Archive for 2012 - Page 113

As part of their additions to the USA Standard Series, Guild has unveiled the B-54CE Standard acoustic bass guitar. The cutaway bass is built on the company’s jumbo body design and features a solid Sitka spruce top with red spruce bracing, solid maple sides and a unique arched laminated maple back. The body is also bound with Ivoroid. The B-54CE...

ChordBot is a wonderful, easy to use app which is equally powerful for songwriting as it is for accompaniment. The app allows you to develop and play chord progressions in a number of styles. ChordBot features 60 different chord types (including slash chords), 50+ comping styles, a song generator, as well as the ability to export your files as midi,...

Here’s a cool video of Alberto Rigoni bringing back old school gaming memories with a three-bass layered arrangement of the Tetris theme. For authenticity, he used a bitcrusher effect on the lead line for that classic game soundtrack vibe. Also, check out that fretless tone!

The first week of 2012 saw record traffic to No Treble, starting with the Top 10 Readers’ Favorite list of bassists on new year’s day. This is also the time of year where lots of gear announcements start coming, leading up to the Winter NAMM show taking place in a little over a week (we’ll be there, covering all the...

Esperanza Spalding is coming off of a monster year, which started in February 2011 when the bassist became the first jazz musician in decades to win the Grammy Award for Best New Artist (and, much to our pure joy, beating out Justin Bieber for the honor). That award was for Spalding’s 2010 release, Chamber Music Society, which reached number 1...

Fender’s Custom Shop has announced two new bass models for 2012, including the 2012 Closet Classic Precision Bass Pro and the 1961 Closet Classic Jazz Bass. Both models are built in the U.S. by Fender’s master builders. According to Fender, the Closet Classic Precision Bass Pro combines “the best of the Precision and Jazz Bass models,” which can be partly...

Gary Willis! Here’s the bass master taking a solo during a live performance with the Borlai-Kinsey-Willis Trio in October, 2010, on a tune named “Essaouira”. Scott Kinsey – who was with Willis in Tribal Tech – is on keys, and Gerg? Borlai is on drums. Want to check out the whole tune? We’ve got you covered:

Overt?n Amplification will be debuting a few new pieces of gear at the upcoming NAMM Show, including the Flyweight 500 amp, the Tremor 10mini combo, and the T?nLink-DI, which will be the company’s first foray into outboard gear. Overt?n Flyweight 500 The Flyweight 500 builds on Overt?n’s Flyweight 200 and pumps up the power to 500 watts at 4 ohms....

After putting out a teaser last week, Van Halen has released their tour schedule for what will be their first outing since their 2007-’08 “reunion” tour. The current lineup includes David Lee Roth as well as Alex and Eddie Van Halen, with Eddie’s son Wolfgang Van Halen on bass. Wolfgang of course replaced longtime VH bassist and current Chickenfoot bassist...

This live performance is a real gem. The Who’s Roger Daltrey and John Entwistle teamed up with The Chieftains for this live performance in February 1994. The concert took place at Carnegie Hall in celebration of Daltrey’s 50th birthday. Here, the group performs the Who’s “Behind Blue Eyes,” with Entwistle working his magic on an acoustic bass guitar. Be sure...

Paul McCartney‘s songwriting is legendary, but the inspiration for those compositions was never widely known. That’s about to change in February, when the former Beatle releases his newest album, Kisses on the Bottom, one that takes the bassist in new musical directions while keeping an eye on the past. Kisses on the Bottom is focused on jazz standards, or as...

AC Guitars has released a new model, dubbed the “Salace”. Built with the help of Paul Sugden, the bass was intended to be a headless design, but is also available with a headstock. Though AC Guitars builds to suit, this particular Salace is a 6-string bass with a wenge body and Maracarpra top. The neck is made of 7-pieces of...