Keith F. Kelly

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My bass gear:

  1. Ernie Ball MusicMan BONGO 5-string bass
  2. Carvin ICON 6-string fretted bass, solid walnut
  3. Genz-Benz GBE-600 hybrid tube/solid-state amp head
  4. Two Fender Bassman cab stack (4x10 and 1x15)
  5. SWR Workingman's bass combo amp

The Genz-Benz amp head has a nice flat, hi-fi attitude, distinctly different from the muddy, boomy low-end you get out of Ampeg amps.

The SWR Workingman's 12 bass combo amp is the best little solid-state bass amp I've ever used, easily beating out the little Ampeg combo amps I've used. Even though SWR's larger amps generally suck (in my experience), this little combo amp has really served me well.

The Ernie Ball MusicMan BONGO is a great bass with excellent pickups and electronics -- it never picks up radio stations or other EM noise, and it can easily capture the fat lows of the B-string, even when the instrument is downtuned a half or full step. It has 4-band EQ and runs at 18 volts, so you can get a very wide variety of tones out of it. It can be made to do the famous "Warwick growl", but unlike most Warwicks, it can also be made to sound incredibly clean, bright, or creamy-smooth. I compared this instrument side-by-side for hours against several Warwicks (Thumb-5, Jazzman 5, etc), and this one just has a better playing feel and a more diverse range of possible tones. Plus it comes in flamboyant orange and it looks like an alien toilet seat, so you can't beat that.


I took this photo of an ICON bass from Carvin's web site. My bass looks very similar to this one.

The Carvin ICON is easily the best bass I have ever played on. The build quality is amazing, the price was surprisingly cheap, and it easily surpasses basses costing thousands of dollars more. Carvin sells basses similar to how DELL sells computers: you pick a base model, then customize it to your liking, then they build it for you and ship it out. The build time is usually at least several months. I ordered it in mid-2007 and received it later that year. The options I picked were solid walnut body, a satin finish, black hardware, and jumbo-size stainless steel frets. This thing is a tone beast, gorgeous to look at, and easy to play.

I use a PedalTrain pedalboard with a Boss TU-2 tuner pedal (excellent pedal but not super-precise tuning), a Crybaby Bass Wah pedal (excellent sound but not very durable), a DigiTech Bass Overdrive/Distortion pedal (nicely built but crappy effect), a DigiTech X-series guitar Flanger pedal (actually sounds pretty good), an EBS MultiComp bass compressor pedal (works great), and a SansAmp Bass DI pedal.

The Fender Bassman 400H head I originally used for my gigging rig turned out to be a defective piece of junk that finally kicked the bucket, and the replacements that Fender sent to me had other problems, so I finally just switched to a different brand. The Fender cabs were pretty bad at first also, because they weren't assembled well, but they are designed decently enough and use respectable-quality speakers. I had to make some modfications to the cabs to get them working properly, but now they're quite good and complement the hi-fi attitude of the GBE amp very well.

On both cabs, the grills rattled badly, preventing clear tone. On the 4x10, the grill was mounted too close to the speakers, so they would contact at loud volumes and create a flubby distorted sound. On both cabs, the speakers weren't screwed down tightly, so they rattled at high volumes. And I discovered that the rubber grill mounts each contained a pointless metal washer that was dislodged and rattling around inside. And each metal grill had a metal "Fender" logo loosely screwed to it (without any shock-abosrbing attachment) which was rattling against the grill at loud volumes.

So I stacked some black rubber washers to raise the grill on the 4x10 about half an inch farther away from the speakers. I used black rubber furniture feet to create four additional grill mounting posts around the center horn for good measure. I removed the stupid metal "Fender" logo from the grill. I did keep the logo on the 1x15 though because it proved not to be a source of rattle. On both cabs, I removed all the unnecessary metal washers from the original furniture feet, screwed the speakers down tightly, and slightly bent the right-angled edges of the grills to isolate the grills from contacting the sides of the frame. Then I screwed the grills down firmly onto the mounting posts.

After these modifications, the cabs both perform well, yielding a clean, tight tone. They have larger dimensions than most equivalent bass cabs, which makes them sound more full but also makes them more difficult to transport. Ampeg cabs are definitely built much better, but they are designed smaller for portability and therefore they sound less full.