and flagged on the Wal basses fan group on Facebook. Finally, other JG owners, emboldened by the reaction to that bass joining in an online show-and-tell session showcasing their own instruments. What a treasure trove.

One thing that became clear across these communications - which encompassed the second JG ever made and one of the last - was that my presumptions about the basses were dead wrong.

Special feature: Wal Basses - the early years

Wal Basses the early years

Over the last half a century some incredible bass guitars have come from these shores. From the “yeah baby” grooviness of Burns, to the quirky ergonomics of Shergold, from the Alembic influences of Jaydee and John Birch to the macho 80s lines of Status… all classic designs in their own right. However, perhaps one other British bass stands shoulder to shoulder with them – the instruments made by Electric Wood in High Wycombe: the Wal bass. For much of the 1980s and 1990s a Wal was the must-have bass de jour for the discerning British session player and attracted a wide range of celebrity endorsees (all of whom shared one characteristic… they’d bought their own Wals - the company had a “no freebies” policy). A few years ago the brand ceased production when ill health forced the retirement of founder Peter Stevens. However, in the hands of luthier, Paul Herman, Wal has recently re-emerged so perhaps it’s perhaps an appropriate to have a look back at the birth of the brand. We’ve gathered together some of the characters who were instrumental to the story and picked their brains on those early years.

 Ian Waller - the Manchester years...

Ian Waller (second from left) in the Demons - early 1960s

Ian Waller was an enthusiast. A bass enthusiast and an enthusiastic tinkerer. From an early age he was adept with his hands - playing in bands around the early 60s Manchester scene and building instruments and pedals to power his own music. It’s a matter of record that, with US trade embargoes biting, the availability of decent instruments in the early days of the UK beat revolution was low. Many aspiring players plumped for lower cost alternatives like Hagstroms, Dallas Arbiters and Grimshaws. Others such as "Big Wal", as he had become known around the scene, went for the home-made route. Other members of those early bands recall him as a popular figure on the circuit, the quality of the bass he had made with the assistance of his father always drawing gasps of admiration from jealous musos.