The Low End Quest

François and I have been looking for a new bass, something that would mesh better with our world/ethnic fusion aspirations. At first we were looking at an acoustic fretless like the Michael Kelly Dragonfly.









It comes in 4 or 5 strings and exists as a fretless...seemed perfect! It's a gorgeous instrument and the very first time we tried one we were both blown away by the warm organic acoustic fretless tone. But after doing more research and going back to hear it again it seemed rather poorly made. It buzzed, it sounded tiny and we saw a bunch of bad reviews online.

Then we found out about double stringed electric basses...
John Paul Jones uses an Alembic Series I Triple Omega 8-string in the epic Achilles Last Stand.

















Alembic made a gorgeous re-interpretation of that monster. But it's safe to assume it's a little out of our price range.

Well, the quest continues. In the meantime we can drool at the fantastic musicianship of John McLaughlin and Jonas Hellborg getting the best of both the fretted and fretless worlds with this double necked beauty.