Charles Berthoud Reveals What Makes His Signature Schecter Bass So Special, Explains What Features He Preferred

Bass virtuoso Charles Berthoud reflected on his Schecter signature bass guitar and discussed some aspects he loves.

With a bassist like Berthoud, the signature instrument has to be a little more “shred-friendly,” if you will. After all, his music and the stuff we see on his YouTube channel are highly technical. With that in mind, he needs basses that bring sonic diversity and allow for easy playing, which he now has with his signature Schecter CB-4 model.

“I wanted it to be something that I can play really quick,” Charles told Rick Beato about his new instrument in a recent interview (transcribed by No Treble). “So I wanted to have a lot of speed. And one of the keys for that is quite a thin neck.”

“It’s actually probably one of the thinnest bass necks that I’ve played. Which I really like, because it just feels makes me feel like I got a lot of fluency, and I’m just not having to tense up as much in my left hand.”

“And then, another thing I absolutely love about it is the really deep cutaway,” the musician added. For his style of music, where there’s a lot of bass lead parts, it’s a very welcome trait. As he pointed out:

“Having it like this just makes it so much easier to play fast up there. So those are two of my favorite things.”

The CB-4 also has pretty versatile tone-shaping controls, including EMG’s three-band B64 equalizer. Charles explained that “they have quite a wide frequency range when discussing these controls.” Apart from that, there’s also the usual blend control that lets him adjust the balance between the pickups. Discussing this knob on the bass and how he usually keeps it around the middle, Berthoud said:

“It gives me the perfect balance of crisp ‘poppy’ stuff, which is really good for slap, but still maintaining those mids, which allow you to actually cut through in the mix. Because if it’s too metallic and poppy, then it kind of just sounds like a hi-hat, especially in the mix.”

In some cases, however, Charles also likes to do things differently. He added:

“But one thing I do like to do is roll back to the bridge pickup. And I like to do that when I’m doing tapping in like a band setting.”

“Because it just gives you this more mid sound that helps you cut through when there’s a lot of other instruments playing it.”

As far as the tonewood goes, Charles said that he’s not all that informed about its impact on the tone, but he does love its aesthetic effect on these CB-4 basses. When asked about the configuration, he said:

“The body is ash, and the top is flamed maple. I really love the top. And then these red strips, [are] Padauke.”

“To be honest, I don’t really know that much about wood and what kind of tone it creates or anything like that,” he said with a laugh. “But I really like the way it looks.”

Reflecting on the collaboration with Schecter and how the final product came to be, Charles said:

“They sent me maybe, like, six instruments before before I got a signature with them. [Laughs] So I had a six-string stiletto, a four-string fan-fret stiletto, a five-string… I had one of those bass sixes. So I had a lot of stuff with them before I did a signature.”

“We spent a while figuring out the design and everything. And they knew, just from my videos and everything, that I was going to want something very agile. They’re not going to give me something with some fat neck and, really, like, sticky. [Laughs] It’s got to be very playable.”